HexvorCoffee shops and bakeries
A website for your café or bakery
A café is chosen on feeling and found on a phone. The page has to carry the room — the light, the counter, what the place is like at four in the afternoon — and then answer where you are and when you open, without making anyone hunt.
Describe your siteTry something like this
A site for a specialty coffee shop and bakery. What we roast, the pastry list, opening hours, and where to find us. Warm, unfussy, lots of white space.
The more of it that is true of your business, the less of the result you will have to change. Hexvor never invents a phone number, an address, a price or a review — anything you leave out comes back as an obvious placeholder rather than as a plausible lie.
29 rules the engine applies to this kind of site
Not a feature list. These are the actual instructions sent with your request when Hexvor recognises the trade, on top of the 638 that apply to every site.
Atmosphere first
Communicate the room and the feeling before the detail. Somebody deciding where to eat is choosing an evening, not reading a specification.
Food is the hero
When real photographs exist, let them carry the page. Decorative UI must never sit on top of a good photograph of food.
The menu is one click away
A menu reachable in the first navigation interaction. It is why most people came.
Booking is the loudest action
Reservations are the most visually prominent action on the page, repeated at the end of the menu.
Say where it is
Address and neighbourhood, findable without hunting, as text that can be copied into a phone.
Hours where they are looked for
Opening hours prominent, never buried. Say the kitchen's hours separately when they differ.
Cuisine has a look
Let typography, spacing and colour reflect the kind of food and the personality of the place.
Upscale means restraint
For fine dining: quieter layouts, generous whitespace, elegant type. Loud is the opposite of expensive.
Casual means warmth
For a casual place: warmer type, stronger colour, more expressive detail. Restraint there reads as cold.
Menu categories are a hierarchy
Group the menu with clear visual levels rather than one long undifferentiated list.
Dish, description, price are distinct
Keep the three visually separate so a menu can be scanned by any one of them.
Signature dishes lead
Give the dishes the kitchen is known for more weight than everything else. Equal weight is no recommendation at all.
Name the booking action
“Reserve a table” rather than “Click here”. The label is what somebody is agreeing to.
The menu works on a phone
Most menus are read standing up on a small screen. It must stay readable and scrollable there.
A story, not marketing
The about section says who cooks and why. Generic hospitality language says nothing.
Reviews only if real
Use ratings and awards only when they were provided. Never invent either.
The chef, when the chef matters
Where the kitchen is the draw, put the chef on the page.
Private dining gets its own level
When events or private rooms are offered, give them their own clear place in the hierarchy.
Delivery is not booking
Keep dine-in reservations and delivery or takeaway visually distinct. They are different intentions.
Getting there is an action
Provide an obvious way to get directions, not only an address.
Repeat the essentials in the footer
Hours, address and phone in the footer of every page: it is where people look when the page did not answer them.
Seasonal without breaking the system
A seasonal menu gets visual distinction inside the existing design language, not a second one.
Never a PDF menu
A downloadable menu is unreadable on a phone, invisible to search engines, and the most common way a restaurant site fails.
Say what happened to the booking
Confirm success, failure and pending clearly. A booking form that goes quiet is a booking nobody made.
Dietary marks are scannable
When the information exists, mark it beside the dish and explain the marks once.
Appetite, not decoration
Imagery and spacing should make the food feel wanted. Effects on top of it do the opposite.
No generic restaurant template
Adapt the direction to this restaurant's actual personality rather than to what restaurant sites usually look like.
Local identity where it belongs
Reflect the neighbourhood or region when it is genuinely part of the brand.
Beauty must not block booking
Balance atmosphere against the practical information somebody needs to actually turn up.
Describe yours
Free to start, no card. Publish when it looks right.
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