What a customer actually needs from your website
It's 7 o'clock on a Friday. Somebody in the car searches your name, taps the first link, and needs three things: are you open right now, what's on the menu, and how do I call or find you.
That's the whole job. If the link Google hands them is a dead domain, a parked ad page, or a site with a "BUSINESS HOURS" heading and nothing under it, you lost a table and you'll never know it.
In August 2026 I checked 38 locally-run restaurants, cafes and food spots operating in Winchester and Clark County, public sources only. Nineteen had no working website: thirteen had none I could find, six had a site that was dead, broken, or lapsed into a domain-parking ad page. Of the nineteen that loaded, ten were missing their hours or showed different hours than the listing sites, checked the same day, and ten failed the phone test, either a number you couldn't tap or no number on the page at all.
I didn't name anybody and I won't. The point is that the bar is low and the fix is cheap.
What a restaurant site gets from me
- Hours at the top, matching your Google listing exactly, including holidays, and easy for you to change by texting me.
- A menu that's text on the page, not a PDF or a photo, so it loads on a phone and Google can read it.
- Your food and your room, photographed for real; nobody in Kentucky wants a stock photo of somebody else's burger.
- A phone number that's a button, and a map that points at your building.
- A single page is often all it takes, which is why the $850 site exists.
What I don't sell you is an online ordering system you'll never use. If you take orders through a third-party app, the site links to it. If you don't, the site says call, and the number works.
What it costs
A single-page restaurant site is $850 and takes one to two weeks. If you've got multiple locations, catering, or a story worth telling, the five-page site is $2,600.
Both carry the $100-a-month care plan, which for a restaurant mostly means: the new special, the holiday hours, the menu price change, menu and hours updates handled within 24 hours—often same-day. Every price is on the pricing page.
What a restaurant website has to do.
- Hours that are right. At the top, matching Google, including holidays. Changed by text, handled within 24 hours—often same-day.
- A menu Google can read. Text on the page, not a PDF. Loads on a phone, shows up in search.
- Your food, photographed. Real plates, your room, your people. Never a stock burger.
- Tap to call, tap for directions. The two things a hungry customer does. Both work, every page.
- A domain you own. Registered in your name, so it never lapses into somebody else's ad page.
- No ordering system you won't use. If you use a third-party app, the site links to it. If not, the site says call.
Restaurant websites: the published numbers
| $850 | Single-page restaurant site — usually all it takes |
|---|---|
| 19 of 38 | Clark County restaurants checked in Aug 2026 with no working website |
| 1–2 wks | The honest build time for a single page |
The Clark County Web Census, restaurants.
The numbers above aren't a sales line; they're a dataset I built in August 2026 and published, business names withheld. Thirty-eight locally-run food spots, checked from public sources the way a customer would. Half with no working site.
Two lapsed domains serving somebody else's ad-network scripts right now. The full write-up is on the blog, and if you want to know whether your place is one of them, I'll look it up free.
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