Websites for Halifax cafés, restaurants and bakeries

Picture someone looking you up on their phone a few streets away. They want to know three things: are you open, what’s on the menu, and how do they get there? A site that answers those quickly, and keeps answering them correctly as things change, is doing its job.

We’re a small Halifax studio, and this is the kind of website we most want to build: clear, quick on a phone, and kept current by one person you can reach by email. We also build for salons, barbers and independent studios, whose prices and bookings change just as often, on the same packages.

What a good café or restaurant website needs

• A menu you can read on a phone. As real text on the page, not a PDF or a photo of the printed menu. Text loads quickly, zooms properly, works with screen readers and can be read by search engines. It’s also far quicker to update.
• Hours that are right, including holidays. Regular hours plus holiday hours and seasonal closures, shown where people look first. Few things sour a visit like arriving at a locked door because the website said you were open.
• Your location and a map. Your address as text, so it can be copied, a map, and a line about parking, entrances or step-free access if it helps.
• Call and directions buttons. Large, obvious buttons that open the phone’s dialler or maps app in one tap.
• Ordering or reservations through the platform you already use. If you take orders or bookings through Square or a similar service, we link to it or embed it as a standard integration. No custom system, and your staff keep the tools they know.
• Catering and events enquiries. A simple form that asks the useful questions up front (date, numbers, dietary needs) and lands in your inbox.
• Allergen and dietary notes. Clear labels for vegan, gluten-free or nut-containing dishes, using wording you supply and check. You know your kitchen; we make the information easy to find.
• Photos you own. Your food, your room, your people. Photos you’ve taken or commissioned show what visitors will actually find, and they stay yours.

Common problems with food and drink websites

Look at enough café and restaurant websites and the same few problems come up:

• The menu is a PDF. It has to download, the text is tiny on a phone, and pinching around a scanned page is nobody’s idea of fun. It’s also the version most likely to be out of date, because every change means editing and re-uploading a file.
• The hours are out of date. Summer hours still showing in November, or a holiday closure that never made it online.
• Pages are slow and image-heavy. Large, uncompressed photos and autoplaying video make a page crawl on mobile data. Images should be sized and compressed for the screen they’re shown on.
• Order and booking links are broken. Platforms change their links, accounts get switched, and the button on the site quietly stops working. Someone needs to check them.
• The basics are buried. Hours in the footer, the phone number on another page, the address only inside a map. They should be visible without scrolling or searching.

None of this is anyone’s fault. It’s what happens when a website is built once and left alone while the business keeps changing. The fix is part design and part routine.

How we’d approach it

Harbour, for most cafés, restaurants and bakeries

For most food businesses, we’d recommend Harbour. It has room for up to 7 pages (say home, menu, catering, events, about, gallery and contact) and includes one standard booking integration, which can connect the ordering or reservation platform you already use. A map, an FAQ section and an advanced contact form for catering enquiries are included too.

You can buy it outright with Build for $1,800, or launch with Managed for $229 a month and no upfront website fee ($2,748 over the 12-month term). Managed includes hosting, maintenance and up to 60 minutes of changes a month, which is the part that matters most when your details change often.

Cove, for a very small café

If you run a small counter-service café or bakery and need little more than a menu, hours and a map, Cove may be enough: up to 3 pages for $999, or $139 a month on Managed with up to 30 minutes of changes a month. With Cove, an ordering or booking integration is an add-on (from $250).

Scroll sideways to see the whole table.

All prices are in CAD, plus applicable tax. Third-party subscriptions, transaction fees, domain registration and paid advertising are not included unless stated.

Keeping your menu and hours current

This is where Managed and Steady Care earn their keep. Once you’re on either, updates work like this:

1. Email the change to hello@antrimstudios.com: new prices, a dish that’s off for the season, holiday hours, a photo of the new special. A quick note or a photo of your handwritten changes is fine.
2. We reply within one business day, Monday to Friday, and confirm what we’ll change.
3. We make the change and let you know when it’s live.

Small edits like these are covered by your monthly allowance: up to 60 minutes a month on Harbour Managed or Harbour Care, and up to 30 minutes a month on Cove Managed or Cove Care. Minor changes include replacing text, updating business hours, changing existing images, updating staff information or making similar edits to existing sections. Unused time doesn’t roll over to the next month, so it’s worth sending changes as they come up rather than saving them. New pages, redesigns and new features are quoted separately, and work beyond the allowance is $90 an hour.

After your 12-month Managed term, you can carry on with Harbour Care at $79 a month, month-to-month; switch to hosting only at $149 a year, which doesn’t include changes; or move the site elsewhere. If you buy with Build instead, your first year of hosting is included, but content changes after launch aren’t included unless you’re on Steady Care (the 30-day support period covers bug fixes).

Tip: send holiday hours and seasonal closures a week or two ahead, so they’re live before anyone goes looking.

See a café design sample

We made a design sample for a fictional neighbourhood café to show how a menu-first, phone-friendly layout can still have personality. To be clear, it’s a fictional design sample, not a real café or a client project, and it doesn’t take orders or payments.

View the neighbourhood café sample (fictional)

Questions café and restaurant owners ask