Food and Hospitality
People decide where to eat before they leave the house. Your website is part of that decision.
72%
of diners check a restaurant's website before visiting
30%
less cost per booking when taken direct vs through a third-party platform
4.3
average Google star rating for Surrey restaurants
The restaurant industry is one where presentation matters at every level: the food, the room and the way you present yourself online. Diners researching somewhere to go will look at your website, your photos and your reviews before they decide. All three need to be working together.
We work with independent restaurants and cafes across Surrey who want a website that reflects the quality of their food and their room. Not a template with stock photos, but something built around your identity that makes people want to come in.
Whether you serve breakfast and lunch, do evening covers, run a Sunday menu or focus on events and private hire, your website should make all of that clear and easy to act on.
Common problems
A Google Business Profile gets you in front of local searches but it does not do everything. Customers who want to book a table for a special occasion, check your menu in detail or understand what the experience is like need more than a photo and a phone number. A website does the job your Google listing cannot.
If someone has to call to book a table, a significant number of them will not bother. Online reservations are expected now. A booking system that works on mobile, confirms immediately and lets you manage covers means fewer empty tables and less time managing the phone.
Customers check menus before deciding where to eat. If yours is a PDF that takes ten seconds to load, shows as tiny text on a phone or has not been updated since last year, it is actively putting people off. A well-presented menu that is easy to update directly changes decisions.
What you get
Why it matters
The decision to visit a restaurant often involves two or three people looking at options together. If your website loads slowly, the menu is hard to read on a phone or there is no way to book without calling, you lose to the place down the road that made it easier. Getting the basics right consistently fills more seats.
"Friday and Saturday evenings fill up faster now. We see a direct link between people checking the menu online and making a reservation the same day. The website pays for itself every weekend."
Rosa Nkemdi, The Larder, Guildford · Website and branding, 2024
FAQ
The questions restaurant owners and cafe operators ask us most often, before they brief a project.
A live, current menu rendered as proper HTML rather than a slow-loading PDF, table booking on the home page that takes one tap to start, opening hours that are correct and visible, real photography of your food and the room (not stock shots from a paid library), event pages where relevant, and a sticky address with directions. The aim is one decision per scroll: book, view menu, get directions.
Most independent restaurant projects launch within 3 to 5 weeks of kick-off. The bottleneck is almost always food photography. A small investment in a half-day shoot of signature dishes and the room transforms the site.
Depends on your covers and the type of restaurant. OpenTable and Resy are well integrated, work hard for diner acquisition, but charge per cover. Direct booking with SevenRooms or your own widget keeps the customer relationship and the data, with lower per-cover cost. Many restaurants run a mix. We integrate with all the major platforms or build a custom flow.
HTML, every time. PDF menus are slow to load on mobile, terrible for accessibility, invisible to Google search and AI engines, and a pain to update. A properly built HTML menu loads instantly, can be updated in seconds, and ranks for dish-name searches. PDF menus on restaurant websites are a tell of an out-of-date site.
Local SEO is built in from the start: dedicated pages for the cuisine and offering you want to be known for (Italian restaurant, Sunday lunch, breakfast cafe, private dining) in your specific town, schema markup including Restaurant and Menu structured data, Google Business Profile alignment with photos and reviews surfaced on the site. Realistic timeline for meaningful movement is 2 to 4 months, faster in less competitive towns.
Areas we cover
We work with restaurants and cafes across Surrey and the surrounding area.
More in food and hospitality
Other industries we work in across food and hospitality. Each page covers the specifics of how we approach websites for that sector.
Start a project
Tell us about your food, your covers, your location and what your current website is not doing for you. We will come back with a clear answer on what we can build and what it costs.
Tell us about your project and we will get back to you within one working day.