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Shopify For Restaurants: Success Secrets Revealed (+5 Design Practices)

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The restaurant business is experiencing a significant revolution. You can easily order your favorite delicacy online and deliver it to your home in minutes.

Food industry reports highlight that restaurant delivery and online food ordering maintained more than a 20% growth rate in the last five years. Statista projects that the global online food delivery revenue is estimated to hit $339,257m this year, translating to an annual growth rate of about 8.29% through 2026.

The food industry is changing fast, and restaurants must keep up with all the changes to survive the market.

With 42% of the overall food orders being placed online today coupled with a good 25.3% user penetration in online food deliveries, it is increasingly essential to bring your restaurant business online.

But is Shopify for restaurants any good? Here are more reasons why you should take your food business online using Shopify.

    Why Should You Take Your Eatery Business Online?

    With the eCommerce boom set to continue growing at 12.7% this year, Shopify still stands out as an essential eCommerce solution for any business looking to start selling their products online.

    Established in 2006, Shopify is now a significant marketplace that allows businesses to quickly create custom-branded digital storefronts and keep essential customer data for better marketing in the future.

    It is an easy-to-use eCommerce platform that features numerous affordable DIY solutions for restaurant businesses to sell their delicacies, among other menu items, online.

    Given that 90% of potential customers tend to research an eatery online before dining, hosting your restaurant website on an excellent e-commerce platform like Shopify can help you attract more new clients from the word go.

    Wait! Don’t you believe me? Here are four actual stores using Shopify for their restaurant businesses:

    Sakara

    Sakara example

    Sakara is a typical local food delivery business that delivers nutrient-dense meals prepared by professional chefs. Ideally, they often provide their orders in coolers to keep them cool and fresh for up to two days of ordering.

    In contrast to other restaurants online, the Sakara website features a more subdued color scheme. It is more elegant and has a high-end feel thanks to the deeper colors and typefaces.

    Furthermore, it automatically detects clients’ location and gives further information about the brand once you land on the site. For those outside the U.S., they still manage to offer a warm welcome and encourage you to learn more about them despite not being able to deliver food to your location.

    Start a free trial and enjoy 3 months of Shopify for $1/month
    Trusted by over 2,000,000 businesses worldwide

    Luke’s Lobster

    Luke's Lobster example

    Luke’s Lobster is a family-owned online seafood business that primarily sells authentic, high-quality lobster rolls. Their website is sleek, gorgeous, and straightforward.

    The design and layout used are clean and minimalistic. Using color blocking on specific sections helps make products stand out.

    The use of white space is well balanced, and they’ve made sure to include detailed product descriptions to accompany the many great food images. This gives you a clear sneak peek of what to expect and assures you excellent quality.

    It’s also good to note how they’ve featured a recipe section to keep visitors interested. Once hooked, the design encourages you to sign up for their newsletter, order your favorite seafood, or book seafood catering services. A clever way to upsell, right?

    Well, you must be feeling inspired to start creating your restaurant website now, right? But for your online restaurant website to be successful, here are some crucial must-have elements you should know about:

    • A unique story to engage and connect with all your patrons
    • An easy to search and accessible but appetizing menu to keep customers interested
    • Basic contact details, working hours, and physical addresses on your homepage to help build trust with customers from the word go
    • Links to social media to connect and engage with a broader customer base
    • Relevant responsive layouts for more conversions

    Now, before we get to how to set up a Shopify restaurant website, here is a quick review of Shopify for restaurants

    01. Shopify for Restaurants Price Review

    Shopify Pricing plans

    Using Shopify to create and run a restaurant online means you will need access to sales channels and design flexibility, among many other website features – but how much will all these cost you?

    For starters, running a Shopify store involves several factors that you might think. These often include subscription costs, other initial costs for setting up your store, and payments for any additional features you may need.

    If you wonder how much it costs to launch and run an online restaurant on Shopify, here is a detailed breakdown to help you estimate the actual cost.

    a. Subscription Costs

    Shopify essentially has the following three main pricing plans:

    i. Shopify Basic - $29 per month

    Starting a brand new online restaurant business or trying to create an online storefront for an existing restaurant? Shopify Basic is your plan if the restaurant is small and you only need basic eCommerce functionality.

    ii. Shopify - $79 per month

    If your restaurant business proliferates, so will your need for a robust restaurant website. This Shopify plan offers a more granular reporting data platform and features like abandoned cart recovery and gift cards. A small online business would not miss such features but will as it progresses. It is a mid-tier plan suitable for mid-sized restaurants with or without an existing website but wants to track sales and improve marketing.

    iii. Advanced Shopify - $299 per month

    Think of this plan as a medium for large online businesses to keep on growing. If you intend to grow your Shopify restaurant business ten times more, the Advanced Shopify plan promises rock-bottom transaction fees, stellar shipping, and more advanced reporting. It is specifically designed for restaurants with extensive inventories that want custom reporting. 

    Ideally, your Shopify subscription will only help keep your restaurant website up and running. Here are other additional costs to consider when opening an online restaurant on Shopify:

    b. Initial Costs for Setting up the Website

    Setting up a food website on Shopify costs money. Of course, you will need to pay up for things like branded domain store names, high-impact themes, essential apps, plugins, etc. Let’s delve more into some of the leading initial expenses that you are likely to incur:

    i. Domain Name

    Shopify often includes this provision as part and parcel of all its plans so that you don’t have to host or install your own. You are at liberty to choose from a long list of free myshopify.com domains available.

    But if you prefer having a custom domain, this will cost you anything between $11/year and $81/year. If you might already have a registered domain name, Shopify will let you link it to your store for free. The best part is that the entire process is fully automated, and you can buy and register your preferred domain name for your Shopify restaurant website in minutes.

    ii. Themes

    A good website design often goes a long way in attracting, converting, and retaining customers. While choosing a premium theme is entirely optional in Shopify, you must remember that free ones often have limited functionality and might not help your restaurant stand out from the thousands of other online businesses already using the same freemiums.

    Thankfully, Shopify has plenty of premium themes. The best part is that they are all fully customizable, and you can tweak them around however you like to match your brand. Otherwise, you can spend roughly $150 to $350 for a premium-quality Shopify theme for your restaurant.

    iii. Apps

    Like many other software platforms today, Shopify needs add-ons and different essential integrations to serve many businesses with varying needs fully. The platform lacks on its own, but you can easily find an app for all your needs with the different app features.

    For example, you can use the PageFly App to create and optimize various web pages; Foodee to configure the store and fulfill customer orders; and PickyStory to upsell.

    Shopify boasts of more than 8,000 apps in the Shopify app store, ready to help you enhance store functionality. With an abundance of apps, the average monthly cost of using a premium app on Shopify falls between $15 and $60.

    Start a free trial and enjoy 3 months of Shopify for $1/month
    Trusted by over 2,000,000 businesses worldwide

    c. Shopify Transaction Fees

    Another additional cost that might influence your total running costs is the Shopify transaction fees. Ideally, this is usually charged on every transaction made through a third-party payment service.

    However, its percentage will depend on your preferred subscription plan. So, expect a 2% transaction fee on the Basic plan, 1% on the Shopify plan, and 0.5% on Advanced Shopify. But you can avoid all these unnecessary expenses by choosing to use Shopify Payments from the word go.

    d. Shopify Credit Card Rates

    As part of your total Shopify costs, you must factor in other variables that will affect your profit margin, like credit card rates.

    Shopify typically charges a small commission whenever payments are made via credit cards. Sadly, it’s usually higher relative to other payment methods due to the risks involved.

    Credit card rates generally depend on subscription plans. But you can broadly expect an average charge of 2.9%+ $0.3 and 2.7% for all credit card payments on Basic Shopify both online and offline, respectively; 2.6% + $0.30 and 2.5% on the Shopify Plan; and 2.4% + $0.30 and 2.4% on Advanced Shopify.

    While it is hard to say how much you might need to open a Shopify restaurant, you can easily estimate a precise cost using a Shopify pricing calculator. I know that the review makes it easy to categorically state that Shopify for restaurants costs at least $100 (or even less) in total, but it would help if you first identify your exact needs and then budget for them in advance.

    Now that you have a rough idea of how much Shopify for restaurants costs, here is a quick Shopify pros and cons review:

    02. Shopify Pros and Cons Review

    Shopify is a leading e-commerce platform whose most significant benefits revolve around providing the necessary flexibility to grow an online business. Considered the easiest-to-use platform for small businesses and large enterprises, Shopify offers all the tools you will need to build a beautiful restaurant website.

    While Shopify might not be the cheapest platform to use, they provide cost transparency, more than 100 responsive themes, numerous extensions in the Shopify app store, a super responsive 24/7 customer support service, and the opportunity to sell offline with Shopify POS.

    Its other main drawbacks often include product limitations, customization restrictions, coding difficulties, and the constant need for app installations to run critical functionalities. Although its benefits seem to outweigh the cons, considering each one of them will go a long way in helping you determine whether Shopify is the best fit for your restaurant project.

    Now, let's dive right into the meat of the matter.

    How to Set Up a Shopify Website for Restaurants

    Setting up a functional and on-brand Shopify website for your restaurant can be done in an afternoon.

    This section walks through the step-by-step process of creating a Shopify restaurant, which includes opening an account, designing the website, setting up needed functionality, choosing a domain, and publishing.

    No coding knowledge will be needed.

    Register for a Shopify Account

    Restaurant owners have to choose from three plans when creating an account: Basic, Shopify, and Advanced.

    Basic

    Shopify’s Basic plan has the functionality, website-building, and analytics monitoring that any online food business needs.

    Shopify

    The Shopify plan has these additional features:

    • Five additional staff accounts.
    • Access personal customer data for more tailored marketing efforts.
    • Lower transaction fees.

    Advanced

    The Advanced plan has these additional features:

    • 15 additional staff accounts.
    • Improved analytics.
    • Increased checkout capacity.
    • Additional fees (e.g., 3rd Party Shipping, Duties & Import Taxes) reflected at checkout
    • Lower transaction fees.

    Build the Restaurant Website

    Once restaurateurs have chosen a plan, they may proceed to build their website.

    Building the restaurant's Shopify website allows the creator to put their best foot forward in the online world.

    The website must reflect the restaurant’s brand, as well as showcase its value offering to anyone who navigates the site.

    This provides potential patrons with a brand experience prior to walking through the restaurant doors.

    Select Themes for Your Shopify Store

    Themes are design and functionality templates that allow Shopify users to quickly build and launch their websites.

    There are various themes to choose from, each optimal for different industries and business types. By default, Shopify users start with the “Dawn” theme and customize it from there.

    However, there are themes for food establishments that will provide a much better start for building the restaurant’s website. A Shopify restaurant theme, if you will.

    Taste Shopify Theme

    Source: Taste

    Some of the popular Shopify restaurant themes include Taste, Vantage, and Yummi. Shown above is the Shopify theme, Taste.

    Create the Pages of your Online Restaurant

    It’s recommended that a restaurant’s website has the following:

    • A Homepage
    • An About Us section
    • A Contact Us page
    • A Booking Calendar
    • An Online Shop

    Depending on the number of menu items, it may be feasible to create product pages for every individual menu item as well. This gives each item a descript page, complete with photos, making them appear more premium and enticing.

    However, if a restaurant has more than 20 menu items and primarily looks to increase foot traffic with its Shopify website, then having an online menu would be more efficient than individual product pages. More on that later.

    Anatomy of a Restaurant Page

    The header, footer, and body make up the anatomy of any page.

    West Best Pizza Company Website Header

    Source: West Best Pizza Company

    The header should contain navigational links (e.g., About Us, Menu, etc.), the company logo, which usually redirects users back to the homepage, and, for restaurant websites with a shop, the header should also display the cart icon.

    Following the header will be the banner. The banner makes up the entire first fold of the website. Ideally, a captivating image, some short yet descriptive copy about the restaurant, and some key CTA buttons would be placed on the banner.

    A well-crafted banner piques interest and prevents visitors from bouncing off the site.

    Popwich homepage featuring a dipped gelato on a stick

    Source: Popbar

    Shown above, Popbar, a frozen dessert restaurant in New York, entices website visitors with a video banner, immediately captivating visitors with movement. It also contains an “Order Now” button, which takes patrons to the online catalog.

    The bottom of any page would be the footer.

    La Patisserie Website Footer

    Source: La Patisserie

    The footer contains more navigational links, directing users to the legal stuff such as privacy policy and terms of service. It typically also contains social buttons that direct visitors to the company’s social media pages.

    Craft the Shopify Restaurant’s Online Menu

    Having an online menu allows website visitors to see the restaurant’s food before even being seated. This is a great way to entice potential visitors to come to the store.

    It’s also good for restaurant SEO, optimizing search visibility for food-related terms.

    There are various ways to go about the online menu.

    Adding your menu items to Shopify as products is one such way. This method can make creating an online menu much easier.

    California Pizza Kitchen Product Catalogue

    Source: California Pizza Kitchen

    Adding products to Shopify will also register these menu items as purchasable shop items from your restaurant’s online store. So, only add menu items that you want available online.

    It’s also a good idea to segregate these Shopify products into “collections.”

    These collections may be categorized by food type, so pastries would be one collection, frozen deserts would be another collection, and so on.

    Restaurateurs may even segment food into collections based on cuisine (e.g., Indian, Italian, Asian).

    California Pizza Kitchen Original BBQ Chicken Pizza Product Page

    Source: California Pizza Kitchen

    Only the items listed as products can be dynamically shown on the Shopify site and have their own product page, just like California Pizza Kitchen’s BBQ Chicken Pizza, shown above.

    Another method of creating an online menu would be through an embedded image.

    La Creperie Website Embedded Online Menu

    Source: La Creperie

    The advantage of this is that web designers won’t have a troublesome time aligning text and media assets like a Word document. That’s because the menu image is fixed.

    However, if anything about the menu were to change, then the whole image would need to be replaced.

    Furthermore, images may make the site load slower, which won’t be good for the user experience and restaurant SEO. So, make sure to compress your images before adding them to the website.

    An alternative to an embedded menu image would be a text format menu.

    Here, the text elements of a menu, such as the food item’s name, description, and price, are placed as text on the Shopify site. If anything about the menu were to change, webmasters can simply edit it from Shopify’s web builder.

    The downside of this text format is if web designers decide to integrate menu photos, they may have a difficult time keeping it consistently aligned as intended across different devices.

    Make the Design Process Easier with PageFly

    PageFly users have tremendous freedom and flexibility when it comes to placing elements, such as media and text, on a page. The straightforward website builder allows restaurateurs to drag an element from one side of the page to another without much headache.

    Pagefly Page Builder Demonstration

    It’s also a hassle-free way of adding columns and dividing elements on screen, which can be a great way to build a dynamic online menu.

    PageFly can create six different page types — the regular page, blog post, password page, home page, product page, and collection page. Those last two have significant use for a restaurant’s Shopify store.

    Furthermore, users have access to various animation styles that they can assign to each element, making for a more engaging webpage. So, if restaurateurs want a PNG of jello to wiggle, that’s possible.

    Saving a Pagefly Page

    After building a page using PageFly, click “Save.”

    Name the page then click “Save The Page

    Then hit “Publish.”

    Pages created by PageFly can be found in “Pages” under the “Online Store” tab from Shopify’s main dashboard.

    Create the Online Restaurant’s Favicon

    Favicons are tiny images typically found on the browser tab.

    Benihana Favicon Image on a Browser Tab

    They are an immediate indicator to the web user, telling them which domain a certain tab is on.

    To add a favicon to the Shopify restaurant, simply click the gear icon on the left-hand side of the Shopify website builder.

    Click on the “Logo” dropdown.

    There, you’ll see the option to add a favicon image. Simply upload a square logo that you wish to represent your domain on browser tabs.

    Refine the Restaurant Website’s Design

    Once you’ve built the site along with the necessary pages, you may refine the colors, fonts, design elements, and copy to match the restaurant's Shopify website with its brand.

    Benihana Homepage featuring colorful cocktails against a black backdrop

    Source: Benihana

    If your restaurant has any media assets (e.g., photos of the food), place them on the website. By default, the Shopify themes will use stock photos or free Shopify images.

    Design Tips for Your Restaurant Website

    Some crucial design will guarantee that the online restaurant will capture visitors’ attention and keep them scrolling through the pages.

    • Make sure images are clear and decipherable.
    • Maximize negative space.
    • CTA buttons should stand out.
    • Keep copy short and punchy.
    • Stick to brand guidelines.

    These tips also allow a restaurant website to stand out from its competitors, highlighting value propositions, showcasing mouth-watering food, and providing a unique online brand experience.

    Set Up the Payment Method for your Restaurant Website

    Setting up the payment method allows your restaurant’s online store to take payments from purchasing patrons.

    To do that, navigate to “Settings” found in the lower-left corner of the main dashboard.

    From there, select the “Payments” tab.

    The Shopify user has three options for setting up online payments. Choose the one that best applies to your restaurant and current circumstances.

    • Payment Providers. This option allows merchants to select a specific third-party payment provider such as Adyen, WePay, or Stripe.
    • Manual Payment Methods. This option is for payments made outside the Shopify online store. This includes bank transfers and cash on delivery.
    • Shopify Payments. This allows payments to be made directly through Shopify, making transactions smoother and minimizing third-party transaction fees. This method, however, is only available in select regions.

    The instructions for setting up payments on Shopify will be different depending on the selected payment method and payment provider.

    After following the respective setup instructions, click on “Activate.”

    Configure Local Pickup and Delivery for your Restaurant Website

    The “shipping” method is off the table. Unless you’re delivering packaged, canned, and bagged goods such as hot sauce or shake powder. In which case, these are fine sitting in a mailbox.

    Otherwise, this leaves restaurants with two options for their Shopify food delivery:

    • Local Delivery. This option allows the merchant or a courier to deliver the meals to the online patron’s address.
    • Pickup. This option allows patrons to visit the physical stall or restaurant and claim the food they ordered from the Shopify website.

    A restaurant may want to offer both of these options.

    To set up local pickup and delivery, first, go to “Settings” from the main dashboard.

    Then click on “Locations.”

    Click on “Add Location.”

    Input the details of your restaurant’s operating address.

    Repeat this process for every chain and cloud kitchen that can offer delivery and pick-up.

    Once that’s done, navigate to the “Shipping and Delivery” option from the left-hand side.

    For Local Delivery

    Scroll down to “Local Delivery

    Here, merchants can find the restaurants and cloud kitchens they’ve added as locations on Shopify.

    Click on each of these input locations in “Local Delivery.”

    For each of the locations, tick on the checkbox that says “This Location Offers Local Delivery,”

    Shopify would need to verify the delivery area for each input location.

    There are two options to define the serviceable area: Use Postal Codes or Select a Delivery Radius.

    • Use Postal Codes. This option defines the delivery area with ZIP or postal codes. With this option, merchants list the ZIP/postal codes that they want to include in their delivery area.
    • Select a Delivery Radius. This option defines the delivery area within a radius of the restaurant’s location. This option is only available for verified locations, though.

    Once you’ve input the necessary details, hit “Save.”

    For Local Pickup

    Go back to the “Shipping and Delivery” tab.

    Scroll down to “Local Pickup

    Click on the restaurant’s locations in “Local Pickup.”

    For each of the locations, tick on the checkbox that says “This Location Offers Local Pickup,”

    Shopify asks for the expected pickup time. Click on the dropdown menu and select the option that is closest to the amount of time it takes to prepare each order.

    Fill out any remaining fields and hit “Save.”

    Choose Your Shopify Site’s Custom Domain

    Shopify users are automatically given a “myshopify.com” domain. As a result, the site’s URL will look something like “texasbarbecuesteakhouse.myshopify.com;” which may not be a fitting URL if you want to establish authority and branding for your restaurant.

    Shopify users may either:

    • Buy a domain directly from Shopify, or
    • Use an existing domain that the restaurant has previously acquired

    Assuming the restaurant has never hosted a website before, and thus, never previously owned a domain, we can guide you through the first bullet point — buying a domain from Shopify.

    Go to “Settings” from the main dashboard.

    Navigate to the “Domains” tab

    Click on “Buy New Domain.

    Search for domains using your restaurant’s name. This will show all available domains containing the restaurant’s name that haven’t been acquired yet.

    Acquiring a domain name that reflects the restaurant’s name reinforces the brand on online assets, such as the restaurant’s online shop. This also improves restaurant SEO, specifically for navigational searches.

    Click on “Buy” next to the domain you wish to purchase.

    Input the necessary information and click “Buy Domain.”

    Now that you’ve purchased a domain, set it as the primary domain for your restaurant’s Shopify store.

    Finalize and Publish Your Online Restaurant

    Once you’ve reviewed the restaurant website’s design, payment methods, delivery areas, favicon, and domain, the restaurant’s online shop is ready to publish.

    From the dashboard, simply click “remove password” on the store you wish to publish. This will open the restaurant’s online doors to hungry online patrons, allowing them to visit.

    Promoting your Restaurant’s Website

    Once the Shopify website is up and running, restaurateurs may begin driving traffic to the website.

    If a proper marketing funnel is set up, this effort will increase the amount of restaurant conversions.

    Social Media

    Social media managers may insert website links on social content. Website links may also be found on social page descriptions (e.g., Instagram bios and Facebook intro), and in various content formats, such as 24-hour stories.

    Fleming Prime Steakhouse Facebook Page Intro Section

    Source: Fleming Prime Steakhouse

    Website links may also be part of a restaurant’s paid ads campaign.

    Not only does this increase social media page visibility, but if the content used for the paid ads campaign contains the website link, the Shopify restaurant will also gain traffic from said ads.

    Google Maps and Other Directories

    Listings on online directories, such as Google Maps and Yelp, drive foot traffic from a local demographic to the restaurant.

    That’s considering that people who perform local searches (e.g., parlor near me, restaurant near me) are looking to visit an establishment.

    Sushi Lab Google Maps Listing containing their website URL

    Placing a website link on a directory listing will allow potential patrons to get a detailed idea about the restaurant before visiting it. It also drives online traffic from a high-intent local market.

    Affiliate Links and Influencer Partnerships

    If a restaurant is running an influencer campaign, the restaurant may provide its affiliates with affiliate links or promo codes that customers may use.

    Having affiliate links drives traffic from an influencer’s highly engaged audience to the Shopify website.

    Restaurateurs who wish to leverage affiliate marketing may use the Shopify app called “UpPromote.”

    Kandagawa Bakery Listing on a food feature blog

    Source: TimeOut

    Restaurants may also build backlinks from reputable food blogs to drive niche traffic to the restaurant website. Shown above is a food blog that links to a Tokyo bakery’s website.

    Best Shopify Practices for Restaurant Websites

    To run a successful restaurant business on Shopify, your store must meet the different basic requirements that your customers might have. With numerous apps to choose from in the Shopify App Store, it can be daunting to pick the right one to ensure all your online orders work smoothly.

    Here are some of the best design practices and top-performing apps for running a successful restaurant website on Shopify. 

    01. Give More Order Options

    Like any other business, your restaurant should be centered on addressing essential customer concerns. It would be best for the food business to give your customers more order options— either with takeaways or by delivery. The Store Pickup + Delivery App can help you quickly create these options on your website. This also will give you a comprehensive understanding of which orders are due for local pickup or delivery. It's straightforward to navigate the dashboard, and you don't have to worry about confusing your orders!

    Give more order options

    02. Offer Quality Customer Support

    It's common for customers to have questions, especially about your menu items. This may vary between whether certain foods are vegan and whether some contain gluten. It would help if you made it easier for them to ask and get answers, and one of the best support channels to consider is a live chat setup. Live chat will essentially help you boost customer retention, as it works to provide them with ready information and support.

    Shopify apps like Tidio Live Chat & Chatbots simplify the setup process. Once set up, you are free to add automated responses so that the chatbot instantly answers all common questions if you are not available. This, therefore, means that you will only have to respond to unique questions that haven't been covered in the template.

    Offer quality customer support

    03. Prioritize Earning your Customers' Trust

    When shopping online, many customers are usually doubtful of adding their card details at the end of the checkout page. This is one of the main reasons behind most cart abandonment. So, ensure that your restaurant doesn't lose potential customers because they don't trust you.

    You can easily place trust badges on the website to let customers know it is safe to check out. These additions communicate that your Shopify website is secure and equipped with an encrypted payment gateway to prevent hacking and other fraudulent cases. Use the Free Trust Badge app to enable trust badges on your checkout page.

    Prioritize earning your customers' trust

    04. Automate Order Management

    Managing a food order isn't always a walk in the park with the generic Shopify dashboard. You will need a restaurant management dashboard to help you manage orders and deliveries. Foodee is a Shopify app solely built to help restaurant store owners manage their food orders better. Its dashboard presents a clear list of current orders and highlights all incoming orders, including specific items in each order for your team to manage and process efficiently. It is made explicitly for restaurant businesses and is a must-have app for better managing restaurant orders.

    Automate order management

    05. Consider Onsite Optimization

    When taking your restaurant online, it would be best to retain some of the management aspects from your physical storefront. One such feature is tipping functionality. Several restaurants and food businesses often run on tips. If this is true for your brand, you should consider enabling this on your Shopify website using Tip Jar. Once activated, this app will show a tip jar on the page, prompting customers to leave a tip before checking out.

    Best Shopify Themes for Your Restaurant

    With only 50 milliseconds for you and your business to make an impression, getting the design for your online restaurant right is vital for maximizing sales online.

    On the contrary, having a robust website layout does not always mean using visually appealing images and stylish color schemes.

    Instead, ensuring that you maintain an exceptional user experience throughout the website for all your visitors can help hold customers' interest in your menu options and drive sales on your restaurant website.

    You will need to have a good Shopify theme to pull this off, and here are some of the best Shopify themes for your online restaurant store.

    01. Crave

    Crave is a vibrant, eye-catching, and playful Shopify theme optimized for food ordering and shopping on the go. It is a slick Shopify theme ideal for restaurants, fast food businesses, and food/drinks stores.

    It’s a one-style theme with a mobile-ready and highly responsive design with dynamic checkout options and online food ordering add-ons for on-the-go buyers. Its layout includes a blend of distinct shadows and bold colors that demands attention and promotes visual brand storytelling. 

    You can already tell that it is best for any food and drinks business that is all out for modern design. Using it will make your Shopify restaurant homepage uncluttered, spacious, and visually pleasant to customers.

    The best part is that it is free to consider, try, and use on Shopify for restaurants.

    Shopify Crave theme for restaurants

    02. Vantage

    Vantage is a premium but fully customizable Shopify theme to consider. It features an image-first design that will help personalize your restaurant's online presence. It's a sleek and fully customizable option that can be molded to fit your specific needs.

    Furthermore, its pre-set options allow users to take their businesses online in minutes. But if you are interested in adding a custom design to your restaurant website, consider working with design experts to create an online restaurant presence that resonates with the brand of your choice.

    Otherwise, it is a conversion-focused theme perfect for restaurants with both small and large inventories.

    Shopify Vantage theme for restaurants

    03. Express

    With more than 62% of mobile users buying items online using mobile devices, you must plan to leverage responsive mobile designs for more online sales. Using a mobile-friendly theme can help put you on par with other established brands.

    Express is one of the best Shopify themes you can choose to use because it is fully optimized for mobile. It has few product imagery features but offers restaurants with slight to medium inventories the best chance to get a clean but professional website presence.

    Besides being mobile-ready, this Shopify theme comes with product modals and collapsible cart drawers as its main essential features. If you wonder how much it costs, the Express Shopify theme for restaurants is free to use.

    Shopify express theme for restaurants

    04. Fresh

    Fresh is a versatile option that offers an excellent starting point for eatery businesses to build an online presence. It's a straightforward design that features up to three pre-sets and has unlimited possibilities.

    It's one of the best premium themes for food start-ups with extensive inventories. Its design is quite adaptable and often comes with advanced features for filtering customer searches.

    Shopify Fresh theme for restaurants

    Conclusion

    Shopify for restaurants is a space on the web that offers a great deal of control in designing, creating, and managing an eatery website. If done with precision, you can easily make an excellent first impression on scores of ready-to-buy customers and still get to use it as a tool for promoting your restaurant online.

    Use the tips discussed above to ensure that your new Shopify restaurant website attracts more customers and drives sales.

    Now that you know about the best Shopify design practices for restaurant websites, remember to regularly revisit your business objectives and apply what you've learned to give your restaurant visitors a thrilling experience.

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