By Artem Korsakov ·
In short: A restaurant website budget is determined by the scenario: show the menu and accept an inquiry, or accept an order with payment and pass it to the kitchen. Menu preparation, delivery rules, payment, exchange with the restaurant system and post-launch costs are estimated separately. The article contains an illustrative calculation of two scopes of work.
The cost of a restaurant website depends on the scenario: show the menu and pass on an inquiry, or accept an order with payment and send it into the workflow. In the first case, the visitor chooses a dish and contacts the venue. In the second, the website takes part in the working process of the kitchen, payment and handover. The development and maintenance budget depends on where this boundary lies.
You should rely on current packages and an agreed scope. The calculation below is illustrative: it shows the logic of comparing scopes and is neither trike_dev’s price nor the average market cost.
What the restaurant is buying
To present the venue, you need information, photographs, the address, opening hours and the menu. For orders, you add a cart, pickup or delivery options, time restrictions and a clear confirmation. If payment is offered, there is a separate scenario for the payment result and for linking a paid order to an employee’s work.
The number of screens does not reflect all the complexity. A single delivery selection step may contain zones, a minimum order amount, different time slots and addresses that cannot be served. Before the estimate, decide which rules apply in the first version and which an operator confirms for now.
An illustrative calculation of two scopes
Suppose a hypothetical rate of 2,000 ₽ (Russian rubles) per hour is used for comparison:
- structure and design: 12 hours;
- building the menu and pages: 20 hours;
- filling in prepared materials: 8 hours;
- testing and launch: 10 hours.
This example gives 50 hours and 100,000 ₽. Real effort may differ significantly.
If you add a cart, pickup time slots and order confirmation for a hypothetical 20 hours, and connecting payment and testing its outcomes for another 10, the calculation increases by 60,000 ₽. The numbers are invented for illustration. The point is to compare specific scenarios: websites with photos of dishes can differ greatly in the amount of work.
A menu needs preparation and management
Before development, it is worth bringing names, prices, photographs and portion options into a consistent form. If the contractor has to collect data from different files and agree on each item, that is separate work. Processing materials does not automatically happen as part of menu setup.
Decide who changes prices and hides a dish that is unavailable. With manual updates, staff need clear access and instructions. When exchanging data with a restaurant system, you need to check the supported operations, how items are matched and behavior when something fails. The name of the system without these details is not enough for an estimate. How to set up the menu and the unavailable items list is covered in the article “A restaurant’s digital menu”.
Delivery changes the scope of the solution
A hypothetical café offers pickup from one location and delivery to two zones. You need to decide how a visitor determines their zone, which time slots are available and what happens to an order just before closing. If couriers are assigned by an operator, this should be stated explicitly in the process description. Pickup and delivery scenarios are covered in detail in the article on orders from a restaurant website.
Automatic handover to a courier, several kitchens, different stock levels and promotions make the work more complex. They can be estimated separately from the basic order. Otherwise the starting price mixes the necessary launch with a future system for managing a chain.
Don’t forget the costs after development
Hosting, the domain, licenses, external services and maintenance need to be accounted for separately. A payment partner’s fees and terms of service are checked with the chosen provider. They cannot be assumed to be the same for all restaurants or included in the development price without confirmation. A general list of recurring costs is in the article “Website costs after launch”.
Who updates photographs, seasonal dishes and holiday opening hours? Regular editing is different from fixing a bug. Assign a responsible person and define how critical conditions are changed. A website with outdated opening hours can cause problems even when the cart works properly.
Separately agree on the boundary of content work: the number of initial dishes, photo processing and text migration. The phrase “menu included” may mean only setting up the fields or fully prepared cards. The owner should understand which materials they hand over and what they will receive by launch.
What to provide for a preliminary estimate
Prepare:
- the menu;
- pickup and delivery rules;
- an example of how an employee processes an order;
- the number of locations and payment methods;
- the system you need to exchange data with.
Ask for the basic solution, integrations and recurring costs to be shown separately.
For the discussion, look at the trike_dev restaurant demo: it helps choose a scenario, but connecting real orders and external systems is estimated separately.
Частые вопросы ### Can you start without online payment?
Yes, if the chosen ordering and payment procedure matches how you work and is clearly explained to the guest.