How Much Does a Website for a Cafe Cost in Australia?

The website itself is a one-off cost. Online ordering is usually priced per order, so over a year it can matter more than the build. Uber Eats publishes its Australian merchant fees, and they show how much the route a customer takes changes what you keep:

The same page lists an activation fee of $700 excluding GST for a new location. The marketplace fee pays for real things, including new customers finding you in the app, delivery, payment processing and support, so for many cafes it's money well spent on delivery orders they'd never otherwise get. For regulars ordering a coffee to collect on the way to work, a cheaper route is often available. Square, for example, lists its Online Store from $0 a month with a 2.2% fee on online card payments.

On our sites there are three ways to handle it:

1. Link the ordering you already use. An Order ahead button on every page opens your Square Online store, QR ordering platform or delivery app listing, with your number beside it as a tap-to-call link for anyone who'd rather ring. Included in every package.
2. Ordering and payment built into your own site. Customers choose items, pay and pick a collection time without leaving your pages. We build these, and quote each one once we know your menu, modifiers and kitchen workflow.
3. Phone and walk-in only. Plenty of cafes take no online orders at all, and the site's job is just to get people through the door. Nothing extra to pay.

Our view is to start with the first option. If pick-up orders through a platform grow to the point where the per-order fees bother you, that's the time to price a built-in system against them, using your own order numbers rather than guesses.

A menu set out as real text, rather than a photo of the chalkboard or a scanned PDF, reads properly on a phone, works with screen readers and costs nothing extra to build. Three parts of it are worth getting right before launch, because each has official guidance behind it:

• Surcharges. The ACCC says cafes and restaurants charging a weekend or public holiday surcharge don't need to build it into each price, but must state that a surcharge of a given percentage applies on the named days, at least as prominently as the most prominent price on the menu. If your menu is online too, it makes sense for that version to carry the same line.
• Allergens. The NSW Food Authority says that in a restaurant or café, food allergens must be declared if a customer asks, and that not giving allergen information when asked is a serious offence. A line on the online menu asking customers with allergies to speak to staff points them to the right place.
• Gluten free. Coeliac Australia explains that under the Food Standards Code a gluten free food must contain no detectable gluten, and no oats or malted gluten-containing cereals. A kitchen that can't promise that may prefer wording its own staff can stand behind.

We use the markers and wording you choose; for anything you're unsure of, your local council's food safety team or your state food authority is the place to ask. None of this changes the build price, but it does mean menu text changes over time. With our hosting, a new price, a winter menu or reworded dietary notes are text changes on an existing page, so they're covered.

We haven't built a cafe site yet, and we'd rather say so than borrow someone else's work. The nearest projects in our portfolio are in tourism and community work. Cape Fishing Charters at Cape Jervis is a one-page site with a booking request form, gift voucher requests, a photo gallery, customer reviews and an embedded map, which is close to the shape of a small cafe site. Queensland Dance & Performing Arts in Brisbane's Bayside has a weekly class timetable, the same kind of regularly changing information as cafe hours or a specials board.

Because you only pay once you approve the draft, revisions are part of the job rather than an extra. As Tony Bleijswijk put it in his Google review: “He listened to my feedback and made no hesitations to revise and adjust my website until we were completely happy with it.”

Not every cafe needs a designed website. A coffee cart that moves every day and lives on Instagram, with a well-kept Google Business Profile, may be fine without one, and if you already take orders through Square, its free Online Store can serve as a basic site. A custom site makes more sense once you want your menu, catering and story set out properly under your own domain.

At the other end, a bigger budget suits a group that wants its menus written and photographed for it, loyalty programs and app ordering tied into its point of sale, or ads and SEO managed month to month. We don't write copy, take photos or run ads, and we don't promise rankings or foot traffic. If you can send your menu, hours and a handful of phone photos, we can build the rest. Our guide to small business website costs covers the wider choices, and the restaurant website cost guide covers table bookings and functions in more depth.