A website or just Instagram for a restaurant?
Instagram brings people in, the website receives them. Two different jobs, and neither one is much good at the other.
The profile catches people who were not looking for you: they scroll, see a plate of food, note the name. The website matters ten minutes later, when that same person wants to know whether you open on Sundays and what the carbonara costs. If all they find at that moment is a grid of photographs, the thought stops there.
What Instagram does better than a website
This is not a rigged contest. On some things the profile simply wins.
It gets the place discovered by people who were not searching. It builds a face and a tone of voice better than any "about us" page. It costs nothing in money. And it lets you answer someone in real time in a private message, which for a restaurant is worth more than any contact form.
If you have two hours a week and nothing else, keeping the profile alive is a sensible choice.
What it does not do, and will not
It does not get you found on Google. Anyone searching "pizza near me" at eight in the evening ends up on Maps and in search results, not among your posts. Your profile shows up when somebody searches your name, which is to say when they already know you.
It does not hold a readable menu. A menu in a story expires in twenty-four hours, a menu in a post sinks under another forty pieces of content, a menu in highlights is an image you pinch and zoom. None of those can be read while a family is deciding where to go.
It does not give you the contacts of your followers. Followers are a rented audience. You do not have their emails, you do not decide how many of them you reach, and if the account gets blocked by mistake one day, which happens, you lose everything overnight with nobody to write to.
It does not carry legal duties. Allergens have to be tied to the individual dish and reachable before ordering: an expired story is not a valid channel. We wrote about it here, with the penalties.
Where the people get lost
The real chain runs like this: somebody discovers you on Instagram, opens the link in bio, looks for the menu, decides, books. Four steps, and a share of the people falls away at each one.
The step where most of them go is the link in bio. If that link leads to an aggregator full of buttons, or to a PDF that opens crooked on a phone, or to nothing at all, the only remaining route is to find the number and call. Many people do not call.
Put a page of your own there, with the menu, the hours, an address that opens the map and a WhatsApp button. It does not need to be a big site. It needs nobody to have to search twice.
So what is the right order
The Google listing first. It is free, it takes an afternoon, and it catches the people searching right now, nearby, planning to leave the house tonight. How to fill it in properly is written up separately.
Then the website. It receives the traffic arriving from the listing and the profile, keeps a menu that can be updated, and handles booking on your terms. It is the only one of the three that is genuinely yours.
Instagram alongside, always. Because it is the only one that gets the place discovered by people who were not looking for it.
Skip the second step and you end up with two channels feeding people into a dead end.
What running all three costs
Instagram costs time, and that is the cost people underestimate: two or three hours a week, every week, indefinitely. The Google listing costs an afternoon up front and ten minutes a month.
The website costs a subscription. Ours starts at 99 euros every three months with domain, hosting and QR menu included, and changes are requested over WhatsApp: the full figures are on the pricing page, and the breakdown of what drives the cost of a site is in this article.
The real difference is not in euros though. The profile has to be fed constantly or it dies. The website, once built properly, keeps working through the weeks when you have no time for it. For anyone with a restaurant to run, that is the line that weighs most.
How we connect site, menu and WhatsApp into one path is described on the restaurant websites page.
Frequently asked questions
Can I start with Instagram alone? You can, and plenty of places do at first. The ceiling arrives quickly: people searching on Google will not find you, anyone after the menu has to scroll through posts, and your followers' contact details belong to Instagram, not to you.
What should the link in bio point to? A page of your own, not a link aggregator. It needs the menu, opening hours, an address that opens the map, and a WhatsApp button. Every extra step loses a share of the people.
Isn't Instagram enough if I already have plenty of followers? Followers are not contacts. You do not have their emails, you do not decide how many of them you reach, and if the account is blocked by mistake tomorrow you lose the lot overnight. A website and a contact list stay yours.
What does it cost to run both? Instagram costs time, the website costs a subscription. Ours starts at 99 euros every three months with domain, hosting and QR menu included. The real difference is time: the profile has to be fed every week, the site does not.
Which one do I start with? The Google listing first, because it is free and catches people searching right now. Then the website, which receives all the traffic and carries the menu and bookings. Instagram alongside, because it is the one that gets you discovered by people who were not looking.