Must Have WordPress Restaurant Plugins To Improve Online Ordering
56% of guests order from a restaurant’s website online daily, weekly, or monthly. Is your restaurant website is equipped with all the necessary functionalities? These WordPress restaurant plugins help you improve the online restaurant experience.
In our previous blog post, we saw how to create a restaurant website. As I’ve promised in my previous post, today am going to share the important WordPress restaurant plugins.
Important Functionalities of Restaurant Websites
Each website is different and based on their needs the required plugin for the sites also differs. Internet users are becoming smart every day, to match their needs your website should have intelligent functions. For restaurant websites, these are the essential WordPress plugins.
Important Restaurant WordPress Plugins :
Reservation and Management WordPress Plugins
– FoodPress Reservation & WordPress Restaurant Plugin
– Open Table Plugin
– WP Restaurant ManagerWordPress Restaurant Menu Plugins
– Food and Drink Menu
– Quick Restaurant Menu Plugin
– Restaurant PressTactical WordPress Restaurant Plugins
– Yelp Widget Pro
– Google Maps Widget
– TripAdvisor Widget
– Bonus Key Plugin – WP Pizza
Reservation and Management WordPress Plugins
The primary aspect that every restaurant website must follow at present is to make the reservation options available on their site. According to Toasttab survey, the annual sales of the restaurants are $799 billion; the most important thing is in that 56% of the reservations are through the website online reservation feature.
Hence reservation feature is an essential factor in a restaurant website. These are the best WordPress Restaurant Plugins you can use for WordPress restaurant online ordering.
FoodPress Reservation & WordPress Restaurant Plugin
FoodPress is a premium WordPress restaurant online ordering and reservation plugin. This plugin covers menu option and reservation functionality. This plugin is compatible with WooCommerce, so if you are selling some foods online with WooCommerce, this plugin is an added advantage to create WooCommerce restaurant menu for selling foods.
Since it is a premium plugin, you have numerous option to customize the look and feel of the plugin. Also, you can add and categorize foods in a broad category like breakfast, lunch, dinner and other custom categorize.
This plugin is also developer friendly. The backend customizations and the integration parts are comfortable when we tested.
Manual reservation options are available; you can also review them. There are ten different menu options, and reservation forms are there to help you. Custom shortcodes can also be generated to add elements on your website.
The premium plugin costs $34.
Open Table Plugin
Open Table is a freemium plugin. It covers all the essential features in the free plan itself for US-based restaurants. For advanced functionalities, you need to get the premium plugin. This plugin allows you to add reservation forms to the website.
This plugin also offers customization options, all level of WordPress users can customize the theme. As of now, the plugin has 7000+ active installs. The free plan support only US-based restaurants. To include other country restaurants like the UK, Japan…etc. You need to get the premium plan.
The premium plan starts at $37 for a single site license.
Premium Plan Features
- Display your widget anywhere on your site with our shortcode
- The plugin supports international restaurants including U.K., Canada, Germany, Japan, and Mexico.
- More widget themes out of the box.
- Customize Pre and Post Widget Content for additional SEO and user related content
WP Restaurant Manager
WP Restaurant Manager is a dedicated WordPress restaurant plugin for reservation purpose only. It is also a freemium WordPress plugin.
In the free version, you get the online registration and booking forms, and you can disable particular calendar dates for reservation. Along with menu, you can provide nutritional details. Developer friendly and you can generate shortcodes to place the forms and manage them.
The pro version starts at $29
Premium Features
Like in the event plugins in the pro version you have options to see the entries in the calendar view for better management. Along with this, you get the options to add custom fields and SMS notification features. Other features are
- Frontend Reservations Cancellation
- Bulk reservations management.
- MailChimp newsletter integration.
- Custom HTML email templates.
Recommended Reading:
How To Make A High Ticket Selling Event & Conference Website
WordPress Restaurant Menu Plugins
As we have mentioned in our previous post, the two most predominant reasons why visitors come to a restaurant website is to;
- see menus, what is today’s special or to find the rate
- book and to reserve tables
We already saw about reservation and booking; now we have to look into the menus. The WordPress restaurant menu plugins help you to create a delicious menu on your site within minutes.
Food and Drink Menu
Food and Drink Menu plugin, as the name implies this plugin can be used to create beautiful menus to your restaurant website. It is a free WordPress plugin. This plugin creates two new post types Menu items and menus.
It does not have options to give nutrition information and ingredient information like the FoodPress plugin. Other than that you have plenty of options to customize your menus. Like most of the plugins, this plugin is also mobile responsive.
The Theme of the Crop is the developers of this plugin; they also provide other services like reservation and additional premium add-ons. Even the Food and Drink menu plugin has its own premium version.
The premium plan starts at $25
The Premium Features
- Highlight dishes with discounted prices, sales, and special offers
- Icons to indicate dietary preferences, religious requirements, and allergens
- Display details about your sources and suppliers
Pro Tip :
With Rodich Restaurant WordPress Theme you can add special offers and new dishes in a separate column with interactive slider. You also have shortcode to add food menu to your restaurant website
Quick Restaurant Menu Plugin
Quick restaurant menu plugin from Things of Restaurant, helps you to create dynamic and responsive intuitive food menu for your restaurant website. The unique feature of this plugin is, you can display different menu for different days of the week and for different hours of the same day.
It is also a freemium plugin; the advanced features are available in the pro version. In the free version, you get all the necessary features like adding header and footer to the menu, custom CSS, extensive menus, and items.
The premium version costs $39 per site.
Premium Features
- The most important feature is the drag and drop page builder.
- You get more options to customize your images like resizing, adding shadows.
- Separate single page for single page and popup options.
- Visitors can share your menus directly in the social media.
Restaurant Press
Restaurant Press is more niche-oriented food menu plugin. It helps you to create restaurant menus for restaurants, bars, and cafes in no time. It’s a new plugin in the WordPress restaurant menu plugin game, but they are really excellent. Worth giving it a try.
It is a free plugin and has plenty of features like responsive design, shortcode support, gallery support, special sales price and translation ready. But to integrate it with WooCommerce restaurant menu you need to pay for the addon.
Tactical WordPress Restaurant Plugins
To run a business successfully in the online world, we need to be tactical. The primary motive of any business website is to reach more audience. These WordPress restaurant plugins help your restaurant website to reach more people and also drive more traffic to the site.
Yelp Widget Pro
Every restaurant people must be familiar with the YELP, and you must be knowing the importance of a Yelp profile. Yelp widget pro plugin helps to display your Yelp profile, your reviews, and ratings. This plugin is also from OpenTable plugin developers – WordImpress.
It has searchable Google map; this also allows users to search your city for businesses and access their Yelp profiles directly from your website. Display up to 20 business listings based on a search term on your website sidebar, pages or posts.
It is a premium plugin costs $45 for a single site.
Google Maps Widget
From the Yelp widget pro searchable Google map feature itself you can understand how important a Google map is for a restaurant website. It not only makes your restaurant accessible to the online users but also considerably increases the number of tourists to your hotel.
Google Maps Widget is a freemium plugin. In the free plan, you get normal map zooming, pinning and other normal Google map features.
In the premium plan, you get options like multiple pin support, more skins, Google analytics integration, import and export options.
The premium plan for personal use starts at $29
TripAdvisor Widget
On speaking about the tourists, we cannot miss the TripAdvisor. It is one of the most viewed and used sites to book and also to read a review of a place. Add your TripAdvisor profile as a widget to your website.
There isn’t any plugin to connect TripAdvisor to the WordPress website directly. But you can display the dynamic content about your restaurant by copying and paste the HTML code provided by the TripAdvisor. Choose the widget you want to show, copy the HTML code and paste the code.
Get your site’s TripAdvisor widget here>>
Bonus Key Plugin – WP Pizza
On our study to create Rodich WordPress restaurant theme, we found one essential feature that all the restaurant websites miss. Food tracking is that key feature; all the WordPress restaurant websites have the WordPress restaurant online ordering plugins.
At present, the solution they use for food tracking is to ask the customer to call and know about the delivery status; this feels little awkward right?
WPPizza plugin helps you to track the delivery and also gives you the option for cash on delivery. This plugin is also compatible with WPML plugin.
It is a free plugin and provides some excellent extensions for some cost, but it is worth purchasing if you require one.
You can check the premium WPPizza addons here>>
Create a Completely Equipped Restaurant Website
So now you know how to create a restaurant WordPress website with complete functionality a professional restaurant website must have.
What’s your favorite WordPress restaurant plugin? Let us know in the comment section; if you feel your favorite plugin to be added to this list let us know in the comment section.
