Recently, I’ve noticed a change in the kind of websites restaurants have. Gone are the Instagram redirects and janky WordPress templates with out-of-date menus, and in their place are sleekly designed homepages. In my pre-dinner research sessions, I’ve found myself marvelling at cute stencil fonts while reading opening times, and getting lost in infinite scrolls of tastefully lit artichoke hearts and well-executed white space. Between complimentary colour blocks of powder pink and muted yellow, I find “Contact Us” pages with line drawn maps that look like something you’d get stick-and-poked onto your forearm at a Dalston tattoo studio. I forget that I’m looking up a pasta place in Clerkenwell, not a Berlin creative agency. In short, restaurant websites have really glowed up lately.I’ve found myself marvelling at cute stencil fonts while reading opening times, and getting lost in infinite scrolls of tastefully lit artichoke hearts.
Bright, a wine bar and restaurant in East London, uses blocks of colour and carefully chosen photos. Screengrabs courtesy Bright.
As the influence of print restaurant reviews declines, more and more of us now research new places to eat via social media, with a reported 30 percent of 18- to 25-year-olds saying they would avoid a restaurant if its Instagram presence was weak. Online branding has therefore never been more important for restaurateurs, meaning that their websites have a big job to do.“Our approach [to designing a website] has to be really measured and quite paired back, because a it’s often the first thing that someone engages with when it comes to their experience of a restaurant,” Lidgett says, giving the example of the Two Lights site he and his team worked on. A classic of the Pretty Restaurant Website genre, it features a lot of pastel and evocative photography.“This idea was to incorporate photography that suggested memory and was abstract enough so that it was completely open to interpretation, but alluded to Chase [Lovecky, Two Lights head chef]’s journeys and all these experiences that would inform his menu,” he explains. “When it came to the graphic side, it was about picking elements that you feel are going to be complementary to the photography. It could have been any number of colours, but pastels felt like they had a softness that went against the photography.”"People know that they’ve got to work a lot harder to sustain their business. Branding plays an increasing role in that."
Two Lights, a new restaurant in East London, uses evocative imagery on its website. Screengrabs courtesy Two Lights.
Restaurant and wine bar Jolene uses a distinctive logo on its website. Screengrab courtesy Jolene.
The founders of Levan in South London say its pastel colour scheme is inspired by iconic New York nightclub Paradise Garage, which operated in the late 1970s. Screengrabs courtesy Levan.
