Restaurant and hospitality
Harbour & Vine
Concept. An invented business, made to show how we would approach this sector. Not a client project. Real work is inthe work index.
Menu, hours and a table booking that works on a phone at 6pm, without a delivery platform taking a cut.
- The premise
- A neighbourhood restaurant whose entire online presence is a delivery-platform listing and an out-of-date Facebook page.
- Palette
Restaurants lose margin in two places online: to delivery platforms taking a percentage of every order, and to customers who cannot quickly find out whether the kitchen is open.
This concept answers both. Hours and phone number are the first thing on the page, because that is the question most people arrive with. The menu is real text so it can be read on a phone and found in a search. Booking goes direct.
The visual direction is warm and typographic rather than photographic, which matters practically: most independent restaurants do not have a budget for a food photographer, and stock food photography reads as inauthentic immediately.
Decisions
What we would do, and why.
Hours and phone above everything
The single most common restaurant search is someone deciding right now whether you are open. That answer sits at the top of the page, not three scrolls down behind a hero video.
The menu is text, not a PDF
A PDF menu cannot be read comfortably on a phone and cannot be indexed by Google. Real markup means dishes appear in search results and screen readers can read them.
Booking direct, not through a platform
Reservations go straight to the restaurant. No commission on a table the restaurant already earned.