Why Restaurant Groups Need Wordpress Multisite

Running websites for a restaurant group is messy if you’re using separate installs for each location or brand. Whether you’ve got a dozen pizza shops or three completely different restaurant concepts, you're probably updating the same things over and over, juggling logins, and praying nothing gets missed. It’s a huge time suck, especially if your job is to focus on marketing, not babysitting websites.

That’s why we build restaurant group websites using WordPress Multisite.

Here’s a look at what that actually means. This is the dashboard we set up for one of our restaurant group clients. From this single screen, you can see every location or brand under the same login and switch between them instantly. Currently, there are 49 restaurants managed by this one multisite.

What is WordPress Multisite?

It’s one WordPress install that runs every site in your group. Instead of having six different dashboards, you get one login, one place to manage everything. You can still have individual domains, unique pages, different content, and different users per site, but it’s all connected behind the scenes.

You’re not managing six websites. You’re managing one system.

What It’s Like for a Marketing Manager

Update Once, Not Six Times

Say you’re running a Thanksgiving promotion and need to add a banner and change your hours on every site. If your websites are separate, that’s six different edits, six different spots to find that image, six different times to double-check your work.

With Multisite, you can do it from one place. If the header or footer is shared across all the sites, it’s one update. Done. If the sites are unique, it’s still easier - you can switch between them without logging in and out, and everything is set up the same way, so you’re not guessing where to find things.

For example, if you’ve got a promotion banner in the header that runs across every location’s site, you can edit it once here, and it’ll show up everywhere. No duplicate edits. No risk of missing one.

You get your afternoon back.

One Place to Manage Users

Each site in your group might need different people to have access. A general manager might need to edit their menu or post events, but you probably don’t want them messing with design or SEO settings.

Multisite gives you one screen to manage all users across all locations. You can give your South Philly GM access to just their site, and give your assistant access to all of them. It cuts down on login issues, makes offboarding faster, and helps avoid problems like shared passwords or people editing the wrong site.

Shared Tools, One Setup

If you use the same plugins on every site—like online ordering, a reservation widget, or a contact form plugin—you only have to install and configure them once. From there, you can enable them per site as needed.

No more wondering why the contact form plugin works on four sites but not the fifth. No more trying to remember which version of a plugin is installed where. Everything is consistent, which makes your life easier and cuts down on bugs.

Here’s a quick peek at how we handle plugins across the network. You don’t have to worry about five different versions of the same tool running on different sites. We set it up once and use it everywhere.

A Real-World Example

One of our clients had seven different restaurants with seven separate WordPress installs. Their marketing team was spending hours monthly just doing upkeep: changing hours, updating menus, fixing outdated promo banners, checking for broken links, and swapping out images across multiple dashboards.

Once we moved them to Multisite, that work dropped to under two hours a month. They could make changes across the board quickly, and the risk of missing something went way down. No more copying and pasting the same paragraph into six different editors. No more guessing which site still had an outdated event flyer on the homepage.

You Still Get Full Control Over Each Site

Even though everything’s managed in one place, each restaurant can still look and feel unique. You can have one site with a dark, moody design and another that’s bright and fun. Each site can have its own voice, own menus, own pages.

The difference is you’re not rebuilding the wheel every time. We use the same solid base and then customize from there. That means faster launches, less technical debt, and a setup that actually makes sense if you’re planning to grow.