Tableify Website: a restaurant website builder

Before week one: the short list we ask for

The build starts with a short list, not a questionnaire. Send the address of your current site, your menus in whatever form they live in, the photos you like, the rooms you rent out and how many guests each one holds, and a few lines about how the place started. Addresses, phone numbers and hours for each location matter more than they seem, because they become the facts every page repeats and every listing should match.

You do not pick a template or write pages. If a photo shoot comes with your plan, it is scheduled early, so the new pictures are ready when the pages need them; annual plans include one and waive the setup fee. If your photos are thin today, the site launches with the best of what you have, and you or our team swap in better ones as they come.

Week one: the menu comes over without retyping

Retyping a menu is where most site rebuilds stall. Tableify reads the menu in from wherever it lives now: a link to the old site, a PDF, or photos of the printed pages. Every menu, section, dish, description and price comes through, and the dish photos on the old site are copied across, so the menu keeps working after the old site is switched off.

What comes out is text, not a picture of a menu. You check it in the menu editor, fix the two dishes that changed since the PDF was printed, and it is ready. The mobile menus page covers what the menu does once it is live, and the menu SEO guide covers why text beats a picture when guests search.

Prices are the part to check most closely. A price read from a photo of a printed menu is only as current as the day the menu was printed, so mark anything that has changed since, and the menu and prices approval before launch catches the rest. Dishes that change every day do not belong in the main menu at all; they go in the daily specials you edit yourself.

Weeks one and two: the pages get built

With the menu in, the pages a guest expects get built: a homepage that answers the first questions on one screen, the menu, hours and directions for each location, and a page for each room you rent out, with how many guests it holds. Booking, online ordering, gift cards and private event inquiries are built into the same site, depending on the pieces your plan includes, so no button sends a guest to another company's page.

Pages for the occasions people search for can follow: birthdays, office parties, showers, rehearsal dinners, the neighborhoods you draw from. Each is written from your real rooms and photos. The restaurant SEO guide explains why a page per room and occasion matters, and the guide to AI answers explains what assistants quote from them.

What happens underneath, so you never have to

Every page is built ahead of time when you publish and served finished, so a guest on a weak phone signal outside the door gets the page at once instead of waiting for it to be put together. Photos are converted to a lighter format when they are uploaded, and pictures further down a page load as the guest scrolls to them.

Each page is also labeled for search engines: your hours, your spot on the map, menu items with their prices, upcoming events and the questions you answer. Each site gets a sitemap, the list of its pages that search engines use to find them all. None of this needs a setting from you, and none of it changes how the page looks to a guest.

The last week: four approvals before anything goes live

Before launch you review every page and ask for changes in plain words, the way you would brief a designer. Then you get one email, and four approvals wait on your own dashboard: the booking rules, every word and photo on the site, the address, phones and hours, and every dish with its price. Each approval shows you the real thing, your hours as guests will read them, your menu as the menu page and online ordering will show it, not a checkbox in the abstract.

Splitting them helps, because different people usually own them. A chef checks the dishes and prices, a manager the hours and phone numbers, the owner the words and photos, and whoever runs the floor the booking rules: when guests can book, how big a party can be and how far ahead. One press records who approved it and when. Nothing goes live until you approve.

Launch day: your domain moves over

On launch day your domain points to the new site. It runs on a secure address at your own domain, and the bare domain forwards to the www one, so a guest who types either lands in the same place. Then update the website link on your Google listing if it pointed anywhere else, and add your booking and menu links there too, so the listing and the site tell guests the same thing.

The beer garden in our case study went through these same steps, and its new site has run on Tableify hosting since July 6, 2026. Launch is a quiet day: the approvals happened the week before, so there is nothing left to decide, only a link or two to update.

After launch: the changes you make yourself

A restaurant changes every week, so the site has to keep up without a support ticket. From your Tableify account you change hours, menus, daily specials and the announcement bar across the top of the site, and publish when you are ready. A bar shows every change you saved but have not published yet, on any page, so nothing sits half-done. Holiday hours, a sold-out dish or a patio closing for the season take minutes.

If you would rather not, send the change to our team in plain words and it gets done for you. When guests start booking and inquiring on the new site, the reservation system and the private event software run from the same account, so a booking and a party inquiry land where your team already works.

Questions to ask any builder about the weeks before launch

A demo shows the finished site. The weeks before it are where a rebuild succeeds or stalls, so ask about them directly. The restaurant website checklist covers what a finished site should show a guest, and the guide to what a restaurant website costs covers the money.

• Who moves the menu: you, retyping it, or the builder, reading it in from your old site?
• How many weeks until launch, and what does the timing depend on?
• What do you approve before launch, and is each approval recorded?
• Does every booking, order and gift card stay on your own domain?
• Does the bare domain forward to the site, and is the address secure?
• After launch, can you change hours and specials yourself in minutes?