What a fine-dining restaurant website needs

A fine-dining website has a narrow job. Guests come to it to decide whether to book, to book, and then to find out what they need to know before they arrive. Everything on this list serves one of those three.

Use it to check your current site, or as a brief for the next one.

Booking

• A booking button on every page, visible without scrolling on a phone. If guests have to hunt for it, some of them will book somewhere else.
• It opens your reservation platform directly, whether that’s Resy, Tock, OpenTable or SevenRooms, rather than a page that then links to it.
• Your booking rules, in plain words. When reservations open (“30 days ahead at 10am”), the party sizes you take online, deposits or prepayment, and the cancellation policy. Guests who know the rules before they try to book are less frustrated when tables are gone.
• What to do when you’re full. The waitlist, the bar, walk-ins, or a cancellation line. A sold-out restaurant still has options to offer.

Before they come

These are the questions your team answers on the phone every week. Answer them once, on the site.

• The address, and how to find the door. Hidden entrances, basement rooms, the nearest subway stop and which exit to use.
• Hours and service times, including when the kitchen closes and which nights you’re dark.
• Dress code, even if it’s “none”.
• Dietary restrictions and allergies. What the kitchen can accommodate on a tasting menu, and how much notice it needs.
• Children, accessibility and anything else that would change someone’s evening. Step-free access, restroom location, whether the counter seats are high stools.
• How long dinner takes. A three-hour tasting menu is part of the experience, and guests planning a theater night need to know.

The menu

• The menu as a page, not a PDF. It needs to read on a phone without zooming. Here’s why that matters.
• Prices, including the tasting menu, wine pairing and any supplements.
• Dated, if it changes often. “Tonight’s menu” with a date beats a menu that may be a season old.
• Something you can update yourself, the same day the menu changes.

The room and the story

• Photography of the room, not just the plates. Guests choose fine dining for the whole evening.
• The chef and the team, in a few honest paragraphs.
• Recognition, such as Michelin stars, reviews and press, kept short and current.
• One idea the site is built around. The thing guests remember about your restaurant, whether it’s the counter, the view or the door you walk through. This is what makes a site feel like yours rather than a template.

Private dining and events

• A page for buyouts and private dining, with capacity, minimums or starting prices if you’re comfortable sharing them, and photos of the space.
• An inquiry form that asks for the date, number of guests, occasion and budget, and goes straight to the person who answers it.

Being found on Google

• A complete Google Business Profile, with hours, photos, a menu link and a reservation link.
• The same name, address and phone number everywhere: your site, Google, Resy or Tock, and anywhere else you’re listed. Mismatches confuse search engines and guests.
• Restaurant structured data on the site, describing your cuisine, address, hours, menu and reservations in a format search engines read.
• A real page title and description, so search results show your name, neighborhood and cuisine rather than “Home”.

Speed and the basics

• Fast on a phone over a cellular connection. Large photos are the usual reason restaurant sites are slow, and they can be fixed without making them look worse.
• Readable by everyone, with real text, good contrast, and alt text on images, so guests who use screen readers can use the site too.
• Gift cards, if you sell them, linked from the homepage in November and December.
• You own it. The domain should be registered in the restaurant’s name, and you should have the logins. If the person who built your site disappeared tomorrow, could you still change it?

How did your site do?

If most of this list is already true, your website is doing its job. If it isn’t, the gaps are usually the same few: booking is buried, the menu is a PDF and nobody can update it, and the site looks like every other restaurant’s.

That’s the work Studio Cloche does, in seven days. See how the week works, what it costs, or book a call.