Can I just use a free website builder?

Yes, and for a very small café it can be enough. The costs are your time, a builder-branded domain unless you pay to remove it, and a site that usually loads slowly on a phone because the templates are heavy. If you have a spare weekend and reasonable patience, it is a legitimate option.

How long should a restaurant website take to build?

About a week from the point the builder has your menu, photographs and hours. Getting those together is usually what takes the time, not the building.

Do I need a website if I am on delivery platforms?

The platforms hold your menu, your photographs and your reviews, and they charge a commission on customers who already knew your name and searched for it. A website is where that customer lands instead.

How much should a restaurant website cost?

A straightforward five-page restaurant website costs roughly $800 to $2,500 to build once, or $80 to $200 a month on a setup-fee-plus-monthly arrangement. Below about $500 you are usually buying a template with your logo dropped in. Above about $5,000 you are paying for design work that a restaurant with one location rarely needs.

Website pricing looks arbitrary from the outside because almost nobody publishes it. Here is what the brackets actually contain, using US dollars throughout because it is the currency most people can convert from.

What do the price brackets actually buy?

Under $500: A template, filled in
$800 – $2,500: A built site, written for you
$2,500 – $6,000: Custom design, photography
Over $6,000: Agency, multiple locations

Under $500 you are almost always getting a theme with your name and colours applied. That is not automatically wrong for a small café, but you should know that is what it is, and you should expect the menu to be an image or an embedded PDF.

Between $800 and $2,500 you should expect somebody to write the pages rather than paste in what you send, to build the menu as real text, and to make the site work properly on a phone. This is where most independent restaurants land.

Above $2,500 you are buying design time and usually photography. Worth it if your food photography is the selling point and you do not have any. Not worth it if what you actually need is for your opening hours to be correct.

Is a one-off price or a monthly fee better?

A one-off price ends the day the site launches. Hosting, the domain, the SSL certificate, security updates and every future change are then either your problem or a separate invoice. Most restaurant sites that look abandoned were paid for once and then nobody was responsible for them.

A setup fee plus a monthly fee costs more over three years and less in the first month, and it puts the upkeep on somebody with a name. The thing to check is what the monthly fee actually includes. Ask for a number of changes and a turnaround time in writing. "Ongoing support" is not a number.

What should be in the price for a restaurant specifically?

The menu as real text on a page, not a PDF and not a photograph of a printed menu. This is the single biggest thing, and the section below explains why.
Opening hours marked up as structured data, so search engines and maps show them correctly.
A location that opens in whatever map app the customer already has.
Allergen information, if you serve in a country that expects it.
A gallery that loads on mobile data rather than a folder of 6MB photographs.
Links to the delivery platforms you are on, gathered in one place.

Table booking is worth thinking about separately. Most restaurants are better off linking to a booking service they already pay for than paying to have one built.

What makes a quote go up?

More than one location. Each one needs its own page, hours and map entry.
A menu that changes weekly. That is an ongoing cost, not a build cost, so check it is in the monthly fee.
Two languages. Doubling the pages roughly doubles the writing, which is the slow part.
Photography. If somebody has to come and shoot the food, that is a separate line and it should be quoted separately.
Online ordering with payments. This is a different kind of project and it should not be buried in a website quote.

How do you tell a fair quote from a bad one?

Ask three questions. Who owns the domain and the files if we stop working together? How many changes a month are included and how fast? Can I see a finished site you built, not a design mockup?

The answers should be "you do", a specific number with a specific turnaround, and a link you can open on your phone. Any vagueness in those three answers is worth more than any discount.

Questions people actually ask

Can I just use a free website builder?: Yes, and for a very small café it can be enough. The costs are your time, a builder-branded domain unless you pay to remove it, and a site that usually loads slowly on a phone because the templates are heavy. If you have a spare weekend and reasonable patience, it is a legitimate option.
How long should a restaurant website take to build?: About a week from the point the builder has your menu, photographs and hours. Getting those together is usually what takes the time, not the building.
Do I need a website if I am on delivery platforms?: The platforms hold your menu, your photographs and your reviews, and they charge a commission on customers who already knew your name and searched for it. A website is where that customer lands instead.