Plenty of good pubs do fine on regulars and passing trade, so it’s a fair question. Here’s the honest case, without the sales patter.
Where your customers already are
Think about the last time you tried a pub you didn’t know. You searched “Sunday lunch near me”, or a friend sent a link, and you decided in about ten seconds based on what you saw. Your future customers are doing exactly that about you, right now. The question isn’t whether they look you up — it’s what they find when they do.
What a pub website actually earns you
- Function-room and large-table bookings — by far the most profitable trade, and the easiest to lose to a pub that simply makes booking easier.
- Midweek covers, from people who saw the menu and decided before they left the house.
- A way to fill quiet nights — quiz nights, supper clubs, live music — that a Facebook post vanishes from in a day.
But I’ve got a Facebook page
A Facebook page is a market stall: useful, but you don’t own it, it only reaches people who already follow you, and it disappears down the feed by teatime. A website is the shopfront you own outright, that turns up when a stranger searches, and that works while you’re pulling pints. You want both — but only one of them is yours.
The pub with the better shopfront online wins the booking before anyone has put their coat on.
So — do you need one?
If you’re happy with exactly the trade you have, perhaps not. If you’d like more of the good stuff — the functions, the bookings, the quiet nights filled — then a proper website is the cheapest member of staff you’ll ever hire.
While you’re here