Facebook or Website: What Should Your Café Sort First?

A café doesn't need to choose between Facebook and a website — but if you've only got time for one thing this month, sort your website first, because Facebook can't show up when someone searches "cafe near me" on Google, and a lot of your customers won't have a Facebook account to find you on. A café owner in Bedminster told us this exact thing happened last month: a regular said she'd tried to find the opening hours before a Sunday visit, couldn't see anything on Google, and nearly went to the place two doors down instead. The café had a Facebook page. It just didn't help, because she wasn't looking there.

If you've spent time uploading photos of your flat whites and today's specials to Facebook, it's easy to feel like the "getting found online" job is done. It isn't, and it's worth understanding exactly why.

What's actually at stake

Most people don't decide where to get coffee by browsing Facebook. They decide by typing something into Google — "cafe near me," "brunch Gloucester Road," "coffee shop Stokes Croft open now" — usually on their phone, usually with five minutes to spare. What comes back is a map with a few pinned businesses, their star ratings, and their opening hours. That's called your Google Business Profile, and it's built from information Google holds about you, separate from Facebook entirely. If it's thin, wrong, or missing, you don't get picked, no matter how nice your Facebook photos are.

Here's the bit that catches people out: Facebook changes what it shows people all the time. A page that used to reach most of your followers might now only reach a fraction of them without you paying to boost a post. And a growing number of people, especially anyone over 50 or under 20, simply aren't on Facebook at all, or don't bother logging in to look something up. If your address, hours, and menu only live inside a Facebook page, you're invisible to every one of those people. A website doesn't have that problem. It doesn't depend on an algorithm deciding to show it to someone, and anyone can find it with a plain Google search or by scanning a QR code on your window, no account required.

What good looks like

A basic café website doesn't need to be flashy. It needs to answer the questions a hungry, slightly impatient person is asking on their phone: are you open right now, where exactly are you (a working map link, not just a suburb name), what's on the menu and roughly what does it cost, do you take bookings or is it walk-in, and can I bring the dog or is there space for a pram. That's it. Sort those and you've covered 90% of why someone bounces off a search result to a competitor instead.

The other job your website does is build trust in a few seconds. A handful of genuine Google reviews shown clearly, real photos of the inside (not just the food), and your actual name and phone number tell a stranger this is a real, well-run place — not a page someone abandoned two years ago. That matters more than people realise. A café with one old review and a Facebook page last updated in 2024 reads as closed or careless, even if it's neither. Compare that to a competitor with six recent reviews and hours that are obviously kept up to date, and you can see why one gets the visit and the other doesn't.

Common objections, answered honestly

"It costs too much" — a proper agency build can run into the thousands, fair enough. But a simple site that covers hours, location, menu and photos doesn't need that. Tools built for small businesses can get you a working page for a fraction of the cost, and it usually pays for itself with a handful of extra visits a month.

"I'm not technical" — you don't need to be. You're not being asked to code anything or manage a "content management system" (that's just the tool people use to update text and photos on a site — you won't be touching it directly if you don't want to).

"I get enough business from word of mouth" — that's genuinely great, and it's still true that word of mouth now often means someone hears your name, then checks you out online before they turn up. If what they find is nothing, or outdated hours, you can lose a customer your regulars already sent you.

What to do now

Don't overhaul everything this week. Do two small things. First, check your Google listing — search your own café name and see what comes up: is the address right, are the hours current, is there a phone number people can actually ring? Fix whatever's wrong; it takes ten minutes. Second, ask one regular customer what they'd expect to find if they looked you up before visiting for the first time. Their answer will tell you more than any marketing advice.

If you want to see what a proper website would look like without doing any of the technical work yourself, get a free website preview — it's built straight from your existing Google listing, so there's nothing to set up. Keep Facebook for the personality and the photos. Just make sure there's one proper link everything else can point back to.