Menu first. PDFs never.
People open your site for the menu, the hours, the address and a table. Start there.
What the home page says
Section by section, in the order a visitor reads it.
Menu
It's why most people came. Make it a real page of words and prices, so it reads on a phone and a search engine can read it too. Shingle can't read a PDF, so paste your dishes into the brief or point it at your menu page.
Hours and open now
Give lunch, dinner, brunch and when the kitchen closes, near the top. Shingle can show if you're open right now from those hours. A holiday closing goes in the announcement bar, and its last day takes it down for you.
Order online
Shingle has no online ordering or payments. Link to wherever you take orders now, such as Toast, Square or ChowNow, and put your own ordering link ahead of any delivery app if that's where you'd rather people went.
Reservations
Link to the system you use, such as OpenTable or Resy, and the button goes straight there. No system? Give the phone number, or a short form that says you'll call to confirm, because a form takes a request and can't hold a table.
Find us
Give the address, where to park and which door to use. With a street address from your Google listing, the site shows a map and directions. Say if you're wheelchair accessible, and if the patio takes dogs.
Private events and catering
Party planners read closely and book weeks ahead. Say how many you seat, what's included and what it costs to hold the room, then ask for a date, a headcount and a budget in a short form. Each request lands in your inbox and your email.
How they search
- restaurants near me
- mexican food near me
- restaurants open now
- brunch near me
- best tacos in tucson
- restaurant with patio near me
- private dining room near me
- takeout near me
What earns their trust
- A menu with the same prices your servers hand out
- Photos of your own food and dining room
- Hours that match your door, holidays included
- Which dishes are vegetarian or gluten-free, as your kitchen makes them
- Who cooks, and the story if there's a real one
- Reviews and press you have permission to quote
How it gets found
What moves a restaurant up in a town's results.
Point your listing at your own pages
Your Google listing can carry menu items, an ordering link and a reservation option. Send the menu link to your own page, and check where “order” goes. If it opens a delivery app, you may be paying commission on people who already wanted you.
Pick your cuisine as your category
Mexican restaurant tells Google more than Restaurant does. Use as few categories as you can, as Google asks, and let brunch, the patio and takeout live in your listing's details and on your pages.
Write dishes as words
A dish inside a PDF or a photo of a menu is hard for search engines and AI assistants to read. “Birria tacos” as text on a page can be found, quoted and read out.
Change hours in both places
Shingle doesn't connect to your Google listing, so a change in one won't reach the other. When holiday hours change, update both the same day. A published site carries your hours and address in its markup but not your menu, so link that page from your listing.
How to sell one
Restaurants buy websites when the top result for their own name is a delivery page, an old menu or someone else's directory. They don't want a project. They want the menu, the hours and the links to be right, and they want to fix a price without calling anyone.
Radar marks a restaurant whose only web address is an ordering page, so start there. Build their demo, add their real menu, and put it on your phone beside what comes up now. Shingle is built not to invent dishes, so a demo with no menu won't look like theirs until you add it.
- “I have Instagram. That's enough.”
- It's great for the special. It's poor for hours, and nobody scrolls back six months for a menu. A site answers those questions and links to your feed.
- “The delivery apps handle online orders.”
- They can keep doing that. Your site is for people who already know you, and if you have your own ordering link it goes first. Be plain that Shingle doesn't take orders and only links out.
- “My menu changes every week.”
- Editing a line by hand and publishing both cost nothing, and the change is usually live in a few minutes. There's no menu manager, so it works like editing any other words on the page. Walk them through it once.
- “My ordering system gave me a free website.”
- Keep the ordering. Those sites are built around the cart. Yours can carry the story, the private room and catering, then hand off to the cart when someone's hungry.
- “How much will this cost me each month?”
- Give one number that covers hosting and changes, and set it beside one catering order or one private party. Show them what they can change themselves, so the fee doesn't read as paying for every typo.
Common questions
Can't find your answer? Read Shingle Help or email [email protected].
A menu in plain text, your hours and when the kitchen closes, your address with parking and directions, and clear links for reservations and online orders. Add photos of your own food, and a page for private events if you host them. On a phone, the menu should be one tap from any page.
No. Shingle has no online ordering, payments or store. Give it the link to your ordering provider and the site's buttons send people there, while you keep the provider you have, with its fees and terms. Shingle's analytics count taps on links to other websites, so you can see how many people go through.
Paste your dishes and prices into your brief, or point Shingle at your current menu page. It can't read a PDF, so those words need typing or pasting. The menu becomes a page of your site, with no separate menu manager, and you change a dish or a price by editing the page, which costs no credits.
Link to your reservation system if you have one. If you don't, a short form can take a request, and the site says you'll call to confirm, because a form can't hold a table. Shingle's booking page is built for appointments, taking one booking at a time per person, so it doesn't suit a dining room.
They load quickly on a phone, show the menu in one tap, and give the hours without making you hunt. They use photos of the actual food, say where to park, and link straight to reservations and ordering. They also stay current, because a wrong price or closing time costs trust faster than a dated design.
Yes, in that it writes and designs the site for you from a few sentences or your Google listing. A one-page demo usually takes 5 to 15 minutes, and a 7-day trial for $1 lets you build and publish it. Orders, payments and table plans stay with your own providers.
Read next
- Google Business Profile websitePaste a Google listing and get a site built from it.
- WidgetsCookie banner, age check, chat button, bar and popup.
- Website analyticsVisitor stats without cookies, and taps to call.
- What a small business site needsThe checklist, and why each thing earns its place.
- Optimize a Google Business ProfileEvery field that matters, from Google's own guidance.
- Local business schema generatorStructured data for your page's head.
Websites for other trades
Build your first site
Start from a Google listing or a few notes. Demos usually take 5–15 minutes.
7 days for $1, then $49 a month. Cancel any time.