the restaurant site is read on a phone, outside, at 20:40

business · 2026-10-29 · 3 min

almost every visit to a restaurant site happens on a phone, standing on the pavement, at 20:40, deciding whether to come in. the person is not reading: they are looking for the menu, the price of a plate and whether the kitchen is still open. if any of those takes more than ten seconds, they walk to the place next door.

the menu has to be a page

text, not a pdf, not a photo of the chalkboard, not a gallery of eight images to swipe. one page, courses in the order people eat them, price on the right, four or five words per dish. the fourteen allergens declared next to each plate, with a small legend or a clear table at the end: it is an obligation, and it is also the question that makes people call. update the menu in one place and check that the old pdf is not still online.

one set of hours, everywhere

a single page with monday to sunday, closed days in words, the time the kitchen stops and the time the door closes. then the same hours in the google profile, and a line at the top for holidays. the post from august saying "chiusi per ferie" is still the first thing people find in october, and it is the reason they do not come. adding a map with the entrance visible fixes the last fifty metres, which is where most people give up.

photographs of this room

six or eight real pictures: the room at service, two plates, the door from the street. daylight, phone, no filter. stock photos of pasta with a stranger's hands are recognised immediately and cost more credibility than an empty room. if the room is small, show it small: people forgive a tight table, they do not forgive arriving and finding something else.

booking that stays yours

a phone number, a form with date, time, number of people and a note for allergies, and a reply within the day. if you are on an aggregator, keep the profile, but put your own number on the site and do not require an account to book. the aggregator takes a commission on every cover, and the guest who books twice through it is a guest you paid for twice. nobody needs a deposit for a table of two on a tuesday.

faq

should the prices be on the site?

yes. hiding them moves the conversation to the door, where it is harder and more expensive. a price also filters: the table you want is the one that already knows.

how do i handle allergens?

declare the fourteen on the menu, per dish, and add one line saying the kitchen handles them all in the same space. if a dish changes, the declaration changes with it.

form or phone for bookings?

the phone during service, the form for everything else. a form nobody reads for two days is worse than no form.