Qahwa & Co · London, United Kingdom
What a restaurant website looks like when it is finished
A restaurant website has one job before any other: show the menu, the hours and the location on a phone, in under three seconds, without a download. Qahwa & Co is a five-page site built around that, with the menu set as real text rather than a PDF. A build like it is $1,800 to set up and $249 a month.
The design direction, and why
Editorial. A high-contrast serif, photographs given room to breathe, and the menu set as type with dot leaders rather than boxed into cards. A menu is a document with a typographic tradition behind it, and setting it as a grid of tiles throws that away — it stops reading like a menu and starts reading like a product listing.
Four decisions that do the work
A restaurant site fails in predictable places. These are the four.
The menu is HTML, not a PDF
A PDF menu is the single most common mistake on a restaurant website. It takes seconds to open on mobile data, opens at the wrong zoom, cannot be searched, and is invisible to Google and to every AI assistant somebody asks for a recommendation. The menu here is text on a page: it loads instantly, it is readable at any size, and a dish is a thing a search engine can find.
Hours are structured data, not a picture
Opening hours are marked up so Google and Apple Maps can read them, which is how "open now" works. The most expensive error on a restaurant site is being shown as closed when you are open — and the second is being shown open when you are not.
Allergens sit next to the dish
Not on a separate page, not in a downloadable table. Somebody with a nut allergy deciding where to eat should not have to make a phone call, and increasingly should not have to legally.
Delivery links are secondary, not hidden
Delivery platforms take a cut. They are on the page because people want them, placed below the direct route rather than above it, so the customer who was going to book a table does not get pushed into a commission.
The five pages
Ordered by what a hungry person on a phone actually wants, which is not the order a restaurant usually chooses.
- HomeWhat kind of food, where, and the two buttons that matter: the menu and the address.
- MenuReal text with sections, prices and allergens. The page most of the traffic lands on, so it is built first.
- GalleryThe room and the food, photographed as they look, not as stock photography looks.
- AboutWho runs it and why it exists. Short. Nobody chooses a café on a founder story, but it closes the loop for the ones who read it.
- VisitAddress, hours, map link, transport, and whether you take bookings.
The build, in numbers
Measured on the demo you can open, not on a similar site somewhere.
- Pages
- 5
- Time to build
- 7 days from content
- Setup
- $1,800
- Monthly
- $249
- Languages
- English and Arabic
- Menu format
- HTML, never PDF
Questions people actually ask
How much does a restaurant website cost?
A site like this one is $1,800 to set up and $249 a month. The monthly covers hosting, the domain, SSL, backups, monitoring and two content changes a month — which for a restaurant usually means menu and price updates. In UAE dirhams that is AED 6,600 and AED 900.
Should a restaurant menu be a PDF?
No. A PDF menu is slow to open on a phone, opens at the wrong zoom, cannot be searched, and cannot be read by Google or by an AI assistant answering "where can I get good breakfast near me". Put the menu on the page as text. It is the single highest-value change most restaurant websites can make.
What should a restaurant website have?
In order: the menu as readable text, opening hours marked up so maps and search engines can read them, the address with a working map link, photographs of the actual room, and a way to book. Everything else is optional.
Can I see a real restaurant website example?
Qahwa & Co, linked on this page, is a complete five-page build with a full menu, allergens, hours and a gallery. The café is fictional; the site is a real build you can open and click through.
Want this for your restaurant?
Send me your current menu, in whatever form it is in. I will come back with a price and what the site would contain.
Send an enquiry