A good restaurant website template is one built around four things a hungry guest wants on a phone: the menu as real text, a button to order, a button to book, and today's hours with a map. The look matters far less than whether those four are on the first screen. You can get a template free from Wix or the WordPress theme directory, with a $12 to $36 a month Squarespace plan, as a $59 to $89 WordPress theme, or as part of a restaurant platform that designs the site for you.
Below is the page-by-page outline to hold any template against, a ten-minute test for a template demo, and where templates come from, with prices read from each seller's own page on 10 November 2026. Gigabit builds restaurant websites too, so we are not neutral; our prices are in their own section near the end. If you want the full build in steps, see how to make a restaurant website. If you are choosing between named builders on price and fees, see best restaurant website builders.
The template, page by page
Most independents need six or seven pages. Whatever template you start from, it should have a place for each of these, in roughly this order of importance:
- 1HomeName, cuisine, neighborhood; Order and Book buttons; today's hours; three to six real photos.
- 2MenuEvery section as text: dish, one-line description, dietary labels, price.
- 3OrderYour own ordering link, pickup and delivery details, order cut-off times.
- 4ReservationsA booking button or tap-to-call number; party-size and large-group notes.
- 5Location and hoursAddress that opens in maps, parking, holiday hours, phone.
- 6Catering and eventsSample menus, minimums, capacity and a short inquiry form, if you offer them.
- 7AboutWho runs the place, in plain words. Skip it rather than pad it.
Skip the pages you don't need. A taqueria with no bookings has no reservations page, and a single dining room rarely needs its own events page. What you should never skip is the menu as a page of its own.
The home page, top to bottom
Guests decide in the first screen whether to stay. A restaurant template's home page should run in this order:
- Name, cuisine and neighborhood in plain words, not only a logo.
- Order and Book buttons, side by side, visible without scrolling.
- Today's hours and the address, with the address opening in maps.
- Three to six real photos of your most-ordered dishes and the room.
- A short menu preview that links to the full menu page.
- Catering and private events, if you offer them, with one link.
- Footer: phone number that dials when tapped, address, hours, social links.
Many templates open with a full-screen slideshow or video. On a phone that pushes the buttons below the fold and slows the page. Swap it for one strong photo.
The menu page
Section headings (starters, mains, drinks), then each dish with its name, a one-line description, dietary labels and the price. That is all a template needs to give you, and it needs to give it as text you can edit. Squarespace's own help says "all text in the menu block is indexable by search engines" (Squarespace), which is the point: a dish someone searches for should be on the page as words.
What every template has to handle
Templates differ mostly in looks. Check these six things before you fall for one.
Menu as text, not a PDF
A PDF or photo of the printed menu is hard to read on a phone, gives search engines less to work with, and may not work with a screen reader. Squarespace's restaurant tour page sells its pre-built menu layout with no PDFs required (Squarespace). Offer a PDF as well if you like, for people who print, but never as the only version.
Ordering
The Order button should go to your own ordering, not a delivery app. Templates rarely include ordering themselves; they connect to it. Squarespace adds ChowNow ordering on Core and Advanced, not Basic (Squarespace), and lists Allday, ChowNow, OpenTable and Tock as ordering options (Squarespace Help). How to set up direct ordering and what it costs is in our guide to online ordering without commission.
Reservations
A Book button to the reservation system you already use, or a tap-to-call number. Squarespace includes an OpenTable block on all three plans (Squarespace); its help notes Tock is a separate subscription (Squarespace Help). Many Wix restaurant templates include table reservation and menu apps (Wix). A contact form is the wrong tool for a table tonight.
Hours
One place to edit hours that shows them on every page, plus room for holiday hours. If the template makes you type hours into three places, they will disagree within a month. Keep them identical to your Google Business Profile.
Location
An address that opens in maps, parking or transit notes if they matter, and a separate page for each location if you have more than one, with its own hours and phone.
Photos
Look for layouts that show a few large photos well, not ones that need forty. Your own photos, taken in good daylight, beat stock food every time; guests can tell. Compress them before uploading. Large photos are the usual reason a restaurant site is slow on cellular.
- The menu in the demo is text you can select, not an image or PDF
- Order and Book buttons sit on the first screen, or the header has room for them
- Hours are set in one place and shown site-wide
- The address can link to maps and the phone number can tap to call
- The first screen is one photo, not an autoplay video or slideshow
- The demo loads quickly on cellular, not just office Wi-Fi
- It connects to the ordering and booking you already use
- You can change fonts and colors once for the whole site
- There is a layout for catering or events if you need one
Where to get a restaurant template
Templates come from three kinds of seller: website builders with template stores, WordPress theme sellers, and restaurant platforms that design the site for you rather than hand you a template. Prices below were read from each seller's own page on 10 November 2026, before card processing, ordering and reservation fees.
| Source | Published price | What you get | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Squarespace | $12–$25 a month paid yearly; $19–$36 paid monthly | A Restaurants filter in its template store (help); Menu and OpenTable blocks on every plan | ChowNow ordering only on Core and up; Basic charges a 2% online store fee |
| Wix | Templates start free; plan prices vary by location and we were shown prices with foreign tax, so check yours | 21 pages of restaurant and food templates, many with menu, booking and ordering sections | Confirm the US plan price and payment fees before you build |
| WordPress, free themes | $0 in the WordPress.org directory, 573 tagged food and drink | A theme only; hosting, ordering and booking are separate | You maintain updates, or pay someone who will |
| WordPress, paid themes | $59–$89 one-off for the first ten ThemeForest restaurant themes shown, of 706 results | More restaurant layouts and demo content | Price excludes tax; hosting is extra, for example WordPress.com Personal at $4 a month paid yearly |
| BentoBox | No public price | Restaurant marketing and commerce, now part of Clover | Only available to Clover POS customers |
| Owner | $249 a month + 5% per order, or $499 flat | Site, ordering, app, loyalty, email and text; its team sets it up | Guests pay a 5% fee on both plans; less control over the design |
| Popmenu | $159–$449 a month prepaid yearly; $179–$499 monthly | A restaurant platform; Premier adds direct ordering, catering and delivery | Its page refused our fetch; prices read through search, so confirm on a call |
Builders with template stores: Squarespace and Wix
These suit an owner who will edit the site themselves. Squarespace's help points you to the Restaurants filter in its template store, and its menu blocks need a paid plan (Squarespace Help). Wix says you can "start for free with our restaurant templates" (Wix), but its plan page told us prices and currency vary by location (Wix), so we quote none. On either, the template is a starting layout; you can change most of it.
WordPress themes
WordPress gives the widest choice and the most upkeep. The WordPress.org directory lists 573 food and drink themes (WordPress.org). Paid themes are sold elsewhere; WordPress.org notes that commercial sellers in its list sell themes under the GPL, and that "the GPL doesn't say that everything must be zero-cost" (WordPress.org). On ThemeForest, the first ten restaurant themes in a search cost $59 to $89, excluding tax (ThemeForest).
A theme needs a host. WordPress.com allows uploading a theme on its Personal plan and above (WordPress.com); Personal is $4 a month paid yearly or $9 paid monthly, and Business is $25 or $40 (WordPress.com). Then you add ordering and booking through plugins or links, and keep the theme and plugins updated. Skip WordPress if nobody on your team wants that job.
Platforms that design it for you: BentoBox, Owner, Popmenu
These are not template shops. You get the platform's design, set up by its team, with ordering and marketing bundled. BentoBox is now part of Clover and only sold to Clover POS customers (BentoBox). Owner's own site says that partnering with it means giving up some control over how your presence looks (Owner). Popmenu's tiers add marketing as they go up: Essentials adds mass email, social posting and texts, and Premier adds direct ordering, catering and delivery (Popmenu). We compare these three in Owner alternatives, Popmenu alternatives and BentoBox alternatives.
What a template costs in the first year
Monthly prices hide the real gap, because some routes include ordering and some charge per order. Here is one example restaurant's first year on five routes. The prices are published; the order volume and theme are examples.
| Squarespace Core, paid yearly ($17 × 12); ordering not included | $204 |
| WordPress.com Personal, paid yearly ($4 × 12), plus a $69 theme (example); ordering not included | $117 |
| Popmenu Starter, prepaid yearly ($159 × 12) | $1,908 |
| Owner Flexible ($249 × 12) + 5% of $4,000 a month online orders (example) | $5,388 |
| Owner Flat Rate ($499 × 12) | $5,988 |
The cheap routes are cheap because you do the work and add ordering yourself. The platform routes include ordering, but at an example $4,000 a month of online orders, Owner's per-order fee alone adds $2,400 a year, and guests pay their own 5% on top. Run your own order count before you choose.
Making a template your own without breaking it
- Change fonts and colors once, in the site-wide style settings, not page by page.
- Replace every demo photo. A template with stock food photos left in looks like a template.
- Delete sections you can't fill. An empty testimonials strip or a blog with one post from 2024 does more harm than none.
- Keep the button order. Order and Book stay at the top of every page.
- Write a page title that says what and where for each page, such as the cuisine and neighborhood, not "Home".
- Check it on a phone, on cellular, after every big change.
The how-to guide's launch checklist and search basics apply whichever template you pick: how to make a restaurant website.
When a template isn't enough
A template is a starting layout. Someone still has to type the menu properly, take the photos, connect ordering, and change prices and holiday hours every time. If nobody has that hour a week, the site goes stale, and a stale site turns guests away.
That is the job we sell. The Growth Package for Restaurants is $100 a month and builds your site on our own template stack, with up to about 8 pages, then hosts it and makes up to 4 content changes a month. Restaurants Scale, at $599 a month, adds a site kept up to date with your menu as real text, local SEO, and your own ordering and booking links first. Neither includes ordering software: we connect the ordering you use, and that provider bills you. The Growth Package also leaves out custom development beyond the template. Full details are on our restaurant website service and pricing pages. If you have the hours, a builder template is the better buy.
What to do this week
Open your current site on your phone and hold it against the outline above: can you see the Order and Book buttons, today's hours and the address without scrolling, and does the menu open as text? Then shortlist two templates and run the ten-minute demo test on each. If you want a second opinion, the free restaurant audit checks your site on a phone and lists the first three things we would fix.
