Free static site generator for small restaurants and cafes
11 comments
·December 2, 2025davisr
fullstacking
To be fair this project uses zero 3rd party npm modules for runtime. The total runtime JS it uses is 1.76kB in size.
hunter2_
I agree with no JS, but why PDF over HTML? Hard-wrapping for letter-sized paper (ok, a PDF doesn't need to be letter-sized, but most menus are approximately that) with crapshoot reflow options for soft-wrapping in certain viewer apps is pretty dicey on a phone, mitigated only slightly by rotating the phone sideways.
The only benefit I can think of is if it leads to more frequent updates by the restaurant, due to limited skillset.
dugmartin
I agree. There are lots of free AstroJS themes for restaurants that generate static html that you can host somewhere like Firebase hosting for free.
- https://astro.build/themes/details/astropie/
- https://astro.build/themes/details/astrorante/
- https://astro.build/themes/details/tastyyy-restaurant-websit...
adzm
I love Astro; there is so much you can do with it.
mvdtnz
No one is browsing the internet without JS today (within margin of error). Whether or not this "should" be the case, it is.
stronglikedan
A PDF can't get the user halfway through the delivery process before seeing the soups.
cess11
The soup shows for me without JS.
codewritinfool
Link at the bottom of your example page results in 404. For me, anyway.
fullstacking
ah yeah, sorry work in progress. There is a link to the repo https://github.com/Local-Cafe/localcafe-lite
hunter2_
I'm getting NXDOMAIN, and various online resolution tools [0] show the same.
[0] https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=a%3alocalcafe.or...
No one should need JS to see the soups when that could be handled perfectly fine with CSS. I wish restaurants would just make their homepage a PDF of the menu.