For restaurants in the CBD laneways and Chinatown, along Lygon Street in Carlton and Victoria Street in Abbotsford, and out to Foster Street in Dandenong: a website that takes the booking, keeps each menu current, explains BYO and corkage under the rules that apply in Victoria, and carries your licence number and the under-18 notice if you send wine out with takeaway.
Picture three visitors in one evening. A couple holding tickets for a show at the Princess Theatre wants to know whether a 5.30 table gets them out before curtain up. An office manager planning lunch for the Friday before the Grand Final wants the set menu, the room and the deposit. A Carlton local wants to know whether they can bring a bottle from home. Victorian liquor law shapes more of those answers than most owners expect, which is why a Melbourne restaurant site can't simply copy one from interstate.
In NSW an unlicensed restaurant can let diners bring wine without any liquor approval. Victoria works differently: an unlicensed venue needs a BYO permit from Liquor Control Victoria, which says decisions take about 9 to 11 weeks, while a restaurant and cafe licence already covers BYO. Once you're covered, the site spells out corkage, whether beer is welcome as well as wine, and any limit for large tables. A new venue still waiting on its permit can have that section drafted and switched on the day the permit arrives.
A restaurant and cafe licence lets you send sealed alcohol out with a meal cooked on the premises, to an adult, up to one 750ml bottle of wine or six containers of beer, cider or premix of no more than 375ml each, and never after 11pm. LCV has to be told through the Liquor Portal before the first order. Wherever customers order online, the licence number must be shown with a warning that supplying alcohol to anyone under 18 is an offence, and the number also belongs on any ad for alcohol delivery or pickup.
On a restaurant and cafe licence, serving substantial meals has to stay the main activity at all times, with seating for at least 75% of the people inside, and LCV's own guide says a restaurant can't turn into a bar at night. Standard hours on that licence run to 1am, but your council planning permit has to allow the same hours. So the site gives kitchen hours for late suppers and describes a place to eat, unless you hold a different kind of licence.
LCV's responsible advertising guidelines cover websites, social media and SMS, and the Victorian Liquor Commission can ban a promotion it sees as encouraging irresponsible drinking. Banned examples it publishes include unlimited free beer and champagne across two hours and two-for-one cocktails all day on a Sunday. Venues are also held responsible for comments other people leave about their drinks promotions on their pages, and for influencers they engage, so an aperitivo-hour post deserves the same care as the printed menu.
Restaurants near the Princess on Spring Street, the Regent on Collins Street, and Her Majesty's and the Comedy Theatre on Exhibition Street work to curtain times. A pre-theatre page states the first sitting, how long the set menu takes and when the table has to be free, and the booking button opens your reservation system, set to that sitting where the system allows it. The same page suits a venue near Arts Centre Melbourne, or one that fills up before a game at the MCG.
Victoria makes the Friday before the AFL Grand Final a public holiday, and Melbourne Cup Day, the first Tuesday in November, is one across metropolitan Melbourne. If you close, open late or add a surcharge on those days, the hours go on the home page and into your Google Business Profile as special hours, and the surcharge is stated on the menu as the ACCC's price display guidance asks.
Liquor Control Victoria administers the state's liquor laws, and a few of them reach straight onto a restaurant's website. A restaurant and cafe licence (opens in a new tab) requires that preparing and serving meals stays the main activity, with tables and chairs for at least three-quarters of the customers present; its standard hours run from 7am to 1am Monday to Saturday, 10am to 1am on Sunday and from noon on Anzac Day and Good Friday, provided the council planning permit allows them. An unlicensed venue that wants diners to bring their own needs a BYO permit (opens in a new tab), and LCV suggests applying at least 11 weeks before you need it. Phone and online orders for alcohol (opens in a new tab) bring their own conditions: notify LCV first, finish deliveries by 11pm, check ID on a customer's first order, and send LCV a record of failed deliveries by 30 July each year. The responsible alcohol advertising and promotion guidelines (opens in a new tab) apply to every form of advertising, websites and social media included. Questions about your licence belong with LCV; our part is a site that says what your licence allows.
Melbourne's calendar gives restaurants regular reasons to change their hours or menus. The 2026 Melbourne Food & Wine Festival (opens in a new tab) ran from 20 to 29 March with about 200 events in restaurants and venues across the state, from visiting chefs cooking in Melbourne kitchens to a Greek-themed World's Longest Lunch in Kings Domain. A licensee who wants to trade past its usual hours, or beyond its red line area, for a one-off event can apply to LCV for a temporary limited licence (opens in a new tab), which LCV says usually takes about eight weeks. Tables on the footpath need a permit from the council that manages it, such as the City of Melbourne's outdoor dining permit (opens in a new tab), and LCV needs that approval before the area can go on the red line plan so drinks can be served there. If your courtyard or footpath has shorter hours than the dining room, or can't take drinks at all, the site should say so before someone books an outside table for a long dinner.
People search Melbourne by precinct and cuisine. Victoria University's guide (opens in a new tab) to the city's food destinations calls Lygon Street in Carlton Melbourne's original restaurant precinct, with more than 100 restaurants, bars and cafes. It describes Chinatown, at the eastern end of Little Bourke Street, as the longest continuous Chinese settlement in the western world, Victoria Street in Abbotsford as Little Saigon, Lonsdale Street as the Greek precinct, and Foster Street in Dandenong, about 30km from the CBD, as the city's only recognised Indian precinct. Those precincts fall under different councils, from the City of Melbourne to Yarra and Greater Dandenong, and the council is also who you deal with about footpath tables. A restaurant's page title, opening line and Google listing should use the names its diners use, and a venue in Dandenong gains nothing by calling itself a CBD restaurant.
Plenty of diners arrive without a car, so directions deserve a proper section. The Metro Tunnel (opens in a new tab) opened on 30 November 2025 with five new stations: Arden, Parkville, State Library, Town Hall and Anzac. Underground walkways link the new CBD stations to Flinders Street and Melbourne Central, and State Library has an entrance on the corner of Swanston and La Trobe streets. Tram trips that stay inside the Free Tram Zone (opens in a new tab), which covers the central city and Docklands, need no myki, though trains and buses still need a ticket. Naming the nearest station or stop, the tram routes and whether the ride is free answers a question that otherwise comes by phone at 6pm.
We're an Adelaide team based at Ste 3/110 Hutt St, and we work with Melbourne businesses by phone and email. No restaurant is among our clients so far. Our Melbourne client is Dr Tabara Dione Coaching, whose site puts a booking button on every page, and on a restaurant site that button opens your reservation system instead. You send the menus, photos of the room and your licence details, we build a draft you can open on your phone, and nothing is paid until you've approved it.
Neither of these is a restaurant. Dr Tabara Dione Coaching is our Melbourne client, with a booking button on every page doing the job a Book a table button does for a restaurant. Cape Fishing Charters, in South Australia, takes booking requests and gift voucher requests on a single page.
Confidential coaching for doctors, led by a Melbourne specialist anaesthetist. Every page carries a button to book a discovery call through her booking tool, with a contact form and an about page beside it. Replace the discovery call with a table and it's the arrangement a restaurant has with OpenTable or SevenRooms.
Visit the Dr Tabara Dione site (opens in a new tab) See it in our portfolio
Day charters out of Cape Jervis, SA. One page holds a booking request form, gift voucher requests, a catch gallery, reviews, an FAQ and a map: what a small restaurant needs for group bookings and voucher sales before it outgrows a single page.
Visit the Cape Fishing Charters site (opens in a new tab) See it in our portfolio
“gave us a fixed quote so we knew exactly what we were paying, and turned around the build faster than we thought possible.”
★ 5.0 from 33 Google reviews (opens in a new tab)
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$399
The menu, hours, a booking button, your BYO or licence details and directions from the nearest station or tram stop. Enough for a neighbourhood place with a single menu.
Where most Melbourne restaurants start
$899
A home page with booking and directions, a menus page with the drinks list, and a functions page with its own enquiry form. Pre-theatre and public holiday hours sit on the home page while they apply.
$1,499
Space for private dining, function packages, a takeaway page carrying your licence number and the under-18 notice, gift vouchers, festival events, your story, or a second venue in another suburb.
A BYO permit from Liquor Control Victoria comes first, unless you already hold a licence type that allows BYO, such as a restaurant and cafe licence. LCV puts decisions at about 9 to 11 weeks, so apply well before opening. Once you're covered, the site answers what diners ask: wine only or beer too, corkage per bottle or per person, and any limit for big groups. We can build that section into the draft and publish it when the permit comes through.
On a restaurant and cafe licence, yes, once you've notified LCV: one 750ml bottle of wine or six containers of up to 375ml of beer, cider or premix, sold with a meal from your kitchen, to an adult, and not after 11pm. The page where people order has to show your licence number and the under-18 warning. We can link the ordering platform you already use or build ordering and payment into the site, quoted for the job; either way, check that both notices appear where the order is placed.
The Victorian guidelines apply to websites and social media, and the Commission can ban a promotion it sees as encouraging rapid or excessive drinking. They don't rule out happy hours; they ask venues to keep the length, frequency and size of the discount in check, say promotions before 10pm carry less risk, and suggest stating that offers are for people aged 18 and over. How you shape the offer is your decision. Read the guidelines (opens in a new tab) first, and we'll publish the wording you settle on.
Only if you're part of a big chain. Victoria's kilojoule labelling scheme applies to food chains with 20 or more outlets in Victoria or 50 or more nationally, and it covers online menus as well as menu boards and price tags. An independent restaurant or a small group isn't caught by it, though marking vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free dishes clearly is still worth doing.
Email us the hours, any set menu and any surcharge before the day, and we'll put them on the home page and booking page, then take them off afterwards. Text changes to existing pages are part of the $30 monthly hosting, and we reply within 24 hours. Add the same times as special hours in your Google Business Profile, so Maps and the website tell people the same thing.
By phone and email. We're an Adelaide web design team working with businesses across Australia, with current clients in SA, NSW, VIC and QLD. We talk through your menus, functions and licence on a call, you email your words and photos, and we send a draft link you can check between services. Ask for as many changes as you like and pay once you approve it. Most sites are live within 5–10 days of us getting your words and photos; bigger sites (up to 8 pages) take 2–3 weeks.
Tell us your suburb, send your menus, a few photos of the room and your booking link, and let us know whether you trade on a restaurant and cafe licence, a BYO permit or neither. We'll quote and build the draft, and you owe nothing until you approve it.
We reply within 24 hours. Prefer email? info@webcraftstudio.com.au