Dine-In to Delivery: Taking Your Restaurant Online with WordPress

Running a restaurant business isn’t just about dine-in service. Customers expect the option to order online, make table reservations, and get food delivered to their doorstep. 

If your restaurant isn’t online yet, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to reach more people and grow your business.

The easiest way to take your restaurant online is with WordPress. You can set up a website that accepts orders, manages reservations, and handles deliveries—all without needing advanced technical skills.

Today, we’ll show you step by step how to move your restaurant from dine-in only to a complete online ordering and delivery system using WordPress.

So, keep reading…

What does it mean to digitize your restaurant?

Digitizing your restaurant means using technology to make things faster, easier, and more customer-friendly. Instead of doing everything manually, digital tools help you manage both customers and daily operations.

Key areas of restaurant digitization include:

• Online Ordering & Delivery – Let customers order from your website for pickup or delivery.
• Table Reservations – Allow guests to book tables online and get instant confirmations.
• Digital Menus – Share menus on your website or via QR codes, and update them anytime.
• Table-Side Ordering – Customers can order from their phones or tablets at the table.
• Easy Payments – Accept cards, wallets, and contactless payments smoothly.
• Customer Management – Collect customer details to send offers, discounts, and loyalty rewards.
• Inventory Tracking – Monitor stock in real-time to avoid shortages and waste.
• Staff Scheduling – Use apps to plan shifts and assign tasks easily.

A digitized restaurant uses a unified system to handle front-of-house and back-of-house operations and makes your restaurant smarter—saving time, cutting costs, and giving customers a better experience.

Why WordPress is a strong choice for restaurant websites

WordPress is one of the best platforms for restaurants going digital. It’s free to start, easy to use, and powerful enough to grow with your food business online—whether you run a single café or multi-location restaurant. With thousands of free restaurant plugins and themes, it helps you boost sales, improve visibility, and create a smooth customer experience.

Here’s why WordPress works so well for restaurants:

1. Content management: WordPress’s intuitive interface lets you update food menus, post specials, or add blog content like recipes without coding. It’s as simple as using a word processor, allowing your team to handle changes in minutes.

2. Free restaurant plugins: WordPress offers thousands of free and premium restaurant plugins to power your business. From setting up an online ordering system to enabling takeout service setup and contactless ordering, these plugins make it simple to manage orders online.

3. Free restaurant themes: A WordPress restaurant theme gives you a ready-to-use restaurant website design with pre-built layouts, menus, and reservation options. Many themes are optimized for a mobile-friendly restaurant site, so customers can browse menus, place orders, or view a drive-through digital menu from any device.

4. Customization and flexibility: WordPress lets you fully customize your restaurant website. As your business grows, you can easily expand or upgrade your restaurant online with WordPress setup. This flexibility ensures your website scales with your restaurant’s needs.

5. SEO and online presence: Built-in SEO tools help your site rank higher on Google, driving local traffic. Plugins like Yoast optimize for keywords like “best pizza delivery near me,” improving visibility and attracting more customers.

6. Seamless integration: Easily integrate with tools for reservations (e.g., OpenTable), delivery (e.g., DoorDash), and social media. This creates a unified ecosystem where data flows between your website, POS, and apps.

7. Payment gateway integration: Support popular gateways like Stripe and PayPal for secure transactions. Process online orders, tips, and deposits directly on your site, reducing reliance on third-party fees.

8. Mobile-friendly: Responsive themes ensure your site works flawlessly on phones, crucial since 50% of food orders are mobile. Customers can browse menus or order delivery on the go.

9. Community and support: A massive community offers free resources, forums, and tutorials. Plus, affordable premium support ensures quick fixes for any issues.

Over 43% of all websites use WordPress, including many successful restaurants, because it empowers non-tech-savvy owners to manage their online presence effectively. WordPress isn’t just for bloggers; it’s a versatile platform perfect for restaurant websites due to its ease of use, scalability, and cost-effectiveness.

How WordPress helps restaurants manage dine-in and delivery in one place

You already know why WordPress is the go-to platform for restaurant websites. The next step is putting it into action.

There are thousands of free WordPress plugins available to enhance your website, but when it comes to food businesses, the best free food delivery plugin is WPCafe. It’s more than just a delivery tool—it’s a complete solution for online restaurant management, covering everything from dine-in reservations to takeout and delivery orders.

For this reason, I’ve included WPCafe here to show you how you can manage both dine-in and delivery in one place—without needing multiple tools or complex setups.

Set Up Your Restaurant Ordering System

Download WPCafe and WooCommerce to set up your offline restaurant with an online ordering system.
If you already have WooCommerce installed, simply add WPCafe to get started.

WPCafe WooCommerce

Let’s see how it works for restaurant dine-in and delivery:

One food menu for dine-in to delivery

WPCafe gives you a single menu system that works for both dine-in and online customers. You only need to enter your dishes once — name, description, price, and even photos — and that same menu powers your online ordering, reservations, and in-restaurant display.

If you run multiple branches, you can create location-based menus. For example, your downtown café can show different items than your suburban branch. Updating the menu is quick. Add a daily special, change a price, or mark an item as “sold out,” and it instantly updates everywhere on your site.

How to do this: WPCafe already includes 34+ pre-designed food menus. To enable one, go to WordPress Dashboard → WPCafe → Available Shortcodes → Food Menu, then paste the shortcode where you want it displayed.

Online ordering & delivery workflow

With WPCafe, your WordPress site becomes a full online ordering system. Customers can select dishes, add custom notes (like “extra cheese” or “no onions”), and place orders for pickup or delivery.

The plugin includes smart delivery features such as:

• Setting delivery or pickup times.
• Defining delivery zones using Google Maps.
• Configuring prep times, hours, and holiday schedules so you only take orders when your kitchen is open.

When a new order comes in, you’ll see an instant notification in your dashboard (with sound alerts). All orders are tracked in real time, so you don’t need to juggle phone calls or multiple delivery tablets. Best of all, because the system runs on your own website, there are no commission fees per order.

How to do this: WPCafe integrates directly with WooCommerce, so you don’t need to add a separate cart system. Just install WooCommerce, then setup products with proper description(name, status, delivery option, etc). 

Table reservations & dine-in management

Beyond food delivery and pick-up, WPCafe also handles table reservations. You can:

• Set available time slots.
• Define how many tables or seats you have.
• Prevent double bookings.
• Block off tables for private events.

Customers book a table online and get an instant confirmation email. You also capture their details and any special requests before they arrive, which makes service smoother.

How to do this: Go to WPCafe → Available Shortcodes → Reservation, copy the shortcode, and paste it on your reservations page.

👉  Note: If you face any trouble setting up table reservations, check out the full WPCafe Table Reservation Documentation. It covers everything from the initial setup to the complete configuration.

All-in-one dashboard

The biggest benefit of this approach is simplicity. From your WordPress dashboard, you can see:

• Today’s online orders.
• Upcoming reservations.
• Sales reports and order history.

If you manage multiple branches, you can view each one separately or see combined reports. Staff only need to learn one system instead of juggling apps for orders, reservations, and reporting. This saves training time and reduces mistakes.

How to do this: Open your WordPress Dashboard → WPCafe → Dashboard to view order history, sales analytics, and manage multiple branches in one place.

Enhanced customer experience

For customers, the journey feels seamless. They can find your site on Google, check the menu, book a table for the weekend, or order dinner for tonight — all from the same website. Everything works on both desktop and mobile.

Features like a mini cart and order addons make it easy for guests to add sides, drinks, or desserts, which increases your average order value. For dine-in guests, you can even enable QR code ordering, letting them scan, order, and pay from the table. This modern experience reduces wait times and often encourages guests to order more.

👉 How to do this: Enable QR ordering from WPCafe → Settings → QR Code Ordering, then place the QR shortcode on your menu or order page.

Conclusion: Bringing your restaurant online the right way

Putting your restaurant online with WordPress means you’re in charge: you don’t have to pay extra fees to other companies, you handle everything yourself with a system you control, and you connect directly with your customers. That’s the best way to bring your restaurant online.

Welcome the change and see how working together with dine-in and delivery can help your restaurant do well today.

Frequently asked questions