Pages a cafe or coffee shop's website should have

You probably typed "cafe website" or "coffee shop marketing" into a search box, and now you're wondering how much site you actually need. Less than you think. A cafe site is a shop window, not a brochure; it has one job, which is to get someone through your door. Most people find cafes by searching "cafe near me" or "coffee shop near me" (DataForSEO estimates those run into the millions a month in the UK), so location beats name every time. Keep the site small and keep it true. Current beats clever.

Purpose: Tell a stranger in five seconds what you are, where you are and whether you're open.

Put the answer at the top. Your name, the town or area, a single line on what you do (coffee, breakfast, cakes, whatever is true) and today's opening status if you can manage it. Then a clear way to find the menu and the map. That's the page.

One good photo of the real counter or the real front window does more than a paragraph of description. Add a sentence or two on what makes the place yours, then stop. Visitors on a phone, standing in a street, won't scroll through your life story.

Avoid slideshows that swallow the page, stock photos of coffee beans that could be from anywhere, long welcome speeches, and music that starts on its own.

Purpose: Let people decide before they arrive, and trust what they read.

Write the menu as text on the page. Not a photo of a chalkboard, and not a PDF someone has to download and pinch-zoom. Text can be read on any phone, searched, and updated in a minute. A scanned image can't.

Include prices. People want to know, and leaving them off just invites the question you'd rather not answer at the till. Group items sensibly: hot drinks, breakfast, lunch, cakes. Keep names plain.

Then comes the real discipline: keep it current. A menu that still lists the soup you dropped in spring is worse than no menu. So pick one person who owns the update, and make it part of changing the board in the shop. Same job, same moment.

Avoid out-of-date PDFs, prices that differ from the till, menus buried three clicks deep, and descriptions so poetic nobody can tell what's in the sandwich.

Purpose: Give customers the safety information they need, and meet your legal duties.

This page matters more than any other, and to be fair, it's the one most cafes get muddled. Loose food needs information on the 14 major allergens. That means the customer must be able to find out which of those allergens are in what you serve.

Then there's the part that trips people up. Food you packaged on the premises before the customer ordered it, and sold there, is called "prepacked for direct sale", or PPDS. Think prepacked sandwiches, soup in pots, cakes sold in packaging. The FSA's guidance gives the same kinds of examples. Since 1 October 2021 ("Natasha's Law"), PPDS food needs a label with the name of the food and a full ingredients list, with allergens emphasised. The Food Standards Agency names coffee shops among the businesses this applies to.

What isn't PPDS? Unpackaged cakes on display, and food made to order. Those fall under the loose food rules instead.

So say it plainly on the site: how customers can find allergen information, and who to ask in the shop. Make sure what you publish matches what's on the labels. If a recipe changes, the page changes too.

Avoid vague lines like "ask us about allergens" with nothing behind them, guessing at ingredients, and treating the website as a substitute for labels where labels are required.

Purpose: Make it effortless to arrive at the right door at the right time.

This is the page people actually came for. Give the full address, a map, and opening hours for each day written out in plain text. Add a line on how to find you if it isn't obvious: next to the station, down the side passage, opposite the church. Mention parking, step-free access and whether dogs are welcome, if those are true.

Holiday and bank holiday changes belong here too, and so does any odd closure. Update them the moment they're decided. Few things annoy a customer more than a locked door after a ten-minute walk.

And if you sell alcohol, for example with late opening, you need a premises licence (GOV.UK, England and Wales). Keep your published hours consistent with what your licence allows.

Avoid hours that differ between your site and your window, a map that points to the wrong spot, and "see Facebook for times" as your only answer.

Purpose: Show you run a clean, properly registered food business.

The Food Hygiene Rating Scheme is run by the Food Standards Agency with local authorities in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Ratings run from 5 (very good) down to 0 (urgent improvement necessary), shown on stickers and online.

Displaying your rating is voluntary in England, though it's encouraged. In Wales and Northern Ireland it's a legal requirement. Either way, if you've a good rating, show it, and say what the number means for anyone who doesn't know.

Registration is separate. You must register as a food business with your local authority at least 28 days before trading. That's a step to complete before opening, not something for the web page.

Keep this short: the sticker image or the number, and a sentence of explanation. Don't turn it into a compliance essay.

Avoid showing a rating you don't hold, an old rating after a new inspection, and fussy paragraphs of legal wording nobody asked for.

Purpose: Turn regulars and local organisers into bookings, without promising what you can't deliver.

If you do takeaway orders, office catering, or hire out the space for a morning, give it a page. If you don't, leave it off. An empty "Catering" page is a small lie.

Say what you actually offer, what the minimum notice is, and how to ask. One clear contact route is enough: an email address or a phone number you really answer. A simple enquiry form works if somebody checks it daily.

Be honest about limits. If you can cater for twenty but not two hundred, say so. It saves everyone's time and makes the enquiries you do get far better.

Avoid long menus of packages you've never sold, pricing you can't stand behind, and forms that vanish into an inbox nobody opens.

Purpose: Give customers a reason to pick you over the chain down the road.

Keep it short and true. Who runs the place, why you opened it, what you care about getting right. A few sentences. Add a photo of the real team, behind the real counter, looking like themselves.

This is where independents have an edge, and to be fair, it costs nothing. People like knowing a person is behind the coffee. Names and faces build more trust than any slogan.

Skip the corporate voice. Write it the way you'd explain the place to a new neighbour.

Avoid grand mission statements, invented history, "passionate about coffee" with nothing to back it up, and anything you wouldn't say out loud.

Purpose: Show customers exactly what they'll find when they walk in.

Use your own photos: the seating, the counter, the cakes, the light in the window. Take them in daylight, keep them clear, and refresh them when the place changes. A shot of a busy morning tells people it's worth the trip.

Photos should do real work. Show the entrance so people can spot it. Show the seating so a group knows whether they'll fit. Show the food as it truly looks.

Resize images before uploading so pages load quickly on a phone. Big image files are a common reason pages load slowly.

Avoid stock photography, heavy filters, images of dishes you no longer make, and dozens of near-identical shots of the same latte.

Purpose: Let other customers do some of the persuading.

Reviews live mostly on Google, and that's fine. You don't need to copy them all onto your own site. A link to where people can read them, or a small number of genuine comments shown with permission, is plenty.

Respond to reviews, good and bad, in a calm and ordinary voice. Thank people briefly. If something went wrong, say sorry and say what you'll do. Readers judge you by how you handle the poor ones, and that counts for more than the stars.

Ask happy customers, in person, to leave one. Don't pay for them and don't write your own.

Avoid fake reviews and public arguments. Don't delete every awkward comment you can find, and don't quote praise you can't trace to a real person.

Purpose: Be found by people searching by location, which is most of them.

Since most customers look for "cafe near me" rather than your name, this free listing may matter more than your website. Claim it, fill in every field, and keep it matching the site: address, hours, phone number, menu link.

The business name must reflect the real-world name used on your sign and website. Don't stuff keywords into it. A name followed by a list of what you sell is the sort of thing to leave out; just use the name above your door.

Add real photos, update special hours, and check it now and then. Nobody can promise where you'll rank. Accurate, complete and current is the honest way to give yourself a fair chance.

Avoid keyword stuffing in the name, a wrong pin on the map, hours that disagree with your site, and abandoning the listing after the first week.

Purpose: Meet the rules for limited companies and quietly show you're legitimate.

If you trade as a UK limited company, GOV.UK says your site should show the registered company number, the registered office address, where the company is registered, and that it is a limited company. Put these in the footer, in small plain text, on every page.

It's a five-minute job. Do it once and it's done.

Avoid hiding the details, using a trading address where the registered office is required, and leaving out any of the four items.

Purpose: Get a working site live without building everything at once.

So, where to start? Build these, in this order:

1. Home page. Name, area, what you do, today's status, a link to the menu and the map.
2. Menu and prices. Plain text, with prices, and a named person responsible for keeping it current.
3. Opening hours and location. Address, map, day-by-day hours and how to find the door.
4. Allergens. The 14 major allergens, how customers can get information, and the labelling point for prepacked sandwiches, soup in pots and packaged cakes.
5. Food hygiene rating. Your sticker or number, with one line of explanation.

The rest can follow: your story, photos, reviews, catering. And your Google Business Profile should be set up alongside, not after. Five pages, honest and current, will beat twenty that are half true.

Avoid waiting until everything is perfect before you publish, adding pages just to look bigger, and building any of the five without someone assigned to keep it up to date.

Not sure which pages you're short of? Seracu offers a free snapshot: a free look at which topics your site lacks compared with its competitors. For more background, see our guides on SEO for small business, content gap analysis and getting found on Google, or browse the food and drink pages and the wider pages you should have directory. Or start with the five pages above.