The three price brackets
DIY builders (Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy) run $16–50/month forever — $200–600 every year, plus your evenings. They are genuinely fine until you notice the menu is a photo Google cannot read, the ordering link hands 15–30% of every ticket to a delivery app, and the site looks like every other restaurant on the same template.
Agencies quote $3,000–15,000 for a restaurant site, usually with a monthly retainer on top. You are paying for account managers and meetings; the actual build is often the same few templates. For a single-location restaurant this is almost never worth it.
Independent developers — one person who designs and codes — typically land between $200 and $1,500 for a complete custom build. This is the bracket where a small restaurant gets the most site per dollar, because every dollar goes into the build.
What actually moves revenue
A real text menu. If your menu is a PDF or a photo, searches like "gluten free pizza near me" or "best birria tacos" skip you entirely — Google cannot read images of text. A structured HTML menu ranks for every dish you serve. This one change is worth more than any visual redesign.
Direct pickup ordering. When your own website pushes customers to DoorDash, you pay commission on people who were already yours. A simple direct order flow keeps the whole ticket.
Hours, location, and phone visible in one tap. These are the most-searched restaurant facts. If they are wrong or buried, the call goes to the place next door.
Speed on a phone. Most restaurant traffic is mobile, standing on a sidewalk, deciding right now. A site that takes six seconds to load loses that decision.
What I charge, for calibration
At Clauser Studio a restaurant landing page runs $200–400 and a full site with a structured menu, ordering, and analytics runs $300–800 — fixed quote before any work starts, live in about a week, and you own the code and domain outright. An AI assistant that answers hours, allergens, and reservation requests around the clock adds $75–150/month, first month free.
Whatever you pay and whoever builds it: insist on a text menu, your own domain, and analytics you can see. Those three decide whether the website makes money or just exists.
Last updated 2026-07-19