A restaurant website rarely breaks in one dramatic moment. It goes stale a piece at a time. The winter menu is still up in summer. The booking link points at a system you stopped using. The contact form has been sending messages to an inbox nobody reads. Each one costs a few customers, quietly, and nobody notices until someone mentions it.
A short monthly check stops that. Below is the list we work through for the restaurant and cafe sites we look after, split into what to do every month, every quarter and once a year. Print it, or put a recurring reminder in your calendar for the first Monday of the month.
Every month
1. Menu and prices. Open the menu page on your phone and read it against the current printed menu. Dishes, prices, dietary labels. If your menu is a PDF, check it is the latest one, and think about moving it to a proper web page. Our post on whether a PDF menu is bad for your restaurant explains why.
2. Hours, including the next holiday. Check opening hours on the site, then on your Google listing, Facebook and the delivery apps. They should all say the same thing. Look ahead to the next public holiday and add special hours now, not the night before.
3. Place a test order. If you take orders online, place a small real order from your phone and follow it through: does it arrive in the kitchen, is the confirmation email right, does the pickup time make sense? Ordering systems change their settings and integrations, and a broken checkout costs you every order until someone notices.
4. Make a test booking. Same idea. Book a table for next week, check the confirmation, then cancel it. Make sure the booking button on every page goes to the right place.
5. Send yourself a message through the contact form. Check it arrives, and that it lands in the inbox, not spam. Catering and function enquiries often come through this form, and they are worth a lot more than a single table.
6. Click every button on the homepage. Call, directions, menu, book, order, Instagram, gift vouchers. On a phone. Fix any that go nowhere or open the wrong page.
7. Software updates and a backup (WordPress sites). Take a backup first, then update WordPress itself, the theme and the plugins. Then reload the homepage, the menu and the booking page to make sure nothing broke. Out-of-date plugins are one of the most common ways small sites get hacked. On Squarespace or Wix the platform does this part for you; our Squarespace vs Wix vs WordPress comparison covers the tradeoff.
8. Glance at Search Console. If your site is connected to Google Search Console (it should be), open it and look for new errors under Pages, and for any security or manual action messages. Ten minutes is enough. If it isn't connected, that is a job for this month.
9. Swap a photo or two. A new dish, the seasonal drink, the outdoor area now that the weather has turned. It keeps the site honest and gives regulars something new.
Rather someone else did this every month?
Our website care plan covers hosting, updates and menu changes for restaurants and cafes, from US$120 a month. Send us your restaurant's name and city and we'll check your site for free first.
Get a free restaurant checkIn Australia? See our Australian cafe and restaurant page (care plans from A$150 a month).
Every quarter
10. Check speed on a phone. Run your homepage and menu page through Google's free PageSpeed Insights tool and note the mobile scores. You are looking for big drops since last time, usually caused by a huge new photo, a new plugin or an embedded social feed. Most people open a restaurant site on their phone, often on mobile data, so a slow page loses them before the menu appears.
11. Check your structured data. If your site has restaurant schema (hours, address, menu link, cuisine), run a page through Google's Rich Results Test and make sure the hours and address still match reality. Our guide to restaurant schema markup explains what it should include.
12. Look at the numbers. In your analytics, check visits to the menu, booking and ordering pages compared with the same quarter last year. If menu views are up but bookings are flat, something on the booking path is getting in the way.
13. Read the site as a stranger would. Is the About page still true? Is the chef who left last year still pictured? Is there a "new" banner on something from 2024? Is the copyright year in the footer current?
Once a year
14. Domain and hosting renewals. Check when your domain name and hosting renew, that auto-renew is on, and that the card on file hasn't expired. An expired domain takes your website and your email down together.
15. Logins and access. Make a list of who can log in to the website, the domain account, Google Search Console, Google Analytics and your Google Business Profile. Remove people who have left. Make sure the owner has admin access to each one, as well as any agency or manager who looks after it.
16. Privacy policy and legal pages. If you collect emails, run a loyalty program or use tracking pixels for ads, make sure your privacy policy says so and is up to date.
17. Decide whether it still fits. Once a year, compare your site with the places you lose customers to. If it is slow, hard to use on a phone, or impossible for you to update, patching may not be worth it anymore. Our cafe website checklist lists what a current site should have.
Doing it yourself or paying for it
Everything here can be done in house. The content checks (menu, hours, photos, test orders) are best done by someone in the restaurant anyway, because they know when things change. The technical items (updates, backups, speed, Search Console, renewals) are where a care plan earns its keep, since they are easy to forget and painful when missed.
Care plans vary a lot. Some cover hosting only. Others include a set number of content changes, updates, backups and monitoring. When you compare, ask what happens when something breaks at 7pm on a Friday, and whether menu changes are included or billed separately. If you are also weighing a rebuild, our guide to what a restaurant website costs in the US covers what builds typically cost and how ongoing care is usually charged.
FAQs
How often should a restaurant website be updated?
Check it every month, and update it whenever something a customer cares about changes: menu, prices, hours, holiday closures, booking or ordering details. Software updates and backups on a WordPress site should also happen at least monthly.
How long does monthly website maintenance take?
For a typical restaurant site, the checks in this list take about an hour a month once you are used to them. Updating a WordPress site safely, with a backup first and a check afterwards, can add another half hour.
Do Squarespace and Wix sites need maintenance?
Less, because the platform handles software updates, hosting and security certificates. You still need to keep the menu, hours and photos current, test your booking and ordering links, and check Search Console. The content checks are the same on every platform.
How much does a website care plan cost for a restaurant?
It depends on what is included. Ours covers hosting, updates and menu changes and starts from US$120 a month in the US and from A$150 a month in Australia. Some providers charge less for hosting alone and bill content changes by the hour.
What happens if my domain name expires?
Your website and any email on that domain stop working, usually within days. After a grace period the domain can be bought by someone else. Turn on auto-renew and make sure the card on file is current.