I came across this awesome website design for JDawgs by Red Olive. What can I say that the site doesn’t already “say?” It’s just damn good through and through. The fact is, most restaurant websites are absolutely horrible. Mainly because everyone and their mother things everyone and their nephew can design and build a website for $100. Not the case at all and if you even think that you’re absolutely delusional. It’s not a matter of building the website; it’s HOW IT’S DONE. The difference between JDawgs and every other restaurant website is it blows parity out of the water. It’s not just a website. It’s an amazing experience that gets the mouth watering and accentuates the brand. Considering most folks look at a restaurant’s website before deciding to dine there, this is money well spent.

Click here to experience the JDawgs awesomeness

(more…)

This sets the bar high for restaurant websites. Not only is this site entirely accessible via iPad and other devices, it’s completely engaging. It tells a story and goes beyond just simple works on a page. The team at Push have gone way beyond the extra mile and set Smokey Bones out front of the other restaurant, heck any, website. Kudos to Smokey Bones for letting them do their job!

(more…)

The team at J Fletcher Design in Charleston, SC put together this simple rebrand and an amazing website for Poogan’s Porch, a lovely southern-style restaurant. This restaurant brand is centered on the website: it’s out of this world good. It’s classy, organized, well-designed, quickly loads, and it accentuates the brand of Poogan’s. This is how it should be done folks. Enjoy.

(more…)

The design studio, Craig and Karl, brings us this fantastic little restaurant branding package for the restaurant The Commons. What makes this pop is the strong black and white driven minimalistic illustrations that collectively create the graphic language for the brand itself. It says chic. It says classy. It says modern. The website is also well done with a unique take on map display as well as other unexpected delights.

(more…)

Hey, this is YOUR website. Why not have what YOU want on it? It’s a good argument and a tough one to overcome, but the bottom line is that YOUR website is built to attract THEM. Let’s not forget that very important fact. Although it should be about what they want, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t show them what they didn’t know they wanted. Make sense?

Things you should want to show them on your site:

(more…)

A restaurant’s website isn’t unlike other websites in that it needs to serve a number of functions at the same time. There’s a collision of the User’s Wants, Brand Wants, and Functionality/Accessibility.

Flash brings motion to pages and that motion/animation gets people pumped up. Sure, at first brush it’s great, but then you run into the problems of functionality and user wants. I’ll go into detail in another post, but for now, lets list what a user wants from your restaurant website.

(more…)

The Buccaneer restaurant branding work is an exercise in old style nautical cartography illustration. It’s reminiscent of pirate maps and times where ruling the sea meant ruling the world. The brand has a limited color palate allowing the illustration and typography do the work. Work done by Alvin Diec.

(more…)

Good ol’ Iron Hill Brewery. I first found this place in Lancaster, PA. The beer is pretty good and the food is even better. Another local brewmaster had said they stayed just a microbrew because it’s impossible to be both a restaurant and make a damn good beer. I beg to differ.

The logo for Iron Hill uses what designers would consider to be a retro typeface as it’s logotype, however, here it works well. The advertising and positioning puts IronHill in a fun, but still laid back voice. I love the puns and copy written for this place.

The graphic elements are done in a woodcut style illustration which help support the brand’s vibe, while continuing to build it’s visual repertoire.

Here’s how 160over90, the branding firm behind the design, writes about the project:

Enjoy a full-bodied Lodestone Lager or indulge in a crisp Salmon Spring Roll and you will understand Iron Hill stands for quality. This upscale micro-brew house is quickly becoming a regional powerhouse with multiple locations across the mid-Atlantic region and a slew of medals at the Great American Beer Festival. When it came time to create a brand that was as premium as its product, Iron Hill called on 160over90. Print and in-store executions were supported by broadcast that ran on MTV, ESPN, and CNN.

(more…)

After months of design and development we finally launched the website for central, PA’s sport bar gods, Aroogas! The site features a robust content management system, VIM, with modules spanning ecommerce, blog, events listings and so much more.

Check out the site at www.aroogas.com

Arooga’s Sports Bar & Grille has chosen Vigor, a restaurant branding firm to handle all marketing, interactive, advertising and branding initiatives for their three, and growing, locations. Be on the lookout for a new website in the coming month!