Cafe Website Design

Cafe websites built for the people Googling you from the pavement.

Mobile-first, fast, and full of the things people actually want at the moment they look you up: hours, menu, location, a phone number they can tap, a table they can book. Hand-coded from £400, £0 monthly hosting.

01

The brief

A cafe website has one job.

Most cafe websites are designed for the wrong audience. They open with a sweeping hero shot, an "our story" paragraph, and a navigation bar with seven items. That works for a magazine. It does not work for the actual visitor, who is almost always on a phone, often standing within a kilometre of the cafe, and deciding in roughly four seconds whether to walk in.

A cafe website's job is to answer six questions, fast: are you open right now, where are you, what is on the menu, how do I call you, can I book a table, and does the room look like somewhere I want to spend an hour. Everything else is decoration. If the homepage answers those six in under two seconds on a flaky 4G connection, the visitor walks through your door. If it does not, they tap back to Google Maps and pick the next pin.

That is what this page is selling. Not "a website for your cafe." A website built to win the four seconds when somebody nearby decides where to get coffee.

02

What's included

Six things every cafe build ships with.

No "premium add-ons." The features below are baked into the standard tier for cafes.

smartphone

Mobile-first hero

Today's opening hours, address with one-tap Google Maps, and a tap-to-call phone number all visible above the fold on a phone. Decision time is four seconds.

coffee

Live menu editor

A single password-protected page where the manager updates dishes, drinks, and prices from a phone. Mark something out of stock with one tap. Changes go live in about 30 seconds.

event_seat

Table booking widget

Lightweight booking that routes straight to your inbox. No OpenTable commission, no third-party checkout, no per-cover fee. For walk-in cafes, swap for a "currently quiet / busy" indicator.

reviews

Live Google Reviews

The latest 4 to 5 star reviews from your Google Business Profile pulled in automatically. No manual copying. Schema markup so Google can show your star rating in search results.

photo_camera

Instagram embed

Latest 6 to 9 posts on the homepage, lazy-loaded so they do not slow the page down. Lets you keep one source of truth (Instagram) and surface it where new visitors land first.

location_on

Local SEO from day one

LocalBusiness schema, opening hours marked up so Google can show them in the snippet, address linked to your Google Business Profile. Built to rank for "cafe near me" in your area.

03

Recent hospitality build

Kasto Bali: a hospitality build in three days.

Kasto is a plant-based restaurant rather than a cafe, but the playbook is identical: mobile-first hero, live menu editor, integrated booking, atmosphere photography. Most cafes can launch with the same template.

Screenshot of the Kasto Bali plant-based restaurant website built by James Hattersley

3

days from kickoff

98

Google PageSpeed

~30s

menu change to live

Chef Giuseppe wanted the site to feel like the room: warm, cinematic, plant-forward. The old Wix site looked generic, loaded slowly, and cost more every month than the espresso budget. Worse, editing the menu took the chef away from the kitchen.

The new build ships a single password-protected menu editor that the chef updates from a phone between services. Bookings route directly to the kitchen inbox. No third-party widget, no drop-off, no monthly platform fee. Three days from brief to live. The same architecture works for any independent cafe with a rotating menu and a manager who cannot get to a desktop computer mid-service.

"James delivered something beautiful: professional animations, a booking system, and a simple menu editor, in just a few days."
Giuseppe Maria Brancati, Chef Patron, Kasto Bali
Read the full Kasto Bali case study arrow_forward
04

The argument

"Can't I just use Instagram?"

A version of this question gets asked by every independent cafe owner. Short answer: no. Slightly longer answer below.

Instagram wins discovery

Top of funnel. People scrolling, looking for new places to try, photographs of cortados and corner banquettes. Instagram is the right tool for that audience, and a cafe should absolutely keep posting.

Google wins decision

Bottom of funnel. People who already know your cafe exists and want hours, address, menu, booking right now. About 70 percent of cafe-related searches in the UK go through Google, not Instagram. Without a real website you forfeit those clicks to TripAdvisor.

Best setup is both

A fast cafe website that wins the Google decision moment, with an Instagram embed on the homepage so the discovery audience also gets served. One source of truth (Instagram), surfaced everywhere it matters.

More on what a hospitality website must have arrow_forward
05

Pricing

Three tiers for cafes.

Prices shown with the Supporter Credit applied. Standard rates are £800, £1,200, and £1,600.

Small cafe

£400

48-hour turnaround

Up to 5 hand-coded pages, mobile-first hero, menu page, opening hours, contact form, base SEO. No live menu editor (manual updates).

Busy cafe

£800

3 to 5 day turnaround

Everything in the small cafe tier plus live menu editor, table booking, Instagram embed, Google Reviews integration. Best for any cafe with a rotating menu.

New cafe launch

£1,200

7 to 10 day turnaround

Everything in the busy cafe tier plus brand kit, logo design, complex booking systems, premium animations. Best for new cafe openings.

See full pricing details and the Supporter Credit arrow_forward
06

FAQ

Cafe website design questions.

A cafe website should have six things visible within two seconds of landing on the homepage: opening hours (today's hours specifically), address with a Google Maps link, the current menu (or at least categories and a sample), a tap-to-call phone number, a tap-to-book table widget if relevant, and at least one strong photo of the room. Everything else (about story, gallery, blog, press) is secondary. The visitor is almost always on a phone, often standing nearby, deciding whether to walk in. Optimise for that moment.
A cafe website in the UK costs £400 to £1,200 from a freelance hand-coded developer (with a Supporter Credit; £800 to £1,600 standard), £2,000 to £6,000 from a small agency, or £15 to £30 per month from a builder like Wix or Squarespace, which adds up to £900 to £1,800 over five years and you still do not own the site. The cheapest sustainable option for an independent cafe is a one-off freelance build, which pays for itself in saved subscription fees within the first 18 months.
Yes. Instagram is great for top-of-funnel discovery (people scrolling looking for places to try) but it loses to Google for bottom-of-funnel intent (people who already know your cafe exists and want hours, address, menu, booking right now). Google sees about 70 percent of cafe-related searches in the UK. Without a real website, you forfeit those clicks to Yelp, TripAdvisor, and your competitors. The best setup is a fast website plus an Instagram embed on the homepage so both audiences are served.
Yes, on the £800 Interactive tier and above. The menu editor is a single password-protected page that the manager updates from a phone in under a minute. Add a dish, change a price, mark something out of stock, reorder by dragging. Changes go live in about 30 seconds. No developer needed for ongoing menu changes, ever.
Both are included in the Interactive tier and above. Google Reviews are pulled in live from your Google Business Profile so the latest reviews show on the homepage automatically (no manual copying). Table reservations use a lightweight booking widget that does not drop guests into a third-party checkout (no OpenTable cut, no commission). For walk-in only cafes, the booking widget can be replaced with a "today's wait time" or "currently quiet / busy" indicator.
Yes, this is a specialism. James is vegan, runs vegan activism nonprofit We The Free, and the studio's recent restaurant case study (Kasto Bali) is a plant-based restaurant. Plant-based cafes get the same hand-coded build with Supporter Credit eligibility (£400 off any tier for backing the vegan nonprofit). See the dedicated vegan website design page for the longer pitch.

Open the doors

A cafe website that wins
the four-second decision.

Three new clients per month. Send a brief and I'll get back within 24 hours.

Get a free cafe website quote arrow_forward