What a Bakery Website Needs

The facts quoted here come from primary sources: the FDA's Food Allergies and Menu Labeling Requirements pages, Google's Business Profile help on online ordering options and special hours, Google Search Central's image SEO best practices and local business structured data docs, and schema.org's Bakery type, all checked on 14 November 2026. This is general information, not legal or food safety advice; state and local food rules vary. The rest is our view from building websites for small businesses.

The short answer

A bakery website needs your hours, address and phone at the top of every page, a menu written as text (not a photo of the chalkboard), a custom cake order form that asks for the date, servings, flavors and pickup or delivery, a plain allergen page, a way to order ahead for pickup, real photos of your own work, holiday hours and preorder deadlines, and Bakery schema. The basics of menus, hours and ordering for food businesses are covered in our restaurant website guide; this guide covers what is different for a bakery.

The daily menu and what changes

A bakery's menu has two layers: things you make every day (bread, croissants, cookies) and things that rotate (seasonal pies, weekend specials, holiday items). Put both on one menu page as real text, grouped the way customers think: bread, pastries, cakes, cookies, savory items, drinks. Text can be read on a small screen, found by search engines and updated in a minute; a PDF or a photo of the menu board can't.

• Mark the rotating items. A short "This week" or "Weekends only" line saves people a wasted trip.
• Say when things sell out. If the sourdough is usually gone by 11, say so.
• Date the page with a short "Menu updated" line.

If you are part of a larger chain, note the FDA rule: "The menu labeling requirements apply to restaurants and similar retail food establishments that are part of a chain with 20 or more locations," and "Covered establishments must disclose the number of calories contained in standard items on menus and menu boards." A single-location bakery is not in that group.

A custom cake order form

Most custom cake back-and-forth comes from inquiries that miss key facts, so the form should collect them up front. Ask for:

• Event date and pickup or delivery time. Show your minimum lead time next to the date field (for example, "We need at least one week for custom cakes"), and say what happens with rush requests.
• Number of servings, not cake size. Customers know how many guests are coming; you know what size feeds them. Show a simple size-to-servings table if you have one.
• Flavor, filling and frosting from your actual list, with an "other" box.
• Design notes and an upload field for an inspiration photo, plus any writing on the cake (spelled out).
• Allergies or dietary needs in their own field, with a link to your allergen page.
• Pickup or delivery, and the delivery address and setup details if you deliver (venue, contact on the day, stairs).
• Name, phone and email, and how they prefer to be contacted.

Next to the form, state your process in a few lines: when you reply, how you quote, how much deposit you take and when (if you take one), the date after which changes or cancellations are no longer possible, and how the balance is paid. Put the same terms in your written quote or invoice. Our view: one-off designs work best as an inquiry that ends in a quote and a deposit link; standard cakes you sell every week can be a normal online order with a pickup slot.

Our guide to website forms UX covers the details, and website form spam covers keeping the junk out. For taking deposits online, see accepting payments online.

Allergens and ingredients

Allergen questions are among the most common messages a bakery gets, so answer them on the site. The FDA says: "The major food allergens are milk, eggs, fish, Crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, and sesame." Sesame was added most recently, with the FASTER Act "declaring sesame as the 9th major food allergen recognized by the United States."

Federal allergen labeling is mainly about packaged food: the FDA says it enforces "regulations requiring companies to list ingredients on packaged foods and beverages," and lists among the exceptions "most foods sold at retail or food service establishments that are not pre-packaged with a label." So the bread in your case may not need a federal label, while the cookies you bag and label for a coffee shop to resell likely do. State and local health rules can add their own requirements; check with your local health department.

What we recommend for the website, whatever the legal minimum:

• Mark common allergens next to each menu item as text (for example, "Contains: wheat, milk, eggs, tree nuts (almond)"), not only as small icons.
• Be honest about shared equipment. The FDA describes cross-contact as "the inadvertent introduction of a major food allergen into a product." If your kitchen handles nuts and flour everywhere, say so plainly instead of promising "nut-free" or "gluten-free."
• Give people with serious allergies a phone number so they can talk to a person before ordering.

Online ordering and pickup

Order-ahead pickup suits bakeries: customers skip the line, and you know how many loaves to bake. Whether you use a delivery app, an ordering tool or a shop on your own site, make the link easy to find and show real pickup windows.

Google lets you control which ordering link appears on your profile. Its help page says: "You can manage how customers place food pickup and delivery orders through your Business Profile," including to "Add and manage third-party providers and custom ordering links." If you run your own ordering page, add it there and set it as preferred so people who find you on Maps land on the system you control. Our Google Business Profile guide covers the rest of the profile.

If you ship cookies or sell gift boxes, treat that part like a small online store: product pages, shipping regions and cutoff days, packaging, and a clear refund policy for food that can't be returned. Our ecommerce launch checklist walks through it.

Photos that sell

Photos do much of a bakery's selling. Use photos of your own work: a gallery of past custom cakes grouped by type (wedding, birthday, cupcakes), close-ups of everyday items and a few shots of the shop. Stock photos set the wrong expectations, and other bakers' photos are not yours to use; see website photos and image licensing.

Describe each photo in words, too. Google says it "extracts information about the subject matter of the image from the content of the page, including captions and image titles," and calls alt text "the most important attribute when it comes to providing more metadata for an image." A caption like "Three-tier lemon and raspberry wedding cake, serves 80" helps both search and the customer planning their own order. Keep image files light so the gallery loads on a phone; our image optimization guide shows how.

Holiday hours and preorders

Holidays are when wrong hours do the most harm. Publish a holiday page a few weeks ahead with the preorder menu, the last day to order, pickup times and closed days, and link it from the home page while it is live.

Update Google at the same time. Google's help page says that "When your hours of operation change for a brief period of time, like for a special event, you can set special hours so that your regular hours don't change," and it recommends confirming your hours for official holidays even when they don't change. Keep the website, the Business Profile and any ordering app saying the same thing.

Schema for a bakery

Schema.org has a Bakery type, placed under "Thing > Organization > LocalBusiness > FoodEstablishment > Bakery." Google's local business documentation says to "Use the most specific LocalBusiness sub-type possible," so a bakery should use Bakery rather than plain LocalBusiness. Add your name, address, phone, opening hours, a link to your menu and your price range, all matching what the page and your Business Profile show.

If you run a bakery with a seating area or coffee bar, schema.org's department property fits that case. Its definition reads: "A relationship between an organization and a department of that organization, also described as an organization (allowing different urls, logos, opening hours). For example: a store with a pharmacy, or a bakery with a cafe." Our local business schema guide shows the markup step by step.

A short checklist (our view)

• Hours, address and tap-to-call phone on every page.
• A dated text menu with rotating items marked.
• A custom cake form with lead time and deposit terms beside it.
• Allergens per item, honest shared-equipment wording.
• An order-ahead link with real pickup windows, also on Google.
• Your own photos, with captions and alt text.
• A holiday page, matched by special hours on Google.
• Bakery schema matching your listings.

For menu and hours basics shared with other food businesses, see our restaurant website guide; bakeries that do weddings can borrow ideas from the wedding venue website guide, and those that deliver can use the date picker and cut-off advice in our florist website guide. If you would rather have your bakery site built for you, our website development service builds custom WordPress and static websites made to load fast, rank well and be easy for your team to edit.

Frequently asked questions

What should a bakery website include?

Hours, address and phone on every page, a text menu, a custom cake order form, allergens per item, an order-ahead link, a gallery of your own work, a holiday page with preorder deadlines, and Bakery schema.

What should a custom cake order form ask for?

The event date and time, number of servings, flavor, filling and frosting, design notes and writing, allergies, pickup or delivery, and contact details, with your lead time, deposit and cancellation terms shown next to it.

Does a bakery website have to list allergens?

Federal allergen labeling mainly covers packaged foods; the FDA excludes most unpackaged foods sold at retail or food service establishments. State and local rules can differ. Listing the nine major allergens per item is still good practice, because customers ask.

Which schema type should a bakery use?

Schema.org has a Bakery type under FoodEstablishment, and Google says to use the most specific LocalBusiness sub-type possible, so a bakery should use Bakery. A bakery with a cafe can describe the cafe with the department property.