Why would a cafe and WordPress restaurant theme make sense for most people?
One of the biggest mistakes many newcomers make when building their first website is taking on too much work. They want to create a cafe or restaurant website when their skills lie in creating delicious food.
Enthusiasm tells you that you can learn web design and how websites work alongside setting up your business.
It very rarely works that way.
There is too much to do. Too much to learn and not enough hours in the day for your main job, let alone a second job.
It is much easier to use a pre-made theme for restaurants, bistro, café, coffee shop or whatever you need than design your own. It’s faster, requires less learning and a lot less work setting it up!
This article will help you to understand the essentials of how to select a WordPress restaurant theme. We will also show you how to build a website, set up your new theme and begin putting everything together.
By the end of this page, you will have seen 45 top class WordPress restaurant themes, learned how to secure a domain name, set up web hosting, install WordPress and your theme and build your website.
So let's dig right in to those themes for restaurants!
Restaurant and cafe responsive WordPress theme for restaurants
A business is nothing without an online presence. It’s the foundation from which all online activities are built. A website allows table reservation, menu browsing, customer requests, social media interactions, blogs, news, special offers and so much more.
Without a restaurant website, you will have a much harder time achieving success.
Restaurant website design
When selecting a theme for restaurant, bear in mind that people want to see the same qualities on your website as they would in your restaurant. People come to you for good food, the ambiance, to relax and have a good time. But most importantly, they go for the food!
All that should be reflected in your website.
You should build a great-looking website that whets the appetite and lets diners know what to expect. You want to make sure your guests are familiar with the best dishes you serve, the mouth-watering desserts, the relaxed atmosphere, the menu, style, interior and overall ambiance.
A well-designed website can achieve all that and more.
You could take it a step further with interaction and allow diners to meet your staff, make an online reservation or access a reservation form, experience what it looks like from the chef's perspective and engage with them, even before diners set foot inside the restaurant.
It’s all possible with the application of creativity and effort.
Mobile restaurant websites
Remember that most people these days access sites through their phone.
That means you need use a responsive theme for restaurants that looks as good on a smartphone as it does on a high-resolution monitor. That provides exactly the same quality of experience regardless of what device people use. This is now mandatory, not only for Google SEO but also for user acceptance.
Nothing less will do!
45 Best WordPress Restaurant Themes
So without further delay, let’s see those 45 WordPress restaurant themes.
1. Divi - Restaurants
Restaurants is the first of three WordPress restaurant themes from Divi that are ideal for the food and drink industry. It’s a high quality design with a strong header complete with background image that flows down to clean content blocks, white space and the various page elements you might want to feature.
Divi comes with its own drag and drop page builder that makes short work of creation. The theme comes with the usual page features, restaurant menu options, contact form, SEO tools and a range of modules that can help create a fully operational restaurant website.
Featured often in our theme reviews, Divi is the most solid option.
Learn More About Divi (Get 10% OFF until November 2024)
2. Astra – Food Truck
The Astra Food Truck template is an excellent option if you like to make an impact. It’s fast, fully responsive, easy to use and compatible with drag and drop page builders. It’s also full of colour and life, with a huge presence.
The template is designed for food trucks but could easily be customized to suit any type of café or restaurant. You’ll just need to change some images and then brand it as you like. It’s very easy to do!
3. OceanWP – Restaurant
OceanWP – Restaurant is a WordPress theme that uses a strong header image to make a first impression. It also uses serif fonts to create a feeling of quality and a mix of light and dark backgrounds to keep the appeal coming. It’s a solid design with a smooth flow, parallax effects and neat lower navigation.
OceanWP uses the Elementor page builder and comes with hundreds of demo websites, of which Restaurant is just one. All themes are fully responsive, designed to load quickly, translation ready, can integrate a WooCommerce store and have SEO tools built in.
Learn More About Ocean WP and See a Live Demo
4. Neve - Restaurant
This WordPress restaurant theme from Neve uses a similar header image arrangement but then adds a map and call to action directly underneath. It’s an excellent idea for a food business and provides information the user wants right away. Further down the page is a restaurant menu element, image and content blocks and an elegant background colour.
Neve is one of our favourite WordPress themes as it’s clean, uses quality code, loads quickly, is very flexible and works with Elementor, Brizy, Beaver Builder, Visual Composer, SiteOrigin and Divi Builder page builders. It is compatible with most WordPress plugins too.
Learn More About Neve + Live Demo
5. Divi – Bistro
Bistro offers a much more contemporary take on the restaurant website. It uses a simple palette with some strong imagery, bold content blocks and a mix of complementing and contrasting colours to create a very compelling design. It could be used for all manner of food types and is very flexible.
This being Divi, you get the same drag and drop page builder as usual, restaurant menu tools, fast loading pages, SEO goodness, limitless design options and all the modules and on-page elements you could shake a stick at.
Get 10% OFF On Divi This Month Only
6. Astra – Fast Food Restaurant
The Fast Food Restaurant is another template from the Astra team. It’s another bright and energetic design ideal for food businesses. It makes an instant statement and provides instant engagement with bright colours and that opening image.
The rest of the design is equally engaging with a very attractive menu section, lots of flexible content areas, whitespace to let the eyes rest and some smart page elements on every page. Plus, it’s about as fast and as friendly as it’s possible for a theme to be!
7. Kallyas - Restaurant
The Kallyas - Restaurant WordPress theme is excellent. It’s a stylish design with elegant top menu, strong images and unique header fonts. All combine to create a very modern take on the restaurant theme and it works well.
There is a restaurant menu content block, map, contact form and everything you need within this theme. Buy it and you can also access a number of other themes within the family too. Kallyas is designed to load quickly, be fully responsive, translation ready, SEO-friendly and easy to use and is well worth checking out if you’re in the market for a WordPress restaurant theme.
Learn More About Kallyas + Live Preview
8. Kallyas - Bistro
We think food and drink is one of the few niches where side navigation really works and Kallyas – Bistro proves it. The design immediately stands out with its dark theme, white serif font, dark image shading and then contrasting white restaurant menu section with crystal clear images.
Bistro is one of the strongest WordPress restaurant theme in this list as far as we are concerned. It’s a very slick design with the perfect blend of colour, font, image and page layout. Alongside all the features and benefits of the Kallyas theme family, we think it’s well worth trying.
Learn More About Kallyas + Live Demo
9. StudioPress - Recipe & Food Blogger
While this demo may be built around blogging, we think StudioPress - Food Blogger is a strong contender for a restaurant or food business too. It’s a light and clean design with flexible page elements and a nice flow all the way down. It keeps things nice and simple with light backgrounds, distinct content blocks and subtle colours and is all the better for it.
StudioPress uses the Genesis Framework which is an incredibly stable system that allows a lot of design freedom. Themes are well designed and coded. They load quickly, are very easy to work with and customization is drag and drop. What more could you need from a WordPress template?
Learn More About Recipe Blogger + See Live Demo
10. Gaspard
Gaspard is a standout restaurant website theme for WordPress. An impactful header image makes a strong first impression along with a stylish font. Scroll down and you get a crisp and clean page design with standard content blocks done very well. A simple booking element, a restaurant menu section and optional page features all complete the look.
Gaspard is smooth, works very well and comes with a range of page templates, full WordPress plugin compatibility and is fully responsive and SEO-friendly. Pages load quickly and performance compares favourably to any of the themes in this list.
Learn More About Gaspard + Live Demo
11. CSSIgniter - Carbone
Carbone from CSSIgniter is a double layered theme with parallax scrolling. It’s a dark and light design with modern fonts and a nice food menu layout with centred logo. Scroll down for a more traditional dark and light design with distinct content blocks, a smart restaurant menu section with mini images and a very cool footer with a ton of information.
The theme loads quickly and seems very stable. The design is smooth and modern with the ability to use imagery to sell the lifestyle while being complemented by solid copy. It supports page builders and has its own restaurant menu management system too.
Learn More About Carbone / Live Demo
12. Pixelgrade - Rosa2
Rosa2 from Pixelgrade is another standout WordPress restaurant theme. An incredibly strong first impression is backed up by solid dark and light design, parallax scrolling with compelling background images, contrasting light content blocks, custom widgets, superb fonts and great use of colour.
Rosa2 has one of the best restaurant menu pages of any theme in this list. It also has standard page elements and a page builder so you can tweak the demo to suit your own needs. Pages load quickly, there are a range of theme options, the theme is fully responsive and support from Pixelgrade is very highly rated.
Learn More About Rosa2 or See a Live Demo
13. StudioPress - Foodie Pro
StudioPress - Foodie Pro is another blog design that would work equally well as a WordPress restaurant theme. It’s another light and clean design with a hint of minimalism that works very well. While the demo showcases a food blog or recipe site, these designs could easily be transformed for a restaurant or café.
Very subtle navigation with collapsed menu works as well on desktop as it does on mobile. The white background, modern font and subtle images all combine to deliver an understated template with genuine appeal. There is also a nice looking full width demo page templates that looks equally good.
Learn More About Foodie Pro + Get a Live Demo
14. Divi – Bakery
Bakery is different again. It has a similar clean aesthetic to Divi Bistro but is much more crisp and uses white space with images rather than coloured content blocks. It has the same smooth scrolling, modern fonts and great page balance but provides a very different look and feel. Well worth checking out.
Divi uses its own page builder, comes with restaurant menu module, loads quickly, has a ton of theme options, comes with a very nice contact page and has all the tools you need to build professional looking websites with the minimum of fuss.
Learn More About Divi + Live Demo
15. Laurent
Laurent is a dark WordPress restaurant theme that has a heritage feel to it thanks to the 30’s-style font. It makes a great first impression with full screen image and scrolls smoothly to traditional content blocks down the page. The dark theme with light font continues through the restaurant menu section to the table booking element. It’s a very attractive template.
Laurent comes with a couple of layouts with the same look but different flow. Each lends itself well to a restaurant or bar and the font pervades each of them to deliver a real impact. A very stylish restaurant theme for WordPress that deserves its place in this list.
Learn More About Laurent + Live Demo
16. Grand Restaurant
Grand Restaurant from Themeforest is another stylish dark theme for restaurants. You get several demo pages with this theme, mostly dark but a couple of very effective light templates too. Each uses image, font, colour and parallax scrolling to great effect to deliver a very attractive design.
Grand Restaurant uses its own drag and drop page builder, comes with a restaurant menu builder, lots of theme options, payment gateway option and comes with Revolution Slider as part of the package. Given just how many options this template gives you, it is excellent value for money!
Learn More About Grand Restaurant / Live Demo
17. WPZoom - Foodica
Foodica from WPZoom is another food blog template that could be used as a restaurant, café or bar website with minimal effort. It’s a light, clean design with modern typography, boxed layout, strong images and simple but effective navigation. It works as a blog but could be so much more.
The page scrolls smoothly and flows through flat page elements to an Instagram feed, recipe or food menu section and a very simple footer. Foodica uses the WordPress page builder and comes with multiple colour options, lots of on-page customizations, custom widgets, WordPress plugin compatibility and a whole lot more.
Learn More About Foodica + Live Demo
18. OceanWP – Bakery
The OceanWP – Bakery WordPress restaurant theme begins in much the same way as the other OceanWP templates in this list. A strong header image and font, modest navigation and a strong first impression. Then is diverges as that image is in fact a slider. Scroll down and the design switches to a more contemporary design with lots of empty space, strong font and bold colours to make images shine.
We would suggest removing the slider altogether and letting the rest of the page stand on its own. It is a very modern flat design with great use of colour, images and fonts with good balance too. As you can use the Elementor page builder (see our Divi vs Elementor Pro), customization would take just minutes and be well worth the effort!
Learn More About OceanWP + Live Demos
19. Mise En Place
Mise En Place is a modern dark WordPress theme for restaurants that keeps things simple with strong imagery, modern san serif font and clear restaurant menu section. There is definitely scope to add a call to action or two on the demo page but otherwise, this is an exceptional design.
There is an excellent restaurant menu page, clear contact page and a smart blog section too. All combine to deliver a compelling template that can be quickly customized using the included SiteOrigin page builder.
Learn More About Mise En Place and Get a Live Demo
IMH
Do you want a fast website?
Who am I kidding? Don't we all?
So why do so many of us struggle?
The biggest challenge is usually finding a fast, reliable hosting company.
We've all been through the nightmares - support take takes forever or doesn't resolve our problem always blaming something on your side...
But the biggest bummer is that the website always feels slow.
At CollectiveRay we host with InMotion hosting and our website is stupid fast. We run on a custom stack of LightSpeed server setup on MariaDB with a PHP7.4 engine and fronted through Cloudflare.
Combined with our front-end optimizations we reliably server 6000 users every single day, with peaks of 50+ simultaneous users.
Want to get a fast setup like ours? Transfer your site for free to InMotion hosting and get our 50% OFF on current pricing.
Try InMotion Hosting with 50% OFF for CollectiveRay visitors in November 2024 ONLY!
20. OceanWP – Bistro
The Bistro template from our friends at OceanWP is an example of a simple design done well. It’s definitely coffee-themes with the correct colours, a strong fullscreen image and parallax effect with coffee bean background.
Everything you see on the page can be fully customized, including those colours, fonts, content areas and navigation. It’s a very flexible theme that performs well and will look good on any device.
21. Korina
Korina from CSSIgniter is an excellent design for bistros or cafes. It’s an alternating dark and light theme with a very mature look. From the opening slider all the way to the footer, this is everything a café website should be.
It’s fast, flexible, has a great balance, offers easy editing with the WordPress block editor and can be customized or configured at will. The theme is also SEO-friendly, fully responsive and loads quickly, all things users and search engines demand.
22. OceanWP – Baker
The Baker template from OceanWP is a lovely, boxed layout that combined attractive visuals with smart typography and layout. It has simple navigation, engaging colours and page elements and a variety of content areas relevant to food businesses.
As it’s OceanWP, templates load fast, are SEO-friendly, fully responsive and can be customized to suit any brand or use. This is a great option for bakers, confectioners, cafes or restaurants.
23. White Rock
White Rock is a lighter and easier going design from ThemeForest. It’s a light theme with a mixture of fonts and images to create a relaxed atmosphere ideal for exploring your website. All combined with a mature design with broad appeal.
The theme has all the information front and centre along with a series of attractive menu pages and a straightforward contact page with location map. It’s a very effective design made all the more powerful buy its simplicity.
24. Gourmand
Gourmand is set up as a recipe website but could easily be used for cafes or restaurants with minimal customization. It’s a very modern design with an elegant side. It’s light, simple and seems content to let the images do the talking.
It has a blog-style main page with very well-designed recipe pages, a store element, built-in search and recipe cards with built-in schema. It may take a little work to customize this theme but it could be well worth it!
25. Astra – Food Truck
This is the second food truck template from Astra but this has a completely different feel. The use of calmer green mixed with pinks and purples creates a vibrant energy that’s a little more grownup than the other design.
Again, it can be tweaked to fit cafes and restaurants by changing images and minimal modifications. It’s compatible with most page builders to help with that, meaning it’s very easy to live with. It’s also SEO-friendly and fully responsive too.
26. Divi – Seafood Restaurant Landing Page
The Divi Seafood Restaurant landing page is something completely different. It’s much more relaxed and laid back and helps pain the picture of your business immediately. The strong header image with simple headline and call to action is probably all you need.
The rest of the page includes plenty of whitespace, some great images and plenty of space to tell your story, share your vision and promote your business. The built-in menu section is particularly worth of note, as is Divi Builder as it’s very easy to use!
27. OceanWP – Hubspot Delicious
Hubspot Delicious from OceanWP is a bold one page design that uses contrast for its effect. Deep darks with bright whites help create a crisp modern design that stand out. A modest contrast colour helps with calls to action and has a positive impact on the overall feel.
The design includes a dark header with white page sections alongside attractive circular image sections for categories and some animations to help retain interest. The menu section is simple but does the job while the contact form keeps requirements minimal to help minimize abandonment.
28. Hestia – Coffee Shop
Hestia ‘s Coffee Shop template is a slick design that uses dark and light almost as effectively as OceanWP. It’s a more relaxed design with a less bold header and more subtle contrasts, but still gets the job done.
From the simple navigation to the colourful images for menu, the design has everything you need to build a website for your café or restaurant. The menu and contact pages are equally slick, keeping things simple but engaging and everything works well as a cohesive whole.
29. Ultra Ristorante
Ristorante is a template for the ever-popular Ultra WordPress theme. This design also uses contrast for interest, with crisp darks and lights with a bold pink statement colour. It’s a very nice design that showcases exactly what Ultra is capable of.
The design opens with a food-oriented header and simplified navigation before opening out to the menu. There are optional content areas throughout each page that can be added, removed or customized to suit. The entire theme is designed for speed and delivers everything you’re likely to need.
30. Delicio
Delicio is a modern template with an elegant twist. Modern in its use of dark and light and moody imagery and elegant in its use of typography and subtle use of colour. It’s a nice combination ideal for any type of café or restaurant.
The Delicio theme doesn’t try to pack a lot into every page. Instead, it uses shorter pages and more of them to tell the story. The menu page is particularly good, ensuring minimal design remains relevant even when maximalism is trying to take hold.
31. Liber
Liber has a crisp, clean vibe ideal for vegan or vegetarian cafes or restaurants or health food outlets. It’s a great design that uses high quality imagery to tell the story, accompanied by graphics and content areas throughout every page.
Liber is compatible with the WordPress block editor, making customization easy. The design is fast, SEO-friendly and fully responsive to every customer, everywhere can use your site with ease.
32. Tastyc
Tastyc is a smart boxed WordPress theme designed for cafes and restaurants. It’s one of the few templates here that uses a slider, but it’s subtle and doesn’t get in the way. The design as a whole is very accomplished, with great imagery and a very slick boxed navigation bar.
The overall design uses contrast, with dark, light and a bold orange colour for key areas. Pages are attractive and includes well-chosen typography. All of which you can change as you see fit. The theme is also fast, responsive and SEO-friendly.
33. Osteria
Osteria has a selection of 4 templates to choose from, all based around food. Each has an elegant design with some lovely flourishes. Colours, fonts and layout are all very well chosen, and all add a little something special to each page.
Osteria has a very smart customizer that has a series of presets you can select in seconds or customize at length depending on your needs. Each template has all the basic pages you’ll need along with the ability to change everything you see on the page.
34. Bakes and Cakes
Bakes and Cakes is am almost whimsical design with pastel colours, shaped content areas, colourful image slider and lots of little touches that make this stand out for all the right reasons.
The Bakes and Cakes template could be ideal for cafes and restaurants as well as bakers and can be customized at will. There’s both a full site and a one page demo you can use and customize with a wide array of options.
35. OceanWP - Coffee
Coffee is another stylized template from OceanWP that caters to cafes and coffee shops. It has the usual colours and attractive imagery along with flexible content areas for a gallery, menu, blog, social media or whatever you like.
All pages included with the template reflect the same reassuring design. The well-chosen colours and fonts make this an excellent option for many types of food businesses but as always, everything can be changed to brand colours with a visual customizer.
36. Umami
Umami is an outstanding design for cafes and restaurants with a unique side navigation section on the left. It combines it with a hamburger menu to keep things tidy and uses fullscreen images to stand out even more.
Umami has some very attractive pages, including a nice menu page with slider and fullscreen image. It’s a very clever design that could work very well if you’re good with images and don’t have much written content to convey.
37. Resto
Resto is an upscale design with parallax effect and an alternating dark and light colour scheme. It’s a great option for some restaurants as it conveys a feeling of luxury by using simple colours and serif fonts in all the right places.
Pages are equally well designed, with fullscreen images and plenty of whitespace to counter all the design. The menu page is particularly good, lighter than the main design with attractive images and pricing graphics.
38. Savory
Savory is a clean design that opens with a fullscreen image slider and hamburger menu. It’s not afraid to make an impact and continues that down the page where you’ll see a lighter menu section along with parallax effects for content areas.
It’s a fresh, light design with modern fonts, nice menu page and the option to add a portfolio or store should you need to. This theme has everything a care or restaurant needs in a theme and delivers it with style.
39. Cafe
Café is a light theme that verges on minimalist design. Frameless pages, white backgrounds, no borders and a simple scrolling action may sound simple but are delivered in such a way they are anything but.
There are several layout options, each with its own style. Each delivers an excellent option for both cafes and restaurants that include attractive pages, menu sections, maps and more.
40. Zakra Restaurant
Zakra Restaurant is a care and restaurant template from the awesomely popular Zakra theme. It’s a great theme with a lot of flexibility and this particular template has everything a good business needs to get online in style.
Zakra Restaurant uses blocks well, with alternating menu items, dark and light sections, images, content and an attractive review section. The gallery is also worth looking at, as we eat with our eyes, images can be a great selling point.
41. Meza
Meza is more a foundation for a website rather than a readymade design. It has all the ingredients required but will need a little work to make it truly stand out. It’s in our list because of the freedom and flexibility it provides.
Pages flow nicely with a mix of whitespace, images and colour, with content, a blog, attractive menu section and a selection of readymade pages you can use as is or customize to fit.
42. FoodHunt
FoodHunt and FoodHunt Pro are above the fold designs, with an image slider and nothing else. All other content can be found on their corresponding pages, which can work well for some types of food business.
The design is stylish, with great use of images to create engagement. Those pages are all reflective of the homepage design with extra content areas for menus, blog, contact and more. It’s a composed design ideal for its niche.
43. Moonrise
Moonrise echoes many of the café and restaurant designs in this list with a dark and moody opening that sets the scene perfectly for a late night café or bistro. It unfolds into a lighter menu section that immediately communicates with the reader and delivers the information they need.
It’s a one page design with everything you’re going to need for a food business including a review section, menu, contact form with map and optional content sections where you can customize the page to your exact requirements.
44. Divi Bar
Divi Bar is a dark and glamorous template that could easily be tweaked to suit a café or restaurant. It has a dark design with some nice graphical touches and a very simple layout that could work well for a number of businesses.
The theme keeps navigation simple and includes lots of customizable content areas on the page. Extra pages all share the same design ideas and include menu, contact, events and typical pages a food business might need.
45. Gourmet Burger
There’s no mystery around what type of restaurant the Gourmet Burger theme is for. It opens with a delectable image of a burger before unfolding into a colourful and energetic design ideal for the niche.
The theme has an attractive image-based menu, colourful section icons and lots of whitespace to balance pages. Menu sections are effective, with lots of content options to suit any type of restaurant. It’s a great theme to end this post with!
How to put your restaurant website together
You have found an awesome WordPress restaurant theme from this list, you have a business ready to go and you’re eager to get started. So what now?
We are going to walk you through the basics of setting up a website. From securing your domain name, setting up WordPress and installing your new WordPress restaurant theme. Follow this guide and you could have your brand new website up and running within a couple of hours!
The guide covers:
- Securing a domain name and hosting
- Installing WordPress
- Setting up your WordPress restaurant theme
- Bringing it all together
Securing a domain name and hosting
A domain name is the www. name you type into a browser to go somewhere. Hosting is space rented on a web server to allow the general public to access your website. These are two fundamentals in running a website and something you’re going to want to take care of first.
If you have an existing business or restaurant already, you will want to secure the domain name as quickly as possible. There is incredible competition for top level domains like .com, .net, .org and so on, so you need to move quickly.
If a top level domain is not available, try and be creative with your name. Add the restaurant name and the city or the region and see if that’s available. Use your imagination to come up with a short, clear domain name that makes sense for your restaurant.
Try to avoid misspellings, hyphens, special characters and numbers where possible though!
Hosting is the space you rent on a web server so your website is accessible to the world. There are hundreds of web hosts out there and we go into selecting one in a little while.
You need to shop around, read reviews, check feedback and buy the right hosting package for your needs. Don’t buy the cheapest you can find. Be selective. Select the web host with the highest uptime, most positive feedback, best customer service and the features you need.
Installing WordPress
Most web hosts will now set up WordPress for you when you buy hosting. If they don’t, they will use an installer such as Softalicious that can do it for you. Either way, the actual setting up of WordPress is simple.
- Log into your web host control panel
- Select Softalicious or other application installer
- Select WordPress from the list
- Select to install it on your hosting plan
- Give the installation a name and add any further details as required
- Allow the installer to set up WordPress
That’s all there is to it really. Once done, you can log into your website directly or use ‘https://www.yourdomainname.com/wp-admin’. Enter the username and login you set up during WordPress installation and you will be presented with the WordPress dashboard.
Setting up your WordPress restaurant theme
Setting up your WordPress restaurant theme is just as straightforward. Setting up WordPress is the most challenging things get and that didn’t take long did it?
Once you buy your WordPress restaurant theme, you need to download the files to your computer. They will likely be as a .zip file. You may also receive a confirmation email with a licence key. Keep that safe.
To install the WordPress restaurant theme, do this:
- Select Appearance from the left menu of your WordPress dashboard.
- Select Themes from the submenu.
- Select Add New at the top and Upload Theme on the next screen.
- Select Choose File in the middle.
- Select the .zip theme file you downloaded when you bought the theme.
- Select Install Now.
Installation may take a minute or two depending on how busy the host is. Once complete, you should see an Activate button become available. Select Activate to make the theme live and available for you to customize.
Bringing it all together
WordPress has been installed, your WordPress restaurant theme has been activated so what’s next?
Now you need to either import demo data or convert your old website to the new theme. As many of you will be setting up a brand new website, let’s tackle that.
Many WordPress restaurant themes come with their own theme dashboard. Select this if yours has one. You should see an option to Import Demo Data. Select this option if available. You may be presented with a long list of demo websites to choose from. Select the most appropriate from the list and select import.
You may be asked to activate plugins to make the theme work. Do that next. Check the box next to all the required plugins, select Install from the Bulk Actions dropdown menu at the top of the screen and select Install and then Activate.
Using the page builder
Many themes in this list come with their own page builder. This is a self-contained system that uses drag and drop tools to create pages. You can build a page from scratch or customize a page you imported along with the demo data.
Either way, now is a good time to get to know the page builder. Create a copy of a page and have a play around. See what they page builder can do. See what pages look like with different layouts and add and remove page features. It’s a great way to familiarize yourself with how your specific template works.
Once you’re happy, create your real pages using the skills you just learned!
5 Top tips for creating top class restaurant websites
Now you have seen some quality WordPress restaurant themes and learned the basics of how to put a restaurant website together, here are a few actionable tips for your new venture.
1. Don't make your website too complex
Your website should focus on providing your audience with answers to the questions they are most likely to ask and the reasons they arrive on your website.
Those reasons include:
- To find your number to phone for reservations
- Manage an online reservation or use a reservation form
- To find your address or location
- Discover your opening times
- See your current menu
- Check reviews
- See if they like the look and feel of the restaurant
- Make sure that all of the above are addressed clearly on your website to give your visitors what they need when they need it.
2. Choose an appropriate platform.
One of the most important first steps you need to do is to decide what platform you're going to set up your site with.
There are some great CMS (Content Management Systems) out there such as Joomla, Magento, Drupal and many custom systems. Only one has made creating an online presence accessible to everyone and that’s WordPress.
Why WordPress? Because it’s an open-source and user-friendly platform that helps you to set up and manage a great website easily. It doesn't really matter what type of site you're going to build, be it an online store, a coffee shop, a restaurant website or blog, WordPress makes it easy to get it done - fast.
For those who are worried about not being technical, there's no need to worry. No coding skills are needed to create a WordPress site!
If you know how to use office programs, you have enough skills to be able to build your own website.
3. Choose an appropriate domain for both your users and search engines
As soon as you've chosen a platform the next step is choosing a domain name.
A domain name is the principal thing you need when starting a website. It's your unique address that people should type into a browser to get to your web pages.
Keep in mind that the name of your restaurant or cafe should be catchy, short and memorable. It should also reflect your business name or brand and reflect your core values.
That’s a lot of work that a single word has to do!
Let your domain name include some keywords to help your potential customers to find you into search engines. There is an entire discipline in coming up with domain names as it is often the one part of building a website that causes the most challenge!
4. Use a reliable web host
The next important step is to choose a suitable web hosting company.
Without a web host, your website will not be available on the internet. Hosts come in all shapes and sizes, prices and nationalities. We recommend not choose by price but by reputation.
Not all web hosts are created equal so checking reviews and feedback is essential. You would be far better off spending a little more per month on a reliable web host with 99.99% uptime than a less reliable one with frequent outages.
Click here to for a review of InMotion, the web host CollectiveRay uses
5. Find an awesome restaurant WordPress theme
Here's where it gets fun. There are thousands of professionally designed WordPress restaurant themes to choose from. Choice is one thing you’re definitely not short of when it comes to WordPress. It’s one of the reasons we recommend using it.
With food and drink such a popular industry you'll find that many theme vendors will have products that cater specifically to the niche. Many of them will be of such a high quality you will wonder how they sell them so cheap!
We have already introduced you to 25 of the best WordPress restaurant theme out there but there are hundreds more.
Restaurant WordPress Themes Frequently Asked Questions
Have questions about WordPress restaurant themes, perhaps we have already answered them below!
How do food and restaurant WordPress themes work?
Food and restaurant WordPress themes work in exactly the same was as all WordPress themes. You buy the theme, upload it to your web host, activate the theme and use the drag and drop page builder to put your website together. Used alongside great images and compelling copy, you can build a restaurant website in just a couple of hours.
What makes a good theme for a restaurant?
A good food & restaurant WordPress theme should answer all the diner’s questions before they are asked and provide everything they need. That should include, address, phone number, opening hours, food menus, daily specials, details on special dietary requirements, social media accounts and anything else you want to include. Adding the ability to make an online reservation or even phone in a table reservation is useful too and if you can combine that with colour, stylish design, superb fonts and slick navigation all the better!
Where do I install my restaurant WordPress theme?
You need to install your restaurant WordPress theme into your WordPress installation. This will be on your web host. Select the WordPress Dashboard, Appearance, Themes and Add New. Upload your theme file and select Activate. Your new theme is now live. You will then have to customize navigation, page layout, page features and all the things that make your website work but it shouldn’t take long!
Which food & restaurant WordPress theme to choose for non-techies?
All the food & restaurant WordPress theme on this page are for non-techies. Most install easily and use drag and drop page builders to help you put your website together. You don’t need to know code or learn any new skills. The most important skills you need to know for these WordPress restaurant themes is a little patience and the ability to follow a logical process. That’s it!
Why should I update my food WordPress theme?
WordPress restaurant themes should be updated regularly to address changing tastes and new technology. Website designs come and go, technologies advance all the time and web-user’s taste change along with them. A restaurant needs to look current if it is to survive and the website is an important part of that. The good news is that once you have installed and set up a WordPress restaurant theme once, it will be largely the same in the future!
Conclusion
So what do you think of our choices for the best restaurant WordPress themes?
We spent hours and hours searching the web for the highest rated designs from developers we know and respect. We tried and tested all of them to make sure they delivered on their promises and didn’t hide any unforeseen issues.
Each of the 45 WordPress restaurant themes listed offer straightforward drag and drop page builders, the opportunity to change colours, layouts, fonts, page features and images. They also allow you to upload food menus and change them on the fly.
All things we believe the modern restaurateur needs from their website.
Do you have any suggestions for top quality WordPress restaurant themes worth checking out? Tell us about them below if you do!
Please leave a useful comment with your thoughts, then share this on your Facebook group(s) who would find this useful and let's reap the benefits together. Thank you for sharing and being nice!
Disclosure: This page may contain links to external sites for products which we love and wholeheartedly recommend. If you buy products we suggest, we may earn a referral fee. Such fees do not influence our recommendations and we do not accept payments for positive reviews.