Boards and Grazing Tables: Making a Charcuterie Business Website

You can build a charcuterie website in one sitting if you plan it around one visitor: a host with a date, a headcount and a worry about who is coming. Show your boards with sizes and prices, take grazing table requests through an enquiry form, state your lead times and delivery area, and name every allergen plainly. Add real photos of real spreads.

• Allergens matter on a board, and the US FDA lists nine major food allergens: milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans and sesame. FDA: Food Allergies
• Fake reviews are banned in the US: a rule announced on 14 August 2024 covers fake or misleading reviews and testimonials. FTC announcement
• Google indexes the mobile version of your site, so the phone view is the one that counts. Google: mobile-first indexing
• The sample, Graze and Gather Boards, was built with 6 pages in 44 seconds, and you can click through it as a charcuterie business website example. Graze and Gather Boards sample page

What must a charcuterie website do for the people who visit it?

It must help a host choose a board or table, check the date works, and order without a phone call.

Think about who arrives. Someone is hosting a birthday, a baby shower, an office lunch or a wedding welcome drinks. They have a date and a number of guests. They want to know what you sell, how much it costs, how far ahead to order and whether you deliver to them.

Most visitors decide on a phone, often while scrolling through messages about the party. They look at photos first. Then they look for a price. Then they look for a date. If any of those three is missing or hard to find, they go to the next business in the search results.

Your site also has two kinds of customer in one place. One wants a ready-made board and will buy it today. The other is planning a grazing table for forty people and wants to talk. A good site serves both without making either feel like they are in the wrong queue. Boards get prices and a buy path. Tables get an enquiry form and a promise about when you reply.

Write down the three questions you answer most often by message. They are almost always the same ones: how much, how many does it feed, and can you do it on this date. Those three answers should sit on the pages a visitor reaches first. Everything else on the site supports them.

Which pages does a charcuterie website need?

Six pages cover it: home, boards, shop, how it works, about and contact.

You do not need a large site. You need a clear one. Graze and Gather Boards, the fictional charcuterie business behind the sample for this guide, has six pages, and each has one job. You can click through all of them on the live sample website.

Page	What it must do	Where to see it on the sample
Home	Show your best spread and point to boards and enquiries	Home
Our Boards	List sizes, prices and dietary options	Our Boards
Shop	Let a visitor buy a ready board	Shop
How It Works	Explain lead times, collection and delivery	How It Works
About	Show who makes the boards and how	About
Contact	Take event enquiries and show how you reply	Contact

The order matters. A visitor who lands on the home page should reach boards in one tap, and from boards reach the order or enquiry in one more. Keep the menu short. Six items fit on a phone without hiding anything.

You may be tempted to add a page for every occasion: weddings, corporate, birthdays, holidays. Resist that until you have real photos for each. A thin page with stock images does more harm than no page. Start with six, and add an occasion page later when you have a real spread to show for it.

What should the home page say?

It should show your best board, say what you make in one line, and send the visitor to boards or an enquiry.

The sample's home page opens with the headline "Boards worth gathering around". Its sections run in a sensible order: Our boards, what to expect, words from customers, a short enquiry form and the contact details. A visitor can get all the way from first look to a sent message without leaving the page.

Lead with a photograph of a finished spread, taken from above or at a slight angle, in daylight. Do not use a glossy stock image of a board you did not make. Hosts can tell, and this trade runs on trust in what arrives at the door. If you only have phone photos, use those. Clean, bright and real beats polished and borrowed.

Under the photo, say what you make and where. One sentence is enough: boards and boxes for small gatherings, grazing tables for events, delivered or collected in your area. Name the area. A visitor in another city should know within seconds that you are not for them, and a local one should know they are in the right place.

Then give two clear paths. One button for ordering a board. One for asking about an event. Do not give six choices. A host with a date in mind wants to be told where to click.

How do you present boards, boxes and prices?

Give each board a name, a size in guests, what is on it, a price and any dietary options.

Sizes are the first thing a host wants. "Serves 4 to 6" is more useful than "medium". Say how many people the board feeds as a starter and how many as a main. If you sell boxes for one or two people, list them the same way. The sample's Our Boards page is built this way, with sections for sizes and dietary needs, and one for finding the right board for an occasion.

Write what is on each board in plain words: which cured meats, which cheeses, what fruit, nuts, crackers, spreads and pickles. Do not hide behind "a selection of premium items". Hosts compare, and they want to picture the table. If something changes with the season, say so and say what stays fixed.

Put the price next to the size, always. If a price depends on choices, such as a vegetarian swap or a cheese upgrade, show the base price and the extra cost. A price list that says "contact us" for boards loses orders, because the visitor cannot compare you with anyone else. Keep "contact us" for grazing tables, where the cost really does depend on guests, venue and date.

Offer a short "find the right board for your occasion" section. Four or five lines are enough: a quiet evening in, a dinner party, a family gathering, an office lunch. It saves the visitor from doing arithmetic and nudges them to a bigger board than they would have chosen alone.

How should grazing tables and event enquiries work?

Use an enquiry form that asks for the date, guest count, venue and dietary needs, and promise a reply time.

A grazing table is not an add-to-basket purchase. It depends on how many guests, how long the event runs, how big the table is, whether you set up on site and where the venue is. So the page should invite a conversation and make that conversation easy to start.

The form should ask only what you need to give a first quote: name, email or phone, event date, number of guests, venue or area, type of event, any allergies or dietary needs, and an open text box for anything else. Short forms get sent. Long ones get abandoned on a phone.

Tell the visitor what happens next. The sample's Contact page has sections for sending an enquiry, how the business responds and what to say if the request is something specific. Say how soon you reply, for example within one working day, and what you will send back: a quote, a suggested spread, questions about the venue. Only promise a timing you will keep.

The sample's How It Works page also has a section on custom and event orders. That is the right home for the details that do not fit a price list: minimum guest numbers, set-up time, what you provide, what the venue must provide and whether you take back your equipment.

Where it helps, add a booking step. In AI Web Maker the Booking Manager lists each bookable service with its length, a visitor picks a service, a day and a time, and the owner accepts or moves the request. For a charcuterie business that can suit a tasting or a planning call before a large event.

How do you handle ordering, lead times and delivery?

State how far ahead to order, when you collect or deliver, which areas you cover and what delivery costs.

Lead times are where charcuterie orders go wrong. A host who orders on Friday for Saturday needs to know at once whether that is possible. Put the rule in plain words on the How It Works page: how many days ahead you need for a board, how many for a table, and what happens at busy times such as Christmas and Valentine's week. The sample sets this out as a path from first enquiry to the finished board, then a list of what to have ready.

Tell visitors what to have ready before they order: the date, the time they want the board, the number of guests, the address, any allergies and a phone number for the day. It saves a round of messages and makes your reply faster.

Be exact about collection and delivery. Give your collection address or area, your collection hours and your delivery zones. If you charge by distance, say how. If you do not deliver tables, say you set up on site and what you need from the venue. A vague "we deliver locally" produces enquiries from people you cannot serve.

Explain how to pay. Say whether a deposit holds the date, when the balance is due and what happens if the host changes the headcount or cancels. Write it in short, plain sentences. Policies that sound harsh can read as fair when they are short and clear. If you take online orders for ready boards on the Shop page, show the pickup or delivery slot choice at checkout so nobody pays for a date you cannot meet.

What do you say about allergens and food safety?

Name the allergens on every board, offer clear dietary options, and tell hosts to say about any allergy before ordering.

Allergens are the most serious thing on a charcuterie site. A board holds cheese, nuts, wheat crackers, fish and sometimes sesame, all close together. The US Food and Drug Administration says that food allergic reactions vary from mild symptoms to severe, life threatening ones, and that food allergies currently cannot be cured. It also says early recognition and learning which foods to avoid are important. FDA: Food Allergies

The same page names nine major food allergens in the US: milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans and sesame. Use that list as your checklist. For each board, say which of the nine it contains. FDA labeling rules apply to packaged foods, and what applies to a made-to-order board depends on where you trade, so check your local food authority. Your website is where you tell the host, before they pay, what is in the box.

Do not promise what you cannot guarantee. If your kitchen handles nuts, wheat and dairy, say it is not an allergen-controlled space, and describe what you do to reduce cross-contact. Add a line asking hosts to tell you about any allergy when they order, and to tell you again if guests change. The sample's Our Boards page has a section on sizes and dietary needs for this reason.

Food safety for meat and cheese varies by country and by region, and the sources for this guide do not set out those rules. So write about your own practice in plain words: how you keep boards cold, how long they can sit out, when to eat them. Then check the rules with your local food safety authority. Rules differ by place, and this is general information, not legal advice.

How does a charcuterie website earn trust?

It shows real boards, real makers and honest reviews, and it is open about allergens, prices and timing.

Food bought online and delivered to a party is a trust purchase. The host is staking their event on you. Three things build that trust fastest.

First, real photos. Show boards you made, on tables, at events. Show them close up so the meats and cheeses are clear. Where you can, photograph the same board at its smallest and largest size so a host sees what they are really buying.

Second, people. The sample's About page tells the story behind the business, how a board is prepared and what to expect when you work together. Hosts want to know who is putting the board together and how careful they are. A short, honest account does more than a paragraph of praise.

Third, reviews. Use only genuine ones from real customers. The US Federal Trade Commission announced a final rule on 14 August 2024, in force from 21 October 2024, banning fake or misleading consumer reviews and testimonials, such as reviews by people who do not exist or who had no real experience with the business. FTC announcement In the UK, since April 2025, the law bans posting or commissioning fake reviews, and the CMA can fine a company up to 10% of its global turnover. UK government Rules differ by place, so check your own regulator.

A note on the sample: Graze and Gather Boards is fictional, so its people, reviews, prices and contact details are invented. Yours must be real. Ask each happy customer if you may quote their message, and keep the original.

How do you make it work for every visitor?

Design for the phone first, keep pages quick, and make text, images and forms usable by everyone.

Most hosts will open your site on a phone. Google uses the mobile version of a site's content for indexing and ranking, so the phone view is the one that counts. Google: mobile-first indexing Check every page on a real phone. Buttons should be easy to tap, prices easy to read and the enquiry form easy to fill with one thumb.

Photos make a charcuterie site heavy, so keep them to a sensible size and show the best few rather than twenty. A slow page loses the host who is busy with a list of other tasks.

Accessibility is part of the same job. The US Department of Justice's guidance of 18 March 2022 says Title III of the ADA prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities by businesses open to the public. It names the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines as helpful technical standards and lists common barriers: poor colour contrast, colour alone used to give information, images without alt text, videos without captions, inaccessible online forms and mouse-only navigation. ADA web guidance WCAG 2.2, the current version, became a W3C Recommendation in October 2023. WCAG 2.2

For you, that means a few simple habits. Describe every board photo in a short alt text, such as "Large board with salami, brie, grapes and crackers". Keep text dark on a light background. Do not mark dietary options by colour alone; write "vegetarian" or "contains nuts" in words. Label every form field. Make sure the whole site works with a keyboard.

How do local customers find a charcuterie business online?

Through a Google Business Profile with your real details, a site that names your area, and genuine photos and reviews.

Most hosts search for something like "charcuterie boards near me" or "grazing table for a party", then look at a map and a few photos. So being found is mostly local.

Start with your Google Business Profile. Google's guidelines ask a business to represent itself as it is consistently represented and recognised in the real world: its real name, address, phone number and hours. Google Business Profile guidelines Use the same name, phone number and area on your website, your profile and your social pages. If you work from a home kitchen and do not take visitors, check how the guidelines treat your case before you publish an address.

Say your area in the words of the site. "Charcuterie boards and grazing tables delivered across [your town] and the nearby villages" tells people and search engines where you work. Put it on the home page, the How It Works page and the Contact page.

Google supports LocalBusiness structured data, which can tell Google a business's hours, departments and other details. LocalBusiness structured data Add it if your builder allows it.

Finally, write for people. Google's ranking systems are designed to prioritise helpful, reliable information created to benefit people, not content made mainly to rank in search. Google: helpful content A clear page on how far ahead to order helps a host and helps your visibility in the same breath. If you want a quick check on the technical side, AI Website SEO Tools looks at the pages of any website for problems that keep it out of search results and says how to fix each one.

How do you build it with AI Web Maker, step by step?

Start on the homepage with your name and a short description, then edit every page before you go live.

Here is the path, in order. Look through the finished sample before you start, so you know what you are aiming for.

1. Go to the AI Web Maker builder and enter your business name, an email, a phone number and a short description. Mention boards, boxes, grazing tables and your area.
2. Watch the website build. AI Web Maker plans the pages, writes the words, chooses the photos and sets up booking, enquiry forms or a shop where you need them. The sample took 44 seconds for 6 pages.
3. Open the editor and change the words, photos, sections, services, prices and hours. Replace every placeholder with your real boards, sizes and prices.
4. Swap in your own photographs of your own spreads. This is the single biggest improvement you can make.
5. Add your allergen notes, lead times, collection and delivery details and payment terms to the right pages.
6. Set up the enquiry form for events, and the booking or shop path for ready boards.
7. Preview everything on a phone and on a computer. Read it as a host with a date in three weeks.
8. Go live when you are happy.

Building and previewing cost nothing. Going live costs $119 a year of hosting, and the domain name is paid separately. Optional AI work, such as extra blog posts, is paid with credits of about $0.65 each. You can try the whole build before you spend anything.

Frequently asked questions

How many pages does a charcuterie website need?

Six are enough to start: home, boards, shop, how it works, about and contact. Each does one job, and a visitor can move from the first look to an order or enquiry in a few taps. Add pages for particular occasions later, once you have real photos of those events. A small, clear site beats a large, thin one.

Should I put prices on the website?

Yes, for boards and boxes. Put the price beside the size, and show extra costs for upgrades or swaps. For grazing tables, give a starting point if you can, and invite an enquiry for the full quote, because the cost depends on guests, venue and date.

What should I say about allergens?

Name which of the major allergens each board contains, and offer clear dietary options. The FDA lists nine major food allergens, including milk, tree nuts, wheat, fish and sesame. Say plainly if your kitchen handles them together, and ask hosts to tell you about any allergy when they order. Check your local food authority for the rules where you trade.

Can I use reviews on my charcuterie website?

Yes, if they are real. Fake or misleading reviews are banned in the US under the FTC rule, and in the UK under law in force since April 2025. Quote only customers who actually bought from you, and keep the original message. Rules differ by place, so check your own regulator.

How do I get found by people near me?

Set up a Google Business Profile with your real name, phone number and hours. Say your delivery area in the words of your site, and use the same details everywhere. Add real photos and ask happy customers for honest reviews. Local search rewards a business that is clearly real and clearly nearby.

What should you do this week?

Spend this week gathering the material, then build in one sitting.

On day one, list your boards and boxes with a size in guests, a price and the contents. On day two, write your lead times, collection and delivery details and payment terms in plain sentences. On day three, photograph your best three spreads in daylight, and note the allergens on each.

On day four, write the answers to the three questions hosts ask most. On day five, ask two or three happy customers if you may quote their kind words. Keep the original messages.

Then open the AI Web Maker builder, enter your details and let it build the first version. Click through the Graze and Gather Boards sample first if you want a picture of the finish line. Edit each page with your real words and photos, check it on your phone and publish when it answers the host's three questions on the first screen.