Your best table-filler is not an app with a commission. It is being the answer when someone nearby asks their phone where to eat tonight.
A restaurant's website has exactly three jobs: show tonight's real menu, take a reservation in under a minute, and be found when someone nearby asks where to eat. Most restaurant sites fail all three — a PDF menu from last season, a booking widget that charges per cover, and a Google presence left to chance. Fixing those three things fills more tables than any advertising.
A restaurant site with commission-free reservations typically lands between $2,000 and $6,000 — often less than a year of platform fees. Check your configuration in the cost estimator, or bring your current site to a free audit.
You may not have to — platforms bring discovery, and for some rooms that trade is fine. The question is arithmetic: per-cover fees on tables that would have booked with you anyway, plus guest data you never see. Most restaurants do best hybrid: keep the platform for strangers, take regulars and website visitors commission-free.
Yes — that is a design requirement, not an option. Prices and dishes change in one editable place and appear correctly formatted on the site, in structured data, and anywhere else the menu feeds. If updating the menu needs a developer, we have failed.
No — and we will not pretend to. We build the system that converts the attention your food and your photos earn. A good local photographer and whoever runs your Instagram stay essential; the site makes sure their work ends in a reservation instead of a dead end.