While Patrick and Justin code the upcoming Stanley theme, I’m working on a restaurant theme design. See it below…
After looking at what other WordPress development groups or companies have created in this niche and what the typical restaurant website looks like, I found that most WordPress themes made for restaurant websites are almost the exact opposite of what customers need.
What restaurant owners actually need for their sites is a static front page featuring an introduction area and some contact information. It’s definitely not sliding images of food, a calendar for reservation, and/or the latest blog posts.
For other groups/companies, that’s the problem with selling a theme at a high price. You feel like you have to over-deliver all the times even when it’s totally unnecessary, even when it gets in the way of people using your theme.
DevPress has a different philosophy. We roll out the most important features first then keep on adding features — necessary or most useful ones. And at every step of the way, we do our best to keep the overall product easy to use and your content portable. If we have to lock you into one of our products in order to implement a certain feature, for sure, you’re not going to see that feature in a DevPress theme.
Our method is different. That’s why we price our themes club differently.
[...] DevPress posted the image above, teasing the restaurant theme he is working on to release. He also commented on the state of restaurant themes in particular, and why he’s focusing on making a very simple theme:After looking at what [...]
[...] Do over at DevPress has been working on a new restaurant theme for WordPress. With this theme he is attempting to provide precisely what restaurant owners need [...]
After working with too many bloated premium themes for clients, we can appreciate the importance of simplistic approach. We even named one theme “headache theme” for the pains it gave!!
Instantly loving this design and waiting for its release in the club :)
Very nice… How are you handling adding and maintaining menus?
I’m writing a plugin that we plan to release back to the entire WordPress community, especially for other theme developers. It’ll allow for portable content between themes.
Wow Justin that is friggin awesome!
Thank you very much
Re: “It’s definitely not sliding images of food, a calendar for reservation, and/or the latest blog posts.”
What’s the difference between an enormous huge image and an image-slider in terms of importance? As a customer I would prefer the slider.
If no calender than at least a link to a page for further information on how to reserve a table near the “open hours”.
In case restaurant-owners use their blog-posts to announce important future events a short teaser of it on the frontpage might be in order. If that’s the case I suggest renaming “Blog” to “News”.
I hear ya’ man. Without knowing some of our reasons it sounds like we just decided on a whim that sliders and reservations were taboo.
Sliders are pretty overused these days. They’re great for condensing a lot of content into a smaller area or featuring images (which would make sense for this theme). However, from a template point-of-view, we’d rather our users have a site that looks good all the time. As soon as you start adding sliders into the mix you create the necessity for more management and knowledge, when a static image will do just fine.
Reservations are a cool feature. I don’t know about you, but 99% of the places I eat don’t take reservations. If they do, they don’t use email. The fancy (pricey) places taking reservations usually custom design websites anyway, so they’re not really our target.
All that said, this is just the theme. We’re releasing the plugin separately which contains the menu and widget functionality. So adding reservation features and more may eventually be part of the project — just not phase 1. And it’ll be GPL, so our hope is that this is a base for collaboration in making the ultimate restaurant platform.
I seldom dine, too, but I think a short notice “Call us for a table: 555-1234″ (or something else for take-out restaurants, pizza-places, etc.) below the open hours would go a long way. Same for the suggested link to an info-site, if the restaurant has a more elaborated way to put food into people.
As for sliders, I don’t like them either, but if one wants to sell food it’s not the worst idea to give the customer something tasty to look at, so it’s not hard to argue, that it’s something “[t]hat restaurant owners actually need“. Although you are correct in terms of usability.
I have developed several Reasturant websites over the last year and here are the most important customer requirements.
- Easy way to manage the food menu. I ended up using custom post types but recently opted to use http://openmenu.com/ and embed the menu into the website. This is not ideal, but it’s what the customer requested.
- A good events manager. I built this with custom post types and ended up moving most customers to Google calendar and embedded it.
- Facebook integration is a must. I know this can be done with plugins, but it would be nice for the theme to include custom styling for the plugins. I use Simple Facebook Connect and Simple Twitter Connect from Otto but am not tied to anything.
Most restaurants have specials that need to be accounted for. A static website is cool, but specials are what they make their money from. Daily, weekly, seasonal and un-planned specials should be featured prominently in any website design.
Thanks for reminding me. We’ll figure out how to handle daily/weekly/seasonal specials. If not immediately then specials will be in version 0.2.
Very nice. Can’t wait for it to come out.
I agree with Glen, I have developed a couple restaurant sites based on Hybrid just recently in an area where fresh, and farm to table items need to get updated on the menu each morning. I tried openmenu and even asked the developers to add a few things and they said NO! I find it way too constrictive and the only way to edit the menu’s even though they have a WP plugin is to use, you still need their site for add/edit etc.
As much as I am not a FaceBook fan, with the restaurants I work with it is important, but this can be handled many different ways and I would hate to see it integrated into a theme somehow.
I would not disagree with Glen on Events, but again I think this can be handled outside of this theme and plug-in concept.
And I also think, no offense that there is a big difference in the design concept of Tung Do’s vs. using an image slider. I have looked into this quite a bit lately and from a WordPress point of view I am excited I think you are really going in the right direction. Keep it simple elegant, and easy to customize. Sounds like a winning combination.
Thanks!
I LOVE the approach you guys are taking. In my mind, this theme is a perfect complement/addition to a restaurant’s Google Places page.
So many small businesses just want a simple website with basic information (e.g. business hours, location, etc). I’m currently doing a site for a dental practice. They just want something that lists their services, their opening hours, dentist bios, and their location.
It will be AWESOME if you end up publishing simple themes for other industries (such as dentists).
Thanks heaps
Andrew
Just use the Restaurant-theme above (once it’s released), switch the image, the “Menu”, and “Featured Dish” with some teeth, “Doc Bios”, and “Offered Services” and you are good to go. ;-)
Start up a topic over in the themes forum about dentist themes. Link to some great dentist sites, let us know what features should be included, and get the discussion going. We’re always open to new ideas.
I’ll complete my current Dentist site using Twenty Eleven – and once it’s done I’ll start a topic on the DevPress forum with my thoughts/suggestions.
Thanks
Andrew
Do you know when you’ll be releasing the Restaurant theme? Sounds perfect for a client that I should be working with relatively soon.
We’ve got to finish the Stanley theme first. And, we’re also coding a plugin to go along with the Restaurant theme, so it’ll be a few weeks. We’re hoping to release both themes in the month of September though.
This theme tastes yummy.
I really have enjoyed the post, but your site is pretty broken in Google Chrome. What theme are you using?