A hungry person deciding where to eat wants to see the food, the price and how long delivery takes. If your answer is 'call us', most of them call someone else instead.
Think about the last time you ordered food. You looked at pictures, you looked at prices, you checked the delivery fee, and you ordered. At no point did you want to speak to anyone. Now think about what a restaurant with only a phone number asks of that same person: call a stranger, ask what is available, ask the price, repeat your address, and trust that the total you were told is the total you will pay. Every one of those is a reason to close the tab. ## The menu is the website Not the story about your chef. Not the photo of the dining room. The menu, with prices, in the currency people pay in. A menu that cannot be browsed is the most common and most expensive mistake I see in restaurant sites. If a visitor has to download a PDF to find out what jollof costs, you have lost them. Put every dish on the page, with a price, a photo and one honest line about what it is. ## Prices stop the phone calls that waste your time Restaurants sometimes hide prices, thinking a call lets them sell. In practice it filters out the people who were ready to buy and keeps the ones who want to negotiate. Show the price. Show the delivery fee, or the threshold for free delivery. Show the areas you deliver to. Each of those answers a question that would otherwise have been a phone call or a lost order. ## Three paths, not one People arrive wanting different things, and the site should not force everyone down the same route: - Order for delivery, with an address and a time - Order for pickup, so they skip the queue at the counter - Book a table, because they are coming to eat in A site that offers only one of these is quietly turning away the other two. ## Make the kitchen's promise explicit "Fresh" means nothing. "We cook when you order, so it is twenty-five minutes, not five" means something. If you have a delivery guarantee, put it where the order button is. If food arrives cold, say what you do about it. Specific beats impressive. People believe numbers and policies far more than adjectives. ## Let them track it Most of the anxiety in food delivery happens between paying and eating. An order status that moves from received, to cooking, to on the way, removes nearly all of it, and removes the calls asking where the food is. ## Weekend deals belong on the page, not only on Instagram A promotion that lives in a story is gone in a day and invisible in search. On the site it works every weekend, and it gives people a reason to come back directly rather than through a delivery platform taking a cut of every order. ## What this is really about Every delivery platform charges you a commission and owns your customer. Your own ordering page costs you once and the customer stays yours. You will not replace the platforms overnight, and you do not need to. You need the regulars, the people who already know your food, to have somewhere direct to go.