Restaurant website design ideas

These days in is not difficult to take care of online essentials: hosting, domain name, some generic template and even customized graphics for your restaurant's website. If all you want is give people some idea about the menu, the hours and the directions that's fine. But a website can be turned into a powerful marketing tool even for a smallest of restaurants. Here are a few ideas you can implement on your restaurant's web page.


It would be of course, easy to draw attention of Internet users to your website by adding interesting content that is not 100% relevant to your restaurant business: Flash games, blogs on various topics, popular video clips etc. It would be wiser, however, to be of service for people who are likely to become your customers. For instance, use restaurant's website as "an excuse" to provide valuable information for people who visit your town or your neighborhood. Use maps, photographs, local weather reports, reviews of local shops and museums, public transportation info -- anything you can possibly think that could be of value for people who visit the vicinity of your establishment. Are you near a major highway? Maybe a web camera can be used by thousands of commuters to check the traffic. Be creative, spend some time brainstorming. If you are hiring a web design firm, poke their brains a little, because these people likely have encountered many types of clients with various needs. Just make sure that your restaurant website design is always very lucid and people can see the name of your business on every page with easy links to access the parts of the website that are meant for potential customers.

Consider adding something to the design of your restaurant that would make it so unique that people would want to travel an extra mile just to see it. Same ideas as in having a themed restaurant, but a lot less hassle :) Again, be creative. Dinosaur fossils? Unique sports memorabilia? A collection of antique sowing machines? It can literally be anything, as long as you are sure that a good number of people will want to stop by just to see your unique display. Once you have it make sure that you advertise. Dedicate a page on your website, but leave some room for desire to see more, do not have high resolution object of your world's smallest operating gas grill (on which you can grill a special order, of course). Make them want to come and see it!

By all means offer coupons, but there is more that you can do. How about, pick one order number daily that wins a 25% coupon off the next meal? Your customers will have to come to your restaurant's website in order to claim the prize, in the mean time learning about all the useful information you actually happen to have there.

Always remember that the design of your restaurant's website can do much more than the sign on your restaurant!

Cheese Restaurant (a theme restaurant)

This would be a great concept for a theme restaurant. Cheese is an essential ingredient of many dishes and deserts (don't forget cheesecakes!). You can built your menu around a few cheese staples, such as pizza, calzones and lasagna, but be prepared to impress your patrons with a wide selection of cheese, served on platters. You can also serve cheese-bread before the meal.

Chances are, people will end up liking a couple of your carefully selected items, so you can sell them at a gift shop. Cheese lasts a long time, so you will never have problems with inventory, even if you choose to carry a couple very expensive imported cheeses. There are thousands of kinds of cheese available world-wide. When it comes to decorating the restaurant, you can use vintage cheese production tools, old packaging and some whimsical farm animals (cows, goats, sheep) to make the kids happy. White, yellow and green would be an easy choice for uniforms and even furniture.

P.S. Still looking for an actual restaurant that has already implemented this idea. Let me know if you find one!

Dutch restaurant names

The Gourmet's Guide to Europe (1911) provides a wealth of information for anyone who wants to research the history of restaurant business in the Old World. Particularly, some names of great restaurants (many no longer operational) can provide some ideas if you are trying to come up with a suitable name for your own establishment. There are even some decor ideas for a themed restaurant. I am posting a few excepts from this book, regarding Dutch restaurants.

There are several restaurants in the Hague which deserve mention. One is Twee Steeden in the Buitenhof. This is a new building Buitenhof next door to the Hotel Deux Villes, or Twee Steeden, a comfortable hotel with a garden. The building of the restaurant is of buff stone with a good deal of carving and gilding on the front and balconies of wrought iron. The walls of the
restaurant's big room on the ground floor are crushed strawberry in colour, and the upholstery is of greenish grey. There are other rooms on the first floor.

Another is the Cafe Royal in the Vijverberg, an establishment which has its large room on the ground floor. The restaurant is comparatively airy, and the cookery French, and my Vijverberg Dutch friends tell me "fairly good."

The most distinctive of the Hague restaurants calls itself simply The Restaurant, though it made its name and its fame as Van der Fiji's. It is in the centre of the town, and its three windows look out on to the dusty little triangle of the Plaats and the tower where the brothers De Witt were torn to pieces by the populace. The walls of the dining-room are panelled with blue silk, and during the week of my visit to the Hague, when I both dined and lunched several times at the restaurant, I was always received by a very fat maitre d'Hotel, who bowed in a dignified manner by letting his first chin drop into his second and third ones. The cuisine is French, and it has a cellar of excellent wines. Of the hotels which contain restaurants, the Hotel des Indes and Hotel Vieux Doelen have a reputation for good cookery. The former was in olden times the town house of the Lange Voorhoot Barons van Brienen. In winter many people of Dutch society, coming to the capital from the country for the season, take apartments there, and during that period of the year the restaurant is often filled by very brilliant gatherings.

Here are some other Dutch restaurants mentioned in the book:

Van Laar
Amstel Room
Cafe Riche
Plaats Royal
Cafe-Restaurant Fritschy
Stroomberg