A catering website in the UK typically costs £1,850–£5,500 with a freelancer or £4,600–£13,800 with an agency, according to Project Cost Estimator's 2026 UK figures. Where you land depends on how orders come in. An enquiry-and-quote site sits at the bottom of that range, a pre-order menu with a minimum order and a delivery radius sits in the middle, and a full WooCommerce checkout with Stripe and automatic kitchen printing can go past it. Expect 3–8 weeks to build.
I've built each of these pieces for UK hospitality clients, mostly through Aura Clips, a London agency I delivered sites for in 2025. Below is what each catering build includes, what it costs on the UK market, and what I'd check before paying anyone.
What are the three ways a catering website can take orders?
A UK catering website can take orders in three ways: an enquiry-and-quote form, a pre-order menu with catering rules, or a full WooCommerce checkout with Stripe and kitchen printing. Catering isn't takeaway. Orders are bigger, placed days ahead, priced by headcount and often paid by invoice. So the first thing to decide is how much of each order you want the website to handle.
| Build | How an order arrives | Typical UK build cost | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Enquiry and quote site | HubSpot form captures date, headcount, venue and dietary needs; you reply with a quote | £1,850–£5,500 freelancer | Weddings, private events, bespoke menus |
| 2. Pre-order menu | Customer picks from a fixed menu; the site checks minimum order, lead time and delivery distance | £2,000–£8,000 for a small templated store or £3,000–£7,000 bespoke | Corporate lunches, platters, buffets |
| 3. Full checkout with kitchen printing | Paid WooCommerce checkout through Stripe; the order ticket prints in the kitchen | £7,000–£15,000 for complex bespoke e-commerce | Regular delivery runs, high order volume |
Only the first figure is catering-specific. The other two are general UK e-commerce bands. I think they're a fair guide, because a catering pre-order site is really a small online store with extra rules bolted on.
How much does an enquiry-and-quote catering website cost?
An enquiry-and-quote catering website costs £1,850–£5,500 with a UK freelancer, and for most event caterers it's the build I'd recommend. Project Cost Estimator gives that £1,850–£5,500 freelancer range, and Duport puts a standard 4–5 page small-business site from a UK freelancer at £1,200–£2,000. Most of the gap between those numbers is the quote form and the photography.
A good catering quote site has:
- A page per event type: weddings, corporate, private parties, funerals
- Sample menus with "from" prices per head, so people can rule themselves in or out
- A gallery of your actual food and setups, not stock photos
- A quote form that asks for date, guest count, venue postcode, service style, dietary needs and budget
- Clear service-area wording, so someone 80 miles away knows before they ask
The form is where the money is. I wire forms into HubSpot so every enquiry lands in a CRM instead of someone's inbox, and I've written up how to add HubSpot forms to WordPress so no lead is lost. I did this on the Ravens Ait venue website, a Thames island venue with 20+ event pages, HubSpot forms and Stripe bookings, built on WordPress and Bricks Builder. If you don't use HubSpot, sending form entries to a Google Sheet works fine.
Once a client says yes, you can take the deposit online. Ravens Ait bookings were paid through Stripe, and the same setup works for a catering deposit: a fixed or calculated amount, paid by card, with a confirmation email. I cover the setup in how to take paid event bookings on WordPress with Stripe, and it's what my booking and event pages with Stripe service covers.
Two restaurant jobs are relevant here too. For Cyprianis in Locksbottom I built a private dining template and an events listing from Figma. Private dining sells the way catering does, through a conversation rather than a checkout. And if you're launching a catering brand next month, one page with a good enquiry form can go live fast: I built the Raasa coming-soon page overnight on WordPress and Elementor.
How much does a pre-order menu with a minimum order and delivery radius cost?
A catering pre-order menu typically costs £2,000–£8,000 as a small templated UK store, or £3,000–£7,000 as bespoke e-commerce, and catering rules push it toward the top. Those bands come from Parrot Creative's templated UK e-commerce figures and Authentic Style's bespoke e-commerce figures.
This build suits caterers who sell fixed products: sandwich platters, grazing boards, hot buffets for 20. Customers want to order without picking up the phone. You want to stop the £30 order to a postcode an hour away. The extra cost comes from catering logic a standard WooCommerce store doesn't have:
- Minimum order: by basket value, by headcount, or per item (sandwiches sold in tens)
- Lead time: orders placed 24 or 48 hours ahead, with a cut-off time and blocked dates
- Delivery date and time slot, chosen at checkout
- Delivery radius in miles from your kitchen, ideally with a fee that goes up with distance
- Pay by invoice for corporate accounts, next to card payment
The radius is the bit people underestimate. A list of allowed postcodes is cheap and usually handled by an existing plugin. Real distance is a different job. For Whitfield Service Station in Dover I wrote a custom WooCommerce plugin that checks the customer's address against the Google Maps API, blocks orders outside the radius and charges a delivery fee based on distance. I explain the options in how to limit WooCommerce delivery to a radius in miles.
Postcodes are not miles
A postcode district can stretch a long way from your kitchen, and a neighbouring one can be cut off by a river or motorway. If drive distance decides your delivery cost, ask for a real distance check, not a postcode list.
How much does a full WooCommerce checkout with Stripe and kitchen printing cost?
A full catering checkout on WooCommerce with Stripe and kitchen printing falls in the £7,000–£15,000 band Authentic Style gives for complex bespoke UK e-commerce. It's for caterers doing regular delivery: daily office lunches, weekly meal drops, event platters in volume. Every order is paid upfront and gets to the kitchen without anyone checking a laptop.
Authentic Style prices bespoke e-commerce with complex functionality at £7,000–£15,000. Parrot Creative puts mid-market bespoke builds with several integrations at £10,000–£25,000. A catering store with radius rules, slots, Stripe and printing should sit toward the lower of those, because the catalogue is small.
This is the flow I'd build:
On Whitfield, orders print automatically on a receipt printer through PrintNode, a cloud printing service, so staff see the ticket as soon as it's paid. I've written up how to print WooCommerce orders automatically in a kitchen. My WooCommerce stores and online ordering service covers the whole build.
What are the running costs of a catering website?
A UK catering website costs roughly £20–£100 a month to run as a simple site, or £80–£800 a month in support as an e-commerce store, plus Stripe card fees on every paid order. You pay for the build once. These come round every month:
- Card fees: Stripe charges 1.5% + 20p for standard UK cards and 1.9% + 20p for premium UK cards. On a £400 office lunch, that's £6.20 on a standard card or £7.80 on a premium one.
- Kitchen printing: PrintNode sells monthly plans based on how many prints you send. Check PrintNode's pricing page for the current tiers before you budget.
- Hosting and upkeep: Media Village puts a simple business site at £20–£100 a month for hosting, licences and basic upkeep. Parrot Creative puts e-commerce support and maintenance at £80–£800 a month.
- HubSpot: forms and the basic CRM can run on HubSpot's free tools. You only need a paid tier once you want automation.
A quote site is cheap to keep running. A full checkout has card fees on every order, and someone has to keep WooCommerce, Stripe and the printing plugin updated.
How long does a catering website take to build?
Project Cost Estimator puts a typical UK catering website at 3–8 weeks from brief to launch, and notes that content and revision rounds usually set the pace more than the build itself. A quote site is at the short end if your menus and photos are ready. A full checkout needs extra time for test orders: a real address inside the radius, one outside it, a declined card, and a printer that's switched off.
Which catering website build should you choose?
Pick the build that matches how most of your orders arrive today, not the one you might need in two years.
- Most of your work is weddings and private events: build 1. Add a Stripe deposit link once quotes are accepted.
- You sell fixed platters but most clients are repeat corporate accounts: build 2, with invoice payment as an option.
- You deliver every day and phone orders are eating staff time: build 3.
You can also do it in stages. Start with build 1, then add a pre-order menu to the same WordPress site when fixed-menu orders justify it. Nothing from the first build gets thrown away.
How is a catering website different from a restaurant website?
A catering website handles orders placed days ahead and priced by headcount. A restaurant website handles table bookings and same-hour delivery. Restaurants need a menu that can change nightly. Caterers need lead times, headcount pricing, bigger baskets and invoice options. If you run a restaurant and a catering arm, plan the two order flows separately, even if they live on the same site. For the restaurant side, see how much a restaurant website costs in the UK and takeaway website cost vs Just Eat and Deliveroo.
What should you ask a developer before hiring?
Before you hire anyone for a catering website, ask how they'll handle distance, minimum orders, lead times, printer failures, invoices, account ownership and testing. These seven questions cover it:
- Will the delivery radius use real distance or a postcode list?
- Can the minimum order work per basket, per item and per headcount?
- How are lead times, cut-offs and blocked dates handled?
- What happens to a paid order if the kitchen printer is offline?
- Can corporate clients pay by invoice without breaking the checkout?
- Whose name are the Stripe, HubSpot and hosting accounts in? It should be yours.
- Will you run test orders on a staging copy before launch?
If you can't answer some of these yet, my free Project Scope Generator turns a two-line idea into a feature list and build order you can hand to any developer.
How do you get a quote for your catering website?
Send me your menu, your kitchen postcode, how far you deliver and your typical order size through the contact page. I'll tell you which of the three builds fits and what it would involve. If online ordering is the priority, start with my WooCommerce online ordering service.
