A restaurant website builder where the menu takes the order

Most restaurant sites are a homepage, a PDF menu, and a phone number. The guest who wanted to pay gets a picture of a dish and a number to call.

On pickup.kitchen the menu is the ordering page. Each dish has a real price. The guest picks pickup or delivery, chooses a time, pays, and your kitchen screen gets a ticket. There is no second tab and no form that emails you an order you then have to type in.

You do not design anything from a blank page. Your site is built from the details you already have.

• Your name, logo, and a colour you pick for buttons and headers.
• A short about line, your address, and your hours.
• Menu categories with dishes, prices, photos, and options like size or add-ons.
• Vegetarian and non-vegetarian marks on dishes.
• Buttons to call or text the kitchen for what the menu cannot answer.
• A share button that copies your link, so you can paste it into Instagram.

A guest should know four things in five seconds: what you cook, where you are, when you are open, and how to order. Put your name, a line about your food, your address, and your hours at the top. Put the menu right below.

Skip the long story. Skip the slideshow of the dining room, if most of your sales are takeout. Show food.

Shoot in daylight, close to a window. One dish per photo, from above or at a slight angle. Aim for six to eight good photos, starting with your best sellers.

Your page rotates through dish photos at the top, so the first thing a guest sees is food. Dishes with photos get tapped more than dishes without. Add a photo to every dish you want to sell more of.

Start with the menu you already have. Send a photo of it, or paste the text, and pickup.kitchen reads the dishes and prices into a list. You check each line, fix what it got wrong, and add what is missing.

After that you edit the menu yourself. Change a price and the next order uses it. Add a dish, hide a dish, or mark one sold out. Nobody has to republish anything.

If you would rather hand it over, send us the menu and we load it for you.

Create the account with your kitchen's name, and the site is made at yourname.pickup.kitchen. You do not buy a domain or install a theme. Add your dishes and prices, a photo for each if you can, and your hours.

Connect Stripe so guests can pay by card, choose the pickup and delivery times you can keep, and go live. There is no monthly fee and no setup fee. Each order carries 10%, which the customer pays at checkout on card orders.

A free template is a layout: a homepage, a menu block and a phone number. It still needs hosting, a domain and a form that emails you the order, and that last step is where online ordering breaks.

Before you pick any template or builder, check four things.

• Can a guest pay on the page, with no app and no account?
• Does the kitchen get a ticket, or only an email?
• Can you close a full time slot, or mark the day sold out?
• Is the menu something you edit, or a picture you replace?

A template site still needs hosting, a domain, a plugin for ordering, and someone to wire it to your payments. Each of those is a monthly bill or a weekend of work.

Here we host the site, take the card payment through your own Stripe account, and show the order on your kitchen screen. If you already own a domain, we can point it at your site so your own name stays in the address bar.

Your link opens straight on the menu. Paste it in your Instagram bio, a story, a WhatsApp status, or on a sticker by the till.

When someone shares it in WhatsApp, Facebook, or iMessage, the preview shows your name and an image, not a bare address.

You also get a free listing on pickup.kitchen. People nearby can find you there and still order on your own site.

Before you post the link, open it on your phone. Check your hours, your address, and your phone number. Make sure every dish has a price and a photo. Place a test order and watch the ticket arrive on the kitchen screen. Then share the link.

Ask a friend to place an order from their phone without your help. If they get stuck anywhere, your guests will too. Fix that step first.

Ask these of every builder, including this one, before you pay for a year.

• Can a guest pay on the page with no app and no account?
• Does the kitchen get a ticket with a sound, or only an email?
• Can you close a full slot or mark the day sold out?
• Is the menu something you edit, or a PDF you replace?
• What does it cost when an order comes in: a monthly fee, a cut of 15% or more, or a flat 10% you can see?

The same site can sell a meal plan with a start date, an end date, and the days you pack. If you only sell tonight's orders, ignore it. Nothing changes on your menu.