The deli’s customer is hungry now. It is ten to one, they have forty minutes, and they type “deli near me” or “sandwiches Smithfield” and look at the three names Google puts on the map. They decide on three things: are you open, what is on the menu and roughly what does it cost, and is the queue out the door. The page cannot help with the queue. It can win the other two, and that is what websites for delis in Dublin are for.
We build and run the page, get the Google listing right, and send you a short report each month. You keep the counter moving.
The map decides lunch
When someone searches for food near where they are standing, Google shows three listings above everything else, and it picks them on how relevant, how close and how well known each one is. Your Business Profile is the whole of your entry: the right category (delicatessen, sandwich shop, or both), a photo of the counter rather than a logo, the hours, and a link to a menu Google can read. A deli with a complete listing beats one with a blank card even when the blank card’s sandwiches are better. We explain the three things Google weighs in what local SEO is, without the jargon.
Hours do more damage than anything else. Delis open early for the breakfast roll trade and close mid-afternoon, keep different Saturday hours and shut on Sundays and bank holidays. If the listing says nine to five, people arrive at half four to a locked door and you get the one-star review for it. We set the real hours and show you how to change them in the time it takes to lock up.
The menu, the specials board and the cheese counter
The sandwich menu goes on the page as text, with prices: the breakfast roll, the chicken fillet roll, the hot options from the counter, the salads, the soup of the day, the coffee. Not a photo of the board, because Google cannot read a photo and a customer cannot read one on a phone in the rain.
The specials board changes daily, so the page has a short “today” line that you edit from the shop before service. The person who types “soup and sandwich deal near me” gets today’s answer, not last month’s.
If you keep a proper counter (cheeses, cured meats, olives, the Italian imports), list what you keep in plain words. Nobody searches for a mood. They search “where can I buy nduja in Dublin” or “Irish farmhouse cheese near me”, and a plain list is what Google and the AI assistants answer those with. A photo of a sandwich cut in half, the counter mid-morning and the shop front are the three pictures every deli needs, and a phone in daylight takes them fine.
Ordering ahead, platters for the office and the Christmas hamper
The call button sits beside the menu, with a line like “ring before twelve and it is bagged when you arrive”. That turns the lunchtime phone from an interruption into orders you can make up in the gap.
Platters are a different customer. An office manager wants a page that lists the options (a sandwich platter for ten, salads, fruit, pastries), a from-price, the lead time (order by three for tomorrow) and the delivery area, with a form that collects the date, the numbers and the address. It lands in your email and on WhatsApp, and you confirm it from the shop. From November, the same page carries the Christmas hampers, the order deadline and the collection days.
Ten minutes and the menu
What we need: the menu with prices, your hours for weekdays, Saturdays and bank holidays, the platter options with lead times and delivery area, whether you take card, a dozen photos and who answers the phone. Ten minutes at a table before the rush does it.
The cost for a deli
Essentials is the plan for most delis: €499 to set up and €50 a month, with the Google listing set up properly, as described in the guide to setting up a Google Business Profile in Ireland. Complete at €1,499 and €100 a month adds card payments for platters, Christmas vouchers, a review text after each order and the chat box. Both are compared on the pricing page. If your deli is as much a coffee stop as a counter, the cafes page may be the closer fit.