Free Restaurant WordPress Theme - Setup Guide

FAQFree Restaurant WordPress Theme - Setup Guide

How to install our free restaurant WordPress theme

Upload and activate the theme:

  • In your admin panel, go to Appearance> Themes and click the Add New button
  • Click Upload and Choose File, then select the theme's .zip file. Click Install Now
  • Click Activate to use your new theme right away

How to install the required plugins

There are 2 plugins, both free, that this restaurant WordPress theme uses. One helps with the import of the demo content and the other one connects the GloriaFood ordering system.

  • In you admin panel, go to Appearance > Install Plugins
  • Select both plugins and from Bulk actions switch to Install and click Apply
  • When the installation finishes, go back to Install Plugins.
  • Select both plugins and from Bulk actions switch to Activate and click Apply.

How to import demo content and settings

If you didn’t download your demo content yet, get it now from here.

  • In your admin panel, go to Appearance > Import Demo Data (Note: this option shows only if you have installed the One Click Demo Import plugin, as recommended in the previous step).
  • Unzip the demo content and upload the 3 files: .xml, .wie and .dat
  • Click Import Demo Data and wait until you see the confirmation messages when done.
how to import demo data

One final step, adjust your homepage settings:

  • In you admin panel, go to Appearance > Homepage Settings
  • Make sure your homepage displays is set to a static page
  • From the Homepage dropdown select Home
  • Publish your changes.
set your homepage to static page

Having done that, your website should look just like in our demo.

How to edit your content

Homepage

In this theme, the homepage is a big widgetable area. Each section that you see below the header image is a widget.

how to edit homepage widgets

This means that when you want to:

  • add/remove sections -- you just need to add or remove widgets in the Homepage widgetable area
  • edit a section -- you edit the corresponding widget.

You can edit your widgets from Appearance > Widgets (as shown in the above image) or from within the Customizer (Appearance > Customize > Widgets > Homepage).

widgets from homepage area - customizer gloriafood theme

Note: if you are not seeing the Homepage widget area in the Customizer, make sure that in the Homepage Settings, your homepage is set to static page.

GloriaFood widgets

We have implemented 3 widgets that will help you create a beautiful homepage for your website:

GloriaFood - Text and Image: This widget makes it easy for you to add a website section that contains text on the left and visuals on the right. You can choose between one landscape image or two tall images.

gloriafood text and image widget - free wp theme for restaurants

GloriaFood - Promo Cards: We’ve made it easy for you to show the restaurant’s promotions. Just fill in the form, the styling is covered. Also, no need to worry about the cards layout: they promos will always look good, no matter how many you have (1 to max 6).

gloriafood promo cards widget - free wordpress theme for restaurants

GloriaFood - Photo Gallery: We didn’t reinvent the wheel here. Just made sure that we make the most (layout-wise) of the food images that should go here.

gloriafood photo gallery widget - free restaurant theme wp

The photos that come with our demo content are under free license from Pexels and Unsplash. Feel free to keep them.

When you add your own photos, it’s important that you:

  • Resize the images. Your gallery photos are shown on 374x249px. Your photos should not be a lot bigger than this, otherwise your website will load really slow and will rank low in Google. For background images you need images that are 1600-1900 px width.
  • Optimize them. There are a lot of tools that help you compress files.

How to setup food ordering and table reservations

This free wordpress restaurant theme comes with a plugin: GloriaFood. This plugin is needed to integrate the GloriaFood ordering and reservation widgets. If you did not install it yet, please do it now.

GloriaFood is an online ordering system that allows restaurants to take free online orders and table reservations. Easy setup, no contracts, no installation fees or commissions. Learn more here.

In order to use the system, you need to create an account, set up the restaurant profile and insert the food menu:

  • From your admin panel, go to GloriaFood and sign up

    create a GloriaFood account
  • You will land in your restaurant dashboard, which gives you quick access to everything you need to do next

    how to create a GloriaFood account
  • Click on Start the setup to set up your restaurant account in the GloriaFood platform

    start setting up GloriaFood admin
  • In the restaurant dashboard, go ahead with inserting the menu. The publishing step is automatically handled by the theme.

    set up online ordering delivery zones
  • Refresh your website and click on the See Menu & Order button. You will see your menu popping up and you will be able to place your first order (provided that you did complete your restaurant profile as described above).

    configure food menu for online ordering

One more thing: you can also publish the restaurant menu on a WordPress page of your choice.

  • From your WordPress admin panel, go to Appearance > Customize > Restaurant config

    how food ordering menu looks like for the food client
  • Under Menu page, choose the page where the food menu should be displayed. You will get this:

    food menu is automatically published on the menu page

Once you connect the GloriaFood ordering system, the buttons will use the style as defined in the plugin. You can customize them, of course, from within the plugin.

  • In your WordPress admin panel, go to GloriaFood > Settings and hit Customize next to the button you wish to change
  • Change the style as you see fit and click Save.

    how to customize the online ordering button