How to get AI to
build me a website as a bar owner.

What you’ll be able to do

By the end of this you’ll have a proper website. Not a fancy one, just a working one, built from your phone, that has your actual menu on it (not last summer’s), your real opening hours, what’s on this week, and a button people can tap to book a table.

You don’t need to code. You don’t need to pay a designer to tell you it’ll be ready “in a few weeks”. You chat to an AI tool, it builds the site, you check it, you fix bits, done. The same way you’d update your Instagram between service, honestly.

Before you start

Get a few things ready before you open any tool. This bit matters more than it sounds.

You’ll want: your menu as actual text with prices (not a photo of the chalkboard, not a PDF someone made in 2019), your opening hours for every single day including the days you’re shut, a link to whatever booking system you use (OpenTable, ResDiary, SevenRooms, or just your phone number if that’s how people book now), and some decent photos. Real ones. The room, the drinks, the food, daylight and evening shots if you can manage it.

Here’s the bit people skip: Google and AI assistants like ChatGPT and Claude can’t read a screenshot. They can’t read a PDF menu properly either, not reliably. If your hours are baked into an image, or your menu’s a PDF someone photographed off a laminated sheet, the assistants are just guessing. And guessing means someone turns up on a Tuesday when you’re shut, annoyed, blaming you.

So the whole point of this guide is getting your hours and menu into plain text on a real webpage. That’s it. That’s the trick.

Get set up

I’d use Lovable for this. It builds websites through a chat conversation, you type what you want, it builds it, you can keep chatting to change bits. It publishes to a lovable.app address straight away, and you can point a custom domain at it later if you want one, like yourpubname.co.uk instead.

It runs on a credit system with a free tier, so check lovable.dev/pricing before you start rather than trusting me on numbers, because pricing changes and I don’t want to send you off with the wrong figure in your head.

The bit that matters for a bar or pub: once the site’s built, you can go back into Lovable’s editor from your phone browser and make small text changes. Update a price, fix a typo, change Sunday’s hours. You don’t need a laptop for the small stuff. That’s the whole appeal here, you’re already doing your Instagram from your phone at 11pm after a shift, this works the same way.

One more thing worth doing early: if you connect a GitHub account, the code behind your site is genuinely yours, not locked inside Lovable. Not essential for a one-page pub site, but good to know it’s there.

Now, the technical bit that actually solves the “assistants get my hours wrong” problem. When you ask Lovable to build the site, ask it to add schema.org structured data for your business, type BarOrPub or Restaurant, with something called openingHoursSpecification. This is invisible to a human looking at the page, but it’s the bit search engines and AI assistants actually read to work out when you’re open. Without it, they’re inferring from whatever text they can find and sometimes getting it wrong.

Your Google Business Profile (that’s the free listing that shows up when someone searches your bar’s name) needs to say the exact same hours. Both places. If they disagree, that’s when things go wrong, and I’ll come back to that.

Try it yourself

Here are three prompts. Copy them, change the bits in brackets, paste into Lovable’s chat.

This one builds the whole site:

Build a one-page website for [bar name] in [town]. Sections: hero photo with tonight's hours, opening hours for every day as a text table, the menu as text with prices (I will paste), what's on this week with dates, a Book a table button linking to [link], address with Google Maps link, Instagram link, tap-to-call number. Add schema.org BarOrPub structured data with the opening hours. Mobile first.

Once it’s built, you’ll want to keep the “what’s on” section fresh without rewriting it from scratch every week. This is the one you’ll actually use most:

Here is this week's Instagram caption. Turn it into a two-line what's-on entry with the date: [paste]

And when your hours change, and they will, bank holidays, staff shortages, whatever, use this rather than asking for a full rebuild:

Our Sunday hours change to 12-10pm from next week. Update the hours table and the structured data, nothing else.

That last bit, “nothing else”, is doing a lot of work. AI tools can be a bit eager and rewrite more than you asked for if you’re not specific. Keep your instructions narrow when you’re just tweaking.

A few things worth pasting in as you go: the actual menu text with prices, not a description of it. The actual booking link, copied and pasted, not typed from memory (you will get a digit wrong, I promise). And if you’ve got an “over 18s” line for anything, ID policy, that sort of thing, mention it explicitly so Lovable adds it somewhere sensible.

Check the result

Once it’s live, don’t just glance at it and assume it’s fine. Test it properly, it takes ten minutes.

Search your bar’s name on Google and look at what hours it shows in the results panel. Does it match what you actually do?

Open ChatGPT or Claude and ask, plainly: “what time does [your bar] open on Sunday?” See what comes back. If it’s wrong, that’s useful information, it tells you the assistant’s pulling from somewhere stale, maybe an old directory listing, maybe a mismatch between your site and your Google profile.

Then, on your actual phone, not a laptop, tap the booking button. Does it go where it should? Open the menu page. Can you read the prices without pinching to zoom? Is anything cut off at the edge of the screen?

Do this test again after any change you make. Small edits sometimes break layout in ways you won’t spot unless you actually look.

If it doesn’t work

A few common snags, and what to do about each.

Assistants keep showing old hours. Nine times out of ten this is because your website and your Google Business Profile don’t agree with each other. Fix both, at the same time, so they say the same thing. If you’ve got holiday hours coming up, Christmas Eve, New Year’s Day, set those on Google Business Profile too, don’t just change the site and assume Google will catch up.

Your menu’s still stuck as a PDF because that’s what the printer sent you. Paste the text from it (or type it out if the PDF’s a scan) and ask Lovable: “turn this into a text menu with the same sections and prices: [paste].” Takes two minutes, saves the confusion.

The photos look dark or muddy once they’re on the site, even though they looked fine on Instagram. Export brighter versions and keep them under roughly 2000 pixels on the long side, no need for anything bigger, it just slows the page down.

Now, the bit that matters more than any of the above: don’t paste customer data into an AI chat. Ever. If you’re using a booking tool, OpenTable, ResDiary, whatever, that tool holds people’s names, numbers, email addresses. Your website shouldn’t hold any of that, and neither should your chat with Lovable. Don’t copy a booking list in “just to show the AI the format”. Don’t upload customer photos without asking the people in them first, even if they’re regulars, even if they looked happy in the photo. If in doubt, leave it out and ask.

On the subject of being found properly: once your site’s live, the next thing that shapes how people find you is reviews.

Keep exploring

“How to get AI to recommend my business” is the next one: what assistants actually look at when someone asks them for a pub near the station. “How to get AI to write a social post” turns the weekly specials into posts without starting from a blank page every time, and “How to get AI to build me a website” covers the other routes if a one-pager grows into more.

Sources and review notes

https://lovable.dev/pricing https://support.google.com/business/ https://schema.org/BarOrPub https://schema.org/openingHoursSpecification

Review date: 2026-09-16

Disclosure: ReviewNudge and hilyt are our products — this site is made by the same studio, Adapt Progress Evolve. We have tried to compare fairly, and the alternatives named are real and worth a look.