Answers
Is building websites for coffee shops a business?
Building café websites is my business, so read this as coming from an interested party. The gap is real and much bigger than you think. Of 77 independent Dublin cafés I read on 20 September 2026, 62 had no site of their own on their Google listing. The demand is a different question, and it is the one that decides whether this is a business. By the end of 22 September 2026 I had built 18 finished café websites in Dublin, sent 15 of them to the owner with the live link and nothing to sign, and not one had paid.
Where the question came from
A software engineer asked it on r/Entrepreneur: lots of cafés, boba shops and bakeries near him with no formal website, is that a need he could fill. A student asked a related question on r/smallbusiness in April. Both threads answered with opinions about whether cafés need websites. Neither answered the question that was asked, which is whether cafés buy them.
Worth saying twice: this is my business, so I am the last person you should take on trust. Everything below is a number you can check or a thing that happened to me, and the numbers are not flattering.
The supply side, counted
On 20 September 2026 I read the Google listing of 77 independent Dublin cafés, roasters and coffee carts, 24,599 Google ratings between them: 35 had nothing in the website field, 15 pointed it at Instagram, 12 at Facebook and 15 at a site of their own, so on that date four in five had no site of their own. Method and limits here, CSV here.
That is the number that makes this look like an open field, and it is the number that fooled me first. Here is the correction I had to publish about my own earlier count.
| Group, on 20 September 2026 | Shops | With a site of their own |
|---|---|---|
| Shops I had already built a sample site for | 16 | 0% |
| Shops I had never contacted | 61 | 24.6% |
In a guide published on 16 September 2026 I had counted fourteen shops, found zero websites, and published it. Of course I had: I pick shops that look like they have no website, so my list was assembled by the sales pitch it was meant to support. On 20 September 2026 a quarter of the shops I had never gone near had one. If you count your own prospect list you will get the same flattering answer I did.
The demand side, which is the part nobody posts about
I did not pitch. I built the whole site first, six pages, real menu, real hours, an admin panel the owner can use, hosted and live, then sent the owner the link with nothing to sign. That was meant to remove the objections about risk and effort in one move, which is the strongest version of the offer I could think of. It does not remove the cost: the site is free to look at and €690 to keep.
By the end of 22 September 2026, eighteen sites had been built: fifteen sent, and three more finished and waiting to go out; one owner had replied to say no, fourteen had not replied at all, and nobody had paid. That is the whole of it, and I would rather write it down than let somebody enter this market on the strength of the 80% figure alone.
What the silence has taught me, in order of how much it cost to learn:
- An empty website field may not be unmet demand. My read, and it is a read rather than something I counted, is that it is usually a decision: the shop has looked at it and concluded the trade walks past the door. I have not asked them, and neither has anybody else I can find.
- The buyer may be hard to reach at the counter. The person who decides is the owner and the owner is making coffee. That is an explanation I am inferring from the unanswered emails, not one anybody has confirmed to me.
- Sending it finished did not move anybody. By 22 September 2026 fifteen owners had been sent their own finished site, free to look at and €690 to keep, and none had bought it. Silence cannot tell me whether the blocker is the price or something before the price. My bet is the second: changing anything is a job, and a website is a job with no deadline. That is a bet, not a finding.
- The good version of this business may not be the website at all. I think it is the maintenance nobody wants to do: hours at Christmas, the menu when the price of oat milk moves, the bank holiday. That is a subscription rather than a build, and I have not proved it either.
If you are deciding whether to do this
Do not take the empty-listing count as a market size. It is a supply figure and it tells you nothing about whether anyone will pay. Before you build anything, go and ask ten owners what they would pay to never think about their opening hours again, and take the answer to that seriously rather than the answer to "do you need a website".
And if you are in a subreddit doing that research, read the sidebar first. r/smallbusiness's automod tells people not to conduct market research on the community and asks that a company name sit in your profile rather than in the comment. r/Entrepreneur's automod bans promotion and AI-generated posts and comments, with a permanent ban attached. Neither welcomes a stranger arriving to size up a market. Both welcome answering somebody else's question with something you actually know, which is what this page is.
Questions
- How many cafés have no website?
- In a count of 77 independent Dublin cafés, roasters and carts on 20 September 2026, 62 had no website of their own on their Google listing, which is 80.5%.
- Will a café pay for a website?
- Not readily, on my evidence. By the end of 22 September 2026 I had built 18 in Dublin and sent 15, and none had converted to a paying customer. One studio in one city is a thin sample. It is also a real one, so do not plan on an easy yes.
- Is spec work a good way in?
- On my evidence it gets nothing bought. I cannot tell you whether it gets the site looked at, because at the end of 22 September 2026 fourteen of the fifteen owners had not replied, and I do not track opens. It has not bought me an answer about why not either: by the end of 22 September 2026 the one owner who had declined gave no reason.
- What would you sell instead?
- My bet is the upkeep rather than the build, on the guess that the recurring pain is a wrong opening time on a bank holiday rather than the absence of a homepage. I have not proved that, and nobody has confirmed it to me.
- How much do café websites cost in Ireland?
- Read on 14 September 2026, Irish sellers' published packages ran from €60 a year to packages starting at €1,499. One seller's price guide, published in 2025, puts the overall range at €500 to €5,000. The comparison, with sources, is here.