Choosing the right CMS for a restaurant team
The best CMS is the one the GM will actually use at 4pm. Match who publishes menus before you fall for a feature list.
CMS debates turn into platform religion. For restaurants, start with who edits: a marketing lead publishing events, a GM changing hours, a chef who should never touch WordPress to mark a dish 86'd.
If the CMS feels intimidating, content goes stale and the shiny new site ages in a month. Workflow matters: preview, roles, scheduled publishing, assets, how painful a landing page is on a Wednesday.
Watch hidden costs. Plugins, licensing, whether anyone can support it in two years. A free CMS with six brittle menu plugins is not free.
We usually keep the CMS boring and put the menu in Quiteful. The site team focuses on rooms, stories and booking. The kitchen publishes dishes without a tutorial.
If updating the site feels like a project every time, the stack is wrong.
Common questions
- Should the menu live in the CMS?
- Usually no. The website CMS should own pages, stories and events. The live menu should live in a system built for dishes and allergens — then embed.
- What makes a CMS wrong for hospitality?
- If updating hours or a set menu feels like a project, staff will bypass it and the site will go stale by Thursday.