How Do I Create a Website for My Restaurant Without Any Coding Skills?
You do not need to learn anything to do this. No HTML, no hosting, no plugins, no developer. What you do need is a few things written down before you start, and one unhurried sitting. Everything except the menu takes minutes; the menu takes as long as your menu is, and step five is honest about that.
This is the whole process, in order, with the bits people get stuck on called out.
What should I have ready before I start?
Gather these first. Hunting for them mid-way is what turns one sitting into a whole Sunday.
- A PostMyPlatter account on the Website plan, which is where the page lives. Preview and Editor let you build a page and see it, but publishing it is the Website plan at US$19.99 a month
- Your address, exactly as you want it printed
- A phone number customers should actually call
- Your opening hours, including the days you are closed
- One good photo of the room, the counter or the truck. Not a dish: the dish photos come later, and a room tells a stranger what kind of place this is
- Your menu, either typed out or photographed. A clear picture of the board is genuinely enough
- Your logo, if you have one. If you do not, that is fine, and nothing will look broken
Step 1: Pick your web address
You get one at yourname.postmyplatter.com, free and included. It is checked as you type, so you will know straight away if the one you want is taken.
Choose carefully. You pick it once, and changing it afterwards takes a message to us. That is deliberate rather than awkward: the address ends up on printed menus, table cards and QR codes, and a link that stops working is far worse than a name you have grown out of.
Use your restaurant's name, not a description. lotuslantern beats bestphoinbengaluru.
Step 2: Add your cover photo
This is most of the first screen, so it does more work than anything else on the page.
Shoot it near a window if you can, in daylight. A wide shot of the room with a bit of life in it beats an empty one. If you have a truck, photograph the truck.
You can reposition and brighten it afterwards, so do not worry about getting the crop perfect on the phone.
Step 3: Pick a style and a color palette
Four styles and five color palettes. That is the whole decision, and it takes about a minute.
There is no wrong answer here, and you cannot make something unreadable: every style and palette combination is contrast-checked, so the text stays legible whichever you pick.
If you are stuck, pick the one that looks most like your room.
Step 4: Type your opening hours
Type them once and they keep working. Your page then shows a green Open now or a red Closed, worked out in your own timezone, updating on its own. There is no switch to flip at the end of service.
Split shifts work. So does closing past midnight, so a bar open Friday until 2am shows as open at 1am rather than closed.
Closing for a holiday? Set the notice weeks ahead with an end date and forget about it. It appears and disappears by itself.
Step 5: Add your menu
This is the only step that takes real time, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Thirty dishes typed out is thirty dishes typed out.
Two things make it survivable:
- You do not start from a blank screen. A sample menu based on your cuisine gives you real rows to rename, which is a completely different job from inventing a menu structure from nothing.
- You do not have to type it at all. Up to five photographs of your physical menu board work instead. For a truck with one board, that is the entire step.
Prices show in your own currency. When something runs out, mark it sold out and it stays on the page, dimmed and labelled, so people know it exists and to come earlier tomorrow.
Step 6: Press publish
That is it. Your page is live at your address.
It carries full Restaurant structured data, which is the information Google uses to understand that you are a restaurant in a particular place serving particular food. We cannot promise you a ranking, and anyone who does is guessing. What we can say is that the page is indexed and gives Google everything it asks for.
What do I do after it is live?
Almost nothing, which is the point.
Every food post you make in PostMyPlatter (using Create Post feature) lands on the page the moment you save it, newest first, with today's special promoted to the top. There is no second step to remember, and no publishing to do twice.
Everything else runs from the same app you post with. Change your hours, add a dish, mark one sold out, schedule a closure. No dashboard to learn, nothing to redeploy, nobody to email.
Download your QR code menu while you are there. It opens your menu rather than your homepage, because someone who has just sat down wants to know what the food is and what it costs. There is a printable table card too, A6 at print resolution, four to a sheet, black and white so it runs off the back-office printer.
What mistakes should I avoid?
- Starting from a blank builder. Deciding a layout, a font and where the price goes is a design job, and you are not a designer, and it is 4pm.
- Picking a clever web address. You will regret it once it is printed on something.
- Leaving hours out because you will "do it later". Hours are the single most looked-for fact on a restaurant page.
- Waiting until the menu is perfect. Publish with a photo of the board and type it out properly another week.
What does it cost?
US$19.99 a month on the web, with the address and the hosting included. No setup fee, no contract, cancel any time. There is no domain to buy and no server to pay for.
If you want the full comparison against agencies, freelancers and DIY builders, that is in how much a restaurant website costs and how long it takes.
Want to see the finished article first? Look at three sample restaurant pages, or see what the Website plan includes.
Still deciding whether you need one? Read do I need a website if I already have Instagram?