Restaurants and cafés

A website for your restaurant, written from one sentence

Somebody looking up a restaurant wants three things and wants them in seconds: what you cook, when you are open, and how to get a table. A restaurant site fails when any of those is more than one click away.

Describe your site

Try something like this

A site for Rosa, a small Italian restaurant in Kadıköy. Menu with real dishes and prices, opening hours, and a reservation form. Warm and traditional, not modern.

The more of it that is true of your business, the less of the result you will have to change. Hexvor never invents a phone number, an address, a price or a review — anything you leave out comes back as an obvious placeholder rather than as a plausible lie.

29 rules the engine applies to this kind of site

Not a feature list. These are the actual instructions sent with your request when Hexvor recognises the trade, on top of the 638 that apply to every site.

Atmosphere first

Communicate the room and the feeling before the detail. Somebody deciding where to eat is choosing an evening, not reading a specification.

Food is the hero

When real photographs exist, let them carry the page. Decorative UI must never sit on top of a good photograph of food.

The menu is one click away

A menu reachable in the first navigation interaction. It is why most people came.

Booking is the loudest action

Reservations are the most visually prominent action on the page, repeated at the end of the menu.

Say where it is

Address and neighbourhood, findable without hunting, as text that can be copied into a phone.

Hours where they are looked for

Opening hours prominent, never buried. Say the kitchen's hours separately when they differ.

Cuisine has a look

Let typography, spacing and colour reflect the kind of food and the personality of the place.

Upscale means restraint

For fine dining: quieter layouts, generous whitespace, elegant type. Loud is the opposite of expensive.

Casual means warmth

For a casual place: warmer type, stronger colour, more expressive detail. Restraint there reads as cold.

Menu categories are a hierarchy

Group the menu with clear visual levels rather than one long undifferentiated list.

Dish, description, price are distinct

Keep the three visually separate so a menu can be scanned by any one of them.

Signature dishes lead

Give the dishes the kitchen is known for more weight than everything else. Equal weight is no recommendation at all.

Name the booking action

“Reserve a table” rather than “Click here”. The label is what somebody is agreeing to.

The menu works on a phone

Most menus are read standing up on a small screen. It must stay readable and scrollable there.

A story, not marketing

The about section says who cooks and why. Generic hospitality language says nothing.

Reviews only if real

Use ratings and awards only when they were provided. Never invent either.

The chef, when the chef matters

Where the kitchen is the draw, put the chef on the page.

Private dining gets its own level

When events or private rooms are offered, give them their own clear place in the hierarchy.

Delivery is not booking

Keep dine-in reservations and delivery or takeaway visually distinct. They are different intentions.

Getting there is an action

Provide an obvious way to get directions, not only an address.

Repeat the essentials in the footer

Hours, address and phone in the footer of every page: it is where people look when the page did not answer them.

Seasonal without breaking the system

A seasonal menu gets visual distinction inside the existing design language, not a second one.

Never a PDF menu

A downloadable menu is unreadable on a phone, invisible to search engines, and the most common way a restaurant site fails.

Say what happened to the booking

Confirm success, failure and pending clearly. A booking form that goes quiet is a booking nobody made.

Dietary marks are scannable

When the information exists, mark it beside the dish and explain the marks once.

Appetite, not decoration

Imagery and spacing should make the food feel wanted. Effects on top of it do the opposite.

No generic restaurant template

Adapt the direction to this restaurant's actual personality rather than to what restaurant sites usually look like.

Local identity where it belongs

Reflect the neighbourhood or region when it is genuinely part of the brand.

Beauty must not block booking

Balance atmosphere against the practical information somebody needs to actually turn up.

Describe yours

Free to start, no card. Publish when it looks right.

Build a site