The restaurant website that fills tables

A restaurant website has exactly four jobs: show the menu, say when you are open, let people book a table, make them want to come. Most restaurant sites we see in web design projects fail at the first job, the easiest of the four, because the menu is a PDF.

This is not a budget problem. A restaurant can fill its tables with one well-built page, and stay half empty with an expensive site full of ambiance videos. The difference comes down to a few concrete decisions, and to an honest understanding of where your guests actually decide: more and more often, on your Google Business Profile, before they ever see your site.

Here are the four jobs, the symbiosis with Google, and the real mechanics of delivery and reservation commissions.

The short answer, for the busy

A restaurant website has four jobs: a menu published as HTML text with prices, readable by Google and by a phone, never as a PDF alone; opening hours that are accurate and identical on the site and on the Google Business Profile, including holidays; a booking path visible on the first screen, whether a reservation widget or a tappable phone number; and real photos of your dishes and your dining room, not stock images. The site works in tandem with the Google profile, where a large share of guests decide without ever visiting the site. In Quebec, the Charter of the French language also requires the menu to be in French (section 51). As for delivery platforms, they take 20 to 29% of every delivered order in Canada depending on the plan (DoorDash's posted rates, July 2026): every order or booking captured by your own site is margin recovered.

The cardinal sin: the PDF menu

The first thing a guest looks for is the menu, with prices. It is also the first thing Google looks for. The PDF fails on both fronts.

For the guest, a PDF on a phone means tiny text you pinch to enlarge, a download that opens over the page, prices you cannot read on the bus. And that is exactly where the decision happens: two people, one phone, 5:45 PM.

For Google, the reality is more nuanced than the slogan. Google has indexed text-based PDFs since 2001. But many restaurant menus are graphic exports or scans where the text is really an image, and Google itself states that images inside a PDF are not indexed. Even a perfectly indexed PDF connects to nothing: it does not feed the structured menu on your Google profile, it does not adapt to a screen, and its layout freezes the prices of the last print run.

An HTML menu fixes all of it at once: every dish as text, every price editable in two minutes, clear sections, and dish names that become entry points in search results. Someone searching "salmon tartare Villeray" will never find your PDF.

Accurate hours and honest photos

Opening hours are the easiest promise to break. A guest who drives over and finds a locked door does not write a polite follow-up email: they write the Google review that follows you for two years. The rule fits on one line: accurate hours, identical everywhere, on the site and on the profile, updated before every holiday, the exact moment when everyone checks and almost nobody has updated.

Photos do the work text cannot: they make people want to be there. Two rules. First, real photos: your dishes, your room, your light. Stock images are spotted in a second and plant the one doubt a restaurant cannot afford, the gap between the promise and the plate. Second, recent photos: the renovated dining room deserves better than pictures from before the renovation. No need for a polished production; half a day with a photographer once a year, or a recent phone used in daylight, is plenty.

A booking path, not a treasure hunt

Booking should take one gesture from the first screen: a button that opens your reservation widget, or a tappable phone number. The generic contact form promising a reply "within 48 hours" is where Friday nights go to die.

Reservations also live on the Google profile, through two mechanisms: Reserve with Google partners, which display a booking button directly on the profile, and the booking link you add yourself (Google accepts up to ten links per category).

The fee mechanics are worth understanding before you sign anything. Several reservation platforms charge per seated cover when the booking comes from their network or their app, and charge less, sometimes nothing, when it comes from your own site. The logic is the same as delivery: you pay for the demand the platform generates, not for the tool. The practical consequence: every booking captured by your site instead of the platform's network shrinks the bill. Treat your website as what it is: your cheapest reservation channel.

The symbiosis with your Google profile

Here is the uncomfortable truth: a large share of your potential guests will never visit your website. They will search "Italian restaurant Rosemont", look at three profiles in Google Maps, compare photos, hours, ratings and the latest reviews, and decide right there.

The reflex would be to conclude the site is useless. It is the opposite: the site feeds the profile. Your menu link, your booking link, your official website: everything points to your domain. Google also offers a menu editor that lets you add dishes, descriptions and prices directly on the profile, with changes visible within 24 to 48 hours. An HTML menu on your site and a structured menu on your profile reinforce each other: same text, two storefronts.

We have published two companion guides: optimizing your Google Business Profile and getting more Google reviews and responding well. For a restaurant, those two levers often outweigh any redesign.

Delivery: the commission is rent, not a fee

Delivery platforms publish their rates. In Canada, DoorDash lists three plans: 20% commission per delivered order on the basic plan, 25% on the mid tier and 29% on the top tier, plus a reduced 8 to 10% commission on pickup orders (rates posted on DoorDash's Canadian pricing page, checked in July 2026). Competitors swim in the same waters.

The percentage is not a scandal in itself: the commission pays for a fleet of couriers, a payment system, and above all demand, guests you would not have had. The real cost sits elsewhere: the customer belongs to the platform. It holds their email address, their order history, their loyalty. You are renting visibility in its catalog, on terms it sets.

For most restaurants, the reasonable strategy is to confine the platforms to their role: acquisition. No need to leave them. New guests discover you on the app; regulars should order or book through your site, where the platform commission disappears and the customer is yours. A card in the delivery bag inviting a direct order next time does exactly that job.

Winning "restaurant + neighbourhood"

The searches that fill tables are local: "restaurant Limoilou", "brunch Verdun", "bring your own wine Little Italy". Showing up takes an accurate, living Google profile, a site whose text names the neighbourhood and the dishes (the HTML menu again), and recent reviews. The full mechanics are in our local SEO guide for Quebec SMBs.

A word on language. Quebec's Charter of the French language requires menus and wine lists to be written in French; a translation may accompany them, provided no text in another language is given greater prominence than the French (section 51). A bilingual HTML menu satisfies the law and doubles your entry points in search results: the visitor searching "best ramen Old Quebec" deserves an English page, as text too. Two PDF menus accomplish neither.

Where to start

If your menu is a PDF, start there: it is the highest-yield fix in your entire marketing. Then verify your hours everywhere, add the booking link to your profile, and replace the stock photos with your own.

This is work we do regularly for restaurants and neighbourhood businesses: a website on a monthly subscription, bilingual HTML menu, integrated reservations, an aligned Google profile. The conversation costs nothing.

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This article explains a requirement of the Charter of the French language in plain terms to help a restaurant owner ask the right questions; it is not legal advice. How section 51 applies (menus, wine lists) is determined by the Office québécois de la langue française: if in doubt, check your situation with the OQLF or a lawyer. The statute text on legisquebec.gouv.qc.ca is authoritative.