Diners read the menubefore they see the room

A1. The research question

When a diner looks up an independent restaurant, café or bar online, usually on a phone and often on the pavement outside, can they find out whether it is open tonight, read the menu, see what it costs, get a table or order without calling and without a delivery app, tell whether they can eat there with an allergy or a diet, find the door and somewhere to park, and book it for a party?

Population. Independently owned US restaurants, cafés and bars with one to four locations and their own website, in four groups: casual and family restaurants, chef-driven and fine dining, cafés and bakeries, and bars and brewpubs. These are the hospitality businesses a small or mid-size web agency can realistically win as clients.

A2. Who was studied

The sample was built from local search listings and city dining guides, city by city, then screened so that every site in it is one an independent agency could realistically win.

Source	What it contributes	Sites
Local search and city guides, casual and family restaurants	Independent neighbourhood, family and casual restaurants (diners, pizzerias, taquerias, barbecue and the like) found in local search results and city dining guides, city by city	42
Local search and city guides, chef-driven and fine dining	Chef-owned and independent fine-dining restaurants and bistros found in local search results and city dining guides, city by city	48
Local search and city guides, cafés and bakeries	Independent cafés, coffee shops that serve food, and bakeries found in local search results and city dining guides, city by city	45
Local search and city guides, bars and brewpubs	Independent bars that serve food, gastropubs, taverns and brewpubs found in local search results and city dining guides, city by city	45

From list to sample	Sites
Candidates listed	208
Removed at screening: the site refused automated visitors or served a bot challenge (11)	−11
Removed at screening: no page served to automated visitors, or a placeholder (8)	−8
Removed at editorial review: five or more locations or a multi-location group (3), the domain no longer serves the business (3), a hotel's site (1), no site of its own (1)	−8
Cohort	181

Region (US Census)	Casual and family restaurants	Chef-driven and fine dining	Cafés and bakeries	Bars and brewpubs	All
Northeast	11	13	13	8	45
Midwest	10	12	10	13	45
South	11	12	11	12	46
West	10	11	11	12	44
All regions	42	48	45	45	180

A3. How the sites were read

Pages. The home page, then for each of eight topics (menu, hours and location, reservations, ordering, private events and catering, about, contact, allergens and dietary) the best-matching link on the home page.

Speed and accessibility. Google PageSpeed Insights (Lighthouse) on a mid-range phone profile and on desktop, plus Chrome UX Report data from real visitors over the previous 28 days where Google publishes it for the site.

Crawler conduct. One request at a time to each site, at least 400 ms apart, at most ten pages per site; robots.txt is read and obeyed for every page requested; a site that refuses is left out and never retried. The crawler identifies itself as Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; ClikitiResearch/1.0; +https://clikiti.com).

A4. What was measured

8 questions diners ask before they book, order or walk in, answered from what each site publishes, and 4 technical checks against published standards. A check passes only when the rule below is met; anything the crawler cannot confirm counts as not answered.

Question	Counts as answered when	Standard
Are you open tonight?Opening hours shown on the site	Opening hours are shown as text on the home page or a contact, hours, location or about page it links to: at least one day of the week with a time range (for example 'Tue–Sat 5–10 pm').	Clikiti diner question 1 of 8
Can I read the menu on my phone?The menu is real text, not a PDF or a photo	The menu is readable as text on the site: a menu page (or the home page) carries at least eight dish lines in the served HTML, or a known menu service renders it as text. A menu offered only as a PDF, an image or a link to a delivery app fails.	Diner question 2 · WCAG 1.4.5
What will it cost?Prices shown on the menu	Prices are shown next to dishes on a menu read as text: at least three amounts like '$14' or '14.50' on the menu page. A price only inside a PDF or an image is not seen.	Clikiti diner question 3 of 8
Can I get a table without calling?Book a table online, or a clear walk-ins-only note	A diner can get a table without calling: a link or embedded widget for online reservations (OpenTable, Resy, Tock, SevenRooms, Yelp Reservations and the like, or the site's own booking form), or a clear statement that the place takes walk-ins only or does not take reservations.	Clikiti diner question 4 of 8
Can I order from you directly?Order pickup or delivery directly, not only through an app	A diner can order pickup or delivery directly from the restaurant: a link to the restaurant's own online ordering (its own shop or a commission-free ordering service such as Toast, Square, ChowNow, Clover, BentoBox or a direct storefront). Links only to delivery marketplaces (DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, Postmates) fail, and so does no ordering at all.	Clikiti diner question 5 of 8
Can I eat here with my allergy or diet?Allergens or vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free dishes marked	Allergens or dietary needs are addressed in text: dishes marked vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free or dairy-free (words or a legend like 'GF', 'V'), or a statement about allergens or how the kitchen handles them.	Clikiti diner question 6 of 8
Where are you, and where do I park?Street address with a map link, directions or parking	The street address is shown as text and comes with a way to get there: a map link or embedded map, directions, or a note about parking.	Clikiti diner question 7 of 8
Can we book you for a party?Private events, buyouts or catering described	Private dining, private events, buyouts, large parties or catering are described on the site or on a page it links to.	Clikiti diner question 8 of 8
Technical checks
Loads in under 2.5 s on a phoneLoads in under 2.5 s on a phone		Core Web Vitals · LCP
Text contrast passes 4.5:1Text contrast passes 4.5:1		WCAG 1.4.3
Images have text descriptionsImages have text descriptions		WCAG 1.1.1
Restaurant, café or bar structured dataRestaurant, café or bar structured data	Structured data marks the business as a Restaurant, CafeOrCoffeeShop, Bakery, BarOrPub, Brewery, Winery or FoodEstablishment.	Schema.org · FoodEstablishment

A5. The website score

Each site's overall score (0 to 100) is Clikiti's website score, rubric 2.0.0. It measures the website, not the restaurant, and the diner questions above do not feed it. It is a weighted mean of five pillars:

Pillar	Weight	Based on
Usability	30%	Checks of the home page for broken links and images, and an expert review of the page as rendered on a phone and on a desktop screen, against Jakob Nielsen's ten usability heuristics. Each issue must name the heuristic, a severity on the Nielsen Norman Group scale and the exact element or wording; issues without all three are discarded, and two independent passes must agree.
Speed	25%	Google Lighthouse on a mid-range phone (60%) and on desktop (20%), and real-visitor Core Web Vitals from the Chrome UX Report (20%) where available.
Accessibility	25%	Google Lighthouse accessibility audits (70%) and Clikiti's own WCAG checks of the served page (30%).
Search	10%	Google Lighthouse SEO audits (60%) and Clikiti's own search checks of the served page (40%).
Trust	10%	Google Lighthouse best-practice audits (40%) and security header checks (60%).

Within a pillar, each issue costs points by severity (critical, high, medium, low) and by how many times it occurs; issues based on judgement count at 70% of measured ones, and duplicates of the same root cause count once. On the four restaurant profiles, the number out of 100 is this overall score, and each dot is one check in its group: filled when the site passes it, hollow when it does not.

A6. Precision

With 180 sites, a share reported for the whole sample is precise to within ±7.3 percentage points at 95% confidence (worst case, a 50% share; 1.96 × √(0.25/n)). By type: casual and family restaurants ±15.1 (n = 42); chef-driven and fine dining ±14.1 (n = 48); cafés and bakeries ±14.6 (n = 45); bars and brewpubs ±14.6 (n = 45). Differences between types smaller than these margins should be read as similar. Percentages are rounded to whole numbers; medians are the middle value of the sites in a group.

A7. Quality control

• Every home page in the cohort was fetched and its title checked against the listed business before scanning, every home page was checked for gambling, pharmacy, adult and crypto spam, and every home page was checked for restaurant content (two repurposed domains were removed)
• Businesses were checked for duplicates across domains by phone number (none found; one shared number belongs to two sister businesses)
• Detection rules were checked against the evidence they record for a sample of passes and fails for every rule, and revised before the final run
• Every published figure is recomputed from the data at build time, and a statement in the text that the data does not support stops the build
• Results are published only after automated checks for missing data, anonymity, accessibility of the report itself and the margin of error statement pass

A8. Limitations

• A point-in-time snapshot: menus, hours and sites change often, and a site may have improved or declined since it was read.
• Only public pages were read: the home page and pages it links to. Booking and ordering flows were not completed, and their accessibility was not tested.
• Answers are read from the page as a server delivers it. Content that only appears after scripts run in the browser (some whole sites, menu widgets and booking tools) is not seen, which the study counts as a gap a search engine or a slow phone would also meet.
• A menu, price or allergen note inside a PDF or an image counts as not found as text; the study does not read PDFs or images.
• The study reports what a website shows. It does not judge any restaurant's food, service or prices, and it does not check whether any allergen statement is accurate.
• Automated accessibility tests find only part of what WCAG covers; keyboard and screen-reader use need a manual audit.
• The sample is a structured list of real, independent businesses, not a random draw. Margins of error are given as a guide to precision, not as a guarantee that the results hold for every business in the country.

A9. Data, licence and corrections

The aggregate results are published as CSV and JSON beside this report under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence: you may reuse, adapt and share them, including in client proposals, with a credit to Clikiti and a link. No per-site results are published. Corrections and removal requests are reviewed and answered personally; see the end of this report.