A Yelp review is nothing without the collective efforts of your crazed restaurant fans. In fact, if you build an army of brand ambassadors for your restaurant, most of the lower reviews will never get noticed online. It all starts with getting customers to recognize you on Google on the other search engines, and it moves onto areas like email marketing, social media sharing and more. Whether you’re building your own website without the help of anyone else, or simply looking to improve your current library of themes for client sites, this list should help you out quite a bit. Why? Because the top WordPress restaurant themes have specialty tools for featuring the best parts of your cuisine. You can use portfolio layouts and galleries to talk about your most popular drinks and food items, along with menu pricing for when people want more of a selection.
What else should you expect from a WordPress restaurant theme? To start, most restaurants could use an events management module for displaying when new promotions and weekly specials are being held. We also like themes that have lots of social media sharing buttons. After all, restaurants thrive on word of mouth. Along with menu listings, spots for beautiful imagery and sliders that move through announcements, the primary item to look for in a restaurant theme is some sort of module that helps with reservations. Yes, some plugins provide this functionality, so you don’t technically need it in a theme, but it sure does make it a little easier. Therefore, keep reading to learn more about the best WordPress restaurant themes, and get ready to watch your lines expand around the corner.
Cafe
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As one of the more popular restaurant themes on the market, Cafe stands out because it’s sleek and impressive. Not to mention, the StudioPress product is built completely on the Genesis Framework, one of the most influential, and customizable, frameworks in the industry. To start, quite a few widgets are packed into the theme. These widgets are designed to help out with items that should be on every single restaurant webpage. For example, you can have your business hours, contact information and social media buttons in the footer, revealing these details on all of your pages. The Cafe theme is mobile responsive, which means that anyone can take out a phone or tablet and still view your content in a reasonable manner. The custom page templates add variety to your site, with options for archives, blogs and landing page. You also get four homepage widget areas for scattering the modules we somewhat talked about before.
The customizable header is a must for restaurants, since there’s a good chance you’ll be switching out this header depending on which events, cuisines and promotions are being featured. The header also provides a beautiful parallax effect, which helps your website standout while also grabbing attention and showing that you have a creative side to your restaurant. The announcement banner towards the top of the page may be used for linking to a reservation page. This theme links to a contact form, which is fine. However, you also have the chance to implement a booking plugin. Share the menu in a beautifully formatted card-stock module, placed right on top of another parallax background. Feel free to customize these menus how you want. For example, the demo shows first, second and third courses, but those can be modified for food, drinks and dessert, or something similar. The Cafe WordPress theme makes your restaurant look desirable, so check it out when you have a chance.
Burger Theme
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The Burger Theme is a more relaxed restaurant theme, with the ultimate collection of tools for burger joints, hot dog stands and other restaurants that may fall under the fast food, or quicker food, categories. Don’t fret if you’re running a healthier establishment, because the stigma of fast food doesn’t carry over in this WordPress theme. The theme is designed on the Twitter Bootstrap Framework, making it speedy and responsive for all devices. You may not notice it right away, but the bugs are nearly nonexistent across all devices, and this is all thanks to the special media queries. Custom post types are provided for you to share your menus and talk about the items that are most popular with your patrons. What’s nice is that a unique reservations plugin is packaged in with the Burger Theme, removing the need to install your own plugin, while making it super easy to collect reservations through your own website. The over 40 unique and elegant food icons are ideal for complementing your menus or talking about the services you offer.
As with many WordPress themes, shortcodes are provided for you to keep your hands away from source code. However, these are more dedicated to the food industry, making them especially powerful. For example, some of the shortcodes include carousels, counters, buttons, columns and testimonials. Think about how much easier it is to bring in new customers when you share testimonials from satisfied customers in the past. Not to mention, the shortcodes are wonderful for getting your website up and running within minutes. The color variations are simple to scroll through, and you can match up your colors to the branding strategy you desire. In addition, the fonts and icons are modifiable as well. Finally, the responsive slider is a solid bonus for those who have had trouble with sliders in the past. This one snaps into place to show promotions, events and any other slides that may popup towards the top of your site.
Highgrove
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The Highgrove WordPress theme gives classier restaurants a chance to share their cuisines, talk with customers and post images of the meals people can expect to try when coming into the restaurant. The attractive and easy to use theme is designed particularly for restaurants, and it has a responsive layout for people to quickly make reservations and check out menus on smaller devices. The theme has layouts for restaurants, bakeries, coffee shops or wineries, and it features a reservation button that leads to a full form for people to submit reservations. All of these reservations are managed on the backend of the website, allowing you to cut down on the time spent collecting reservations over the phone. A parallax effect is included with the header module, and it also supports high resolution images and a slider effect. This looks great when posting images of your meals, along with promotions or events that people can come to in the future.
The blog is filled with post types for you to play around with, and it allows for sharing free cooking guides or other information with your patrons. Not to mention, your search engine strength is most likely to improve when you start publishing quality content. The menu is shown in somewhat of a portfolio format, with a grid-based layout with images, prices and some descriptions. This makes for a rather modern take on the digital menu, and it leads into a module that talks about your team members and chefs. A Services area is available as well, just in case you cater for parties, offer support for weddings or allow for team building exercises in the restaurant. Your latest blog posts are all listed on the homepage, due to a beautiful recent posts widget that you can move around. The reservation form can also be placed somewhere on the homepage if needed. Along with simple widgets for your location, contact information, social media buttons and business hours, the Highgrove theme is packed with goodies.
My Cuisine
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The My Cuisine WordPress theme is a product of the Elegant Themes company, meaning you’ll receive a theme with simplicity and functionality built-in. Beginning with the backend, this theme has localization so that everyone in your community understands what your menu says. In addition, the four unique colors come in handy if you’re trying to match up your branding to the logo or other marketing materials. Along with that, you gain access to a wide set of theme options for managing ads, changing fonts and more. The shortcodes are solid for instantly building items like buttons and columns, while the page templates work for gallery, blog and contact pages. When looking at the frontend, its pretty clear that the My Cuisine theme offers a a somewhat rustic, yet modern, take on the restaurant website.
A beautiful slider is included with the theme, and it has overlaying text and buttons for sending people to other parts of the website. You can even see that simple animations draw the eye to promotions and events that are listed on the slider. The theme integrates well with Google Maps, and the various widgets in the footer assist with information for food recommendations, customer testimonials and contact details. Users can browse the menu within seconds and see all of your food items categorized and cut down to smaller thumbnails with descriptions and pricing. No booking plugin is offered with the My Cuisine theme, but a third party solution would do the trick.
Coffee Lounge
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With the Coffee Lounge WordPress theme you have several opportunities to show customers how fun and exciting your company is. To start off, the theme provides a fairly modern and playful design, with more feminine layouts and some interesting icons and overlaying imagery. The header area features a slider, and this is great for talking about the different products you sell on your website. You’ll also find that much of the homepage is managed with widgets, meaning that you pretty much get a full drag and drop experience as long as you know how to work with the WordPress backend.
You get three pre-made colors to choose from. This isn’t exactly that many, but it’s a nice start to continue with your own custom designs. The responsive and retina ready structure ensures that all mobile devices are able to present your content in a reasonable way. The contact form is there for you to keep in touch with your customers, and it makes it less of a hassle compared to going out and finding a third party contact form plugin. Along with language translations, some cool icons and a full blog for chatting with your coffee shop patrons, the Coffee Lounge WordPress theme has quite a bit to offer
Resca
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The Resca WordPress theme is what we might consider the ideal setup for coffee shops and restaurants. It all starts with the reservation system, since it goes through OpenTable and ensures that your table reservations are organized and efficient. The cool part is that this module isn’t going to slow down your site, and it’s sure to keep you off the phone throughout the day. The responsive layout empowers users to take out their phones and make reservations, while the translation tools even bring in some customers who may not speak English. Quite a few demos are packaged into the Resca theme, meaning that you don’t have to design everything from scratch.
The best part of the theme is how the menu is laid out so nicely. It doesn’t matter how many menus you have, because it all comes together in a beautiful fashion. The Revolution Slider plugin is included, which we enjoy for sharing new menu items and promotions that could get people to come into the shop more often. The drag and drop page builder on the backend is sure to get you moving a little faster with the design, while the parallax effects on the frontend grab attention and make your restaurant look more creative.
The Flavour
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The Flavour WordPress theme is a product from ThemeFuse, which is a solid choice considering this company is known for offering quality customer service. The theme has responsive elements that snap right into place when on a mobile device, and the you can present your menu with imagery and other media in order to entice more people who look at your site. The header module consists of a large image, so we recommend displaying one of your most popular food or drink items in that area. You can also have overlying text, which is wonderful for pushing people to other parts of your site.
The animated slider is a nice bonus, while the color changing tools are bound to increase the effectiveness of your overall branding strategy. The demo content ensures that you don’t have to start from scratch, and the events management tool is great for talking to customers and telling them about the specials they can expect in the future. We also like the events calendar for restaurants that are going to be selling party space. Overall, the Flavour WordPress theme has a lot to be proud of, so check it out if you plan on making a restaurant website.
Cuisinier
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Cuisinier is an elegant and responsive WordPress theme that would be a great fit for any modern restaurant. The theme starts off with a beautiful Revolution Slider which is a premium plugin included for free with this theme. It allows you to create stunning animations and overlay text to provide a brief description of everything your restaurant has to offer. With the menu pushed off to the side, your visitors can focus entirely on the content which is sure to get them to make a table reservation. Show what you have to offer with culinary-themed icons and provide a mini-slider of your daily specials or promotions.
Several parallax sections help you add visual appeal to your website without slowing it down and a stylish contact form makes it easy for potential customers to get in touch with you and make dinner or lunch reservations. Since the theme is fully responsive, even those on the go will be able to make a reservation. Customize every aspect of your theme through the theme options panel and with the help of the Tesla Framework which requires zero coding knowledge. Custom blog is also included so you can share some of the recipes with your audience and they can even connect with you on social media to stay up to date with the latest news and offers. Along with built-in shortcodes and extensive documentation, the Cuisinier theme has everything you need for your restaurant website.
Adriana
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Consider the Adriana theme if you run a bakery. The theme is geared for bakeries and patisseries with a responsive and colorful design. A large parallax header is the perfect spot to include a brief description about your bakery followed by a grid layout of everything you have to offer. You can feature a list of client logos you served before, a list of magazines where you have been featured as well as introduce your team of bakers to potential customers. Use the portfolio feature to show off your cakes and pastries and be sure to include your contact information in one of the homepage sections so visitors can call and place their order.
A blog is included so you can share baking tips with your audience and boost your search engine rankings in the process. This theme is easy to customize thanks to the advanced theme options panel where you can modify your colors, logo, fonts, and more. Quite a few shortcodes are included with the theme so you can easily create buttons, columns, lists, and more without having to touch a single line of code. 4 custom post types make it easy to create galleries, feature your clients, promote your services, and more. Along with responsive design, SEO optimization, and translation files, you have everything you need to grow your bakery business.
Japaneo
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Japaneo is a great choice if you run a Japanese restaurant, considering the demo is already setup with all the necessary images. This theme has several slider options available to create a stunning slideshow of your culinary creations and the rest of the homepage includes a clean and organized grid-based gallery of your menu items. Feature your chefs on the homepage so visitors know who is responsible for their food and include your business hours along with your location so everyone knows the right time and the address to stop by for sushi. You can also include your social media icons to stay in touch with your followers and include payment information so potential visitors know upfront what credit cards you accept.
Colors, fonts, and backgrounds can easily be customized on the backend for the perfect branding experience and you can even take advantage of built-in shortcodes to add buttons, columns, menus, and more without having to know any code. Quick install and demo content make it easy to get started with your design process and the responsive design will ensure everybody can access your website whether they use their laptop or their phone. On top of that, SEO optimized code, an AJAX powered working form, and extensive documentation definitely make this theme worth checking out.
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