How to Back Up a Restaurant Website (BentoBox, Popmenu, Owner, SpotHopper)
Most restaurant websites come bundled with something else: online ordering, reservations, a marketing package. BentoBox, Popmenu, Owner, SpotHopper, and Toast all build and host the site as part of the service. That is convenient right up to the day you change vendors, when the site disappears with the contract.
At the time of writing, none of these vendors offer a download of the website. The copy has to come from the public pages.
What is worth keeping
- Menus. Menu pages as text and photos, and PDF menus linked from the site.
- Photos. The ones you paid for: the dining room, the dishes, the team.
- Hours, location, parking, and contact details, as published.
- The about page, press quotes, catering and private dining pages, which take real work to write.
Online ordering itself is the vendor's system, not a page. It does not copy and does not need to; the new vendor brings their own.
Method 1: save pages by hand
Open each page and use Save As. It works for a five-page site if someone remembers to do it, and the saved pages often look wrong because menu sections load with scripts.
Method 2: a monthly backup
Dead Simple Backups crawls the public site on the 1st of every month: every page as HTML, a full-page screenshot of each page, and the images, styles, fonts, and linked PDFs copied into a zip. It emails a private link, keeps 12 months, and needs no vendor login. When you switch vendors, the folder is what you hand the new one.
Paste your site's address on the restaurants page for a free backup of one page first; it takes a couple of minutes.
Who should own it
The backup email should go to the owner or general manager, at an address that belongs to the business, not to the agency or the vendor. Vendor logins drift with staff. The copy in your inbox does not need one.
Q: Does my restaurant website vendor keep a backup for me?
They keep the live site while you pay. None of the common vendors offer a download, and the site comes down when the contract ends.
Q: Will a backup include my online menu and ordering?
Menu pages and PDF menus, yes. The ordering system is not a page and is not included; the new vendor provides ordering.
Squarespace doesn't give you a copy of your site. We do: every public page, full-page screenshots, images and fonts, in your inbox on the 1st.
Back up my site free