Does my restaurant need a website?

Not a website, necessarily — but you do need one page on the open web that you control, that a phone can read in under a minute without logging in, and that shows the four things a guest looks up before they come: what you serve and what it costs, when you're open, where you are, and how to reach you. For most owner-run places that means a free Google Business Profile plus one page of your own that you can edit yourself the day the menu changes. A full multi-page website is optional. An Instagram account on its own is not enough, because half of American adults don't use Instagram and search is where most people look first.

How do people find a small restaurant today?

Search, then reviews, then social. In Popmenu's February 2026 survey of 1,000 U.S. adults, 85% said they use Google and other search engines to find restaurants, and 20% said they use AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity to discover dining options (Popmenu, February 19, 2026). Toast's blind survey of 850 U.S. adults, fielded March 14, 2024 and July 16, 2025, found that 55% search Google for restaurants when booking a reservation, that social media comes second at 21%, and that 46% check Google Reviews first when looking up a restaurant's ratings; guests aged 18–34 were likelier to use social platforms (46%) than older guests (35%) (Toast, restaurant wait-time and reservation data). Once they have a name, they read what other people said: 97% of consumers read reviews for local businesses, 41% say they "always" do, and 74% want reviews written in the last three months (BrightLocal Local Consumer Review Survey, February 11, 2026, 1,002 U.S. adults).

Food trucks are the exception the trade press names. NSFVA's 2026 state-of-the-industry piece says "About 74% of customers discover food trucks through social media" — an association estimate built from its own member surveys, with no outside study behind it, so read it as the trade's rule of thumb rather than a measurement (NSFVA, March 10, 2026). Even for a truck, though, social is where the guest hears about you; it is not where they check whether you're open.

What do guests look for once they find you?

The menu, on a phone. The most-cited survey on restaurant websites is now old — MGH surveyed 1,101 U.S. adults who eat out or order at least monthly, in 2019 — but its findings are still the clearest available. 77% said they were likely to visit a restaurant's website before dining in or ordering, and 68% said a restaurant's website had discouraged them from visiting. The top reason for walking away was the menu itself (65% didn't care for the items — which is the menu doing its job honestly), followed by difficult navigation (33%), hard-to-read menus (30%) and an outdated look (30%); 56% called a mobile-friendly site "very important," and 45% were looking for photos of the food (MGH survey, August 29, 2019). Seven years on, the phone share has only grown, and the lesson is unchanged: they come for the menu and leave if they can't read it.

That gives you the test. Hand your phone to a stranger and ask them to find tonight's menu with prices, your hours and your address. If it takes more than a minute, or needs an app or a login, you have a website problem whether or not you have a website.

Is a Google Business Profile enough?

It is the floor, and it costs nothing. Google states plainly that "creating a Business Profile and listing your business on Google is free," and the profile lets you share hours and contact details, upload photos, respond to reviews, post offers, and — for restaurants — "share your best dishes and full menu," take reservations through booking partners, and accept orders through ordering partners (Google Business Profile; Google Business Profile for restaurants). The menu editor lets a food business list "menu items, along with their descriptions and prices" grouped into sections; the menu shows under "Menu" on Search and Maps, and edits take 24–48 hours to appear. You can also enter the URL where your menu lives, or upload a photo or PDF that Google converts into a structured menu (Google Business Profile Help, "About the menu editor"). One rule matters for anyone who relies on a delivery app as their menu: "Menu URLs can't be direct links to third-party ordering or delivery services" (Google Business Profile guidelines).

Two limits. It is Google's page, not yours: what appears, in what order and under what rules is Google's decision, and it can change. And a menu retyped into Google's editor is a second copy. The stale-menu problem starts the day you have two menus to keep in sync, and Google's own 24–48 hour lag means the profile is never the place a guest sees tonight's change first. That is what the menu-link field is for: one page you control, that the profile points to.

Is Instagram enough?

No, for arithmetic reasons before any other. Pew Research Center's 2025 survey of 5,022 U.S. adults found 71% use Facebook, 50% use Instagram and 37% use TikTok (Pew Research Center, Social Media Fact Sheet, 2025). Half the country is not on Instagram, and the half that is sees a feed, not a reference: your hours and menu scroll away under the next post, and a search engine can't reliably read what sits behind a login. Small businesses without a website already live with the consequence. In Clutch's August 2025 survey of 406 U.S. small-business owners, 83% had a website and 17% did not; of those without, 34% said a site wasn't relevant to their industry and 16% cited cost. Businesses without a website named referrals as their top source of new customers (40%), with social media the top source for about one in ten businesses either way; businesses with one named search engines first (40%) (Clutch, "The State of Small Business Websites," August 2025). Referrals are a fine way to fill a room. They are not something you can turn up on a slow Tuesday.

Use social for what it does — the photo, the special, the reason to come tonight — and put the facts on a page you own. Then put that page's link in the bio, in the profile's website and menu-link fields, and on the door.

What does a restaurant website actually cost?

Anywhere from nothing to several hundred dollars a month, and the subscription is the smaller part of the bill. A domain name at a registrar that charges only the registry's fee — Cloudflare sells domains at cost, with no markup on registration or renewal (Cloudflare Registrar) — is the one cost that is close to fixed. General website builders sit above that: Squarespace, for example, includes a free custom domain for a year on annual plans, starts every site with a 14-day trial, and puts restaurant pieces such as menus and reservation integrations above its entry tier (Squarespace pricing page, as read 2026-09-05); check the current plan names and prices on the page, since both changed in 2026 and vary with promotions and region. Restaurant-specific platforms that bundle a site with online ordering cost more: Owner.com lists a Flexible plan at $249 a month plus 5% per order and a Flat Rate plan at $499 a month, both month-to-month (Owner.com pricing, as read 2026-09-05); BentoBox publishes plan tiers but no prices, with "no contracts, no hidden fees" and a phone number for a quote (BentoBox pricing, as read 2026-09-05). Those are fair prices for what they include — ordering, gift cards, reservations — but a place that just needs to be findable is paying for a kitchen it won't use.

The larger cost is time. A menu that lives on a PDF, in Google's editor, on a delivery app and on a chalkboard is four menus, and every price change is four edits or three lies. Whatever you choose, choose the version you will actually update at 4 p.m. on a Friday, from your phone, without calling anyone.

What should the page do, at minimum?

Show your name, address and hours, and change the hours when they change. Show the current menu as text a phone can read and a search engine can index — a PDF or a photo alone fails both tests, and Google's own editor accepts a URL precisely so it can read a real page. Show prices; a menu without them is the first thing a guest distrusts. Give a way to reach you that doesn't depend on someone answering the phone, and a way for a guest to tell you privately when something is wrong. Load fast on a phone. And be editable by you, in minutes, with no web person in between — because the page that is hard to change is the page that goes stale, and a stale page is what the MGH numbers above describe: an outdated look and an unreadable menu were each enough to turn away three in ten.

Where Brief First fits

That minimum page is what our own product is, for what it's worth. Brief First gives a restaurant one page at brieffirst.com/yourname: your name, hours and address, the current menu with prices as text a phone and a search engine can read, your existing booking and gift-card links, and a private line where a guest tells you when something isn't right. You edit it yourself from your phone and it's live in minutes — no web person, no reprint — and it costs nothing, with no card and no expiration. The paid tier, from $30 a month, adds an AI host that answers menu questions in the guest's own language from your descriptions alone. Either way, the test above stands whether you use us, a builder, or Google's own menu editor: hand a stranger your phone, and see if they find tonight's menu in under a minute.