Designing For Hospitality Groups
When BentoBox began partnering with hospitality groups, the web design team had to create a new process that would benefit the design team, all while meeting the expectations of the hospitality groups’. Designing for hospitality group websites was a new and challenging process that was built from experience rather than prior knowledge. While a lot of the process was exciting and inspiring, a lot of challenges arose on both, the design team and the hospitality groups' sides, of the design process. These challenges paved the way for the web design team to create new workflows, get creative with new solutions, and improve future design based on key takeaways.
Problem
These are some of the problems that arise on both ends of the project:
Customer:
- Needs a way to manage their different websites for all of their different properties in one platform.
- Having the management of the content consistent.
- How do you have a website that better represents your restaurant?
Team:
- Hospitality groups tend to have an established look and feel. How do we translate it onto their websites all while staying true to their branding?
- How do we make sure all internal and external stakeholders are on the same page?
Team
Web Design team: AJ (Principal), Stacy (Web Designer), Kayla (Team Lead), James (Web Designer)
Process:
Every designer has different approaches, challenges, and key takeaways when tackling a hospitality group website. Here are 2 perspectives on hospitality group sites from the team.
SRC Hospitality: The Rusty Pelican
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Communication results in a successful process.
One of the challenges that I faced while designing SRC Group’s Rusty Pelican was communication. Since this website was one of my first hospitality group websites, I had to establish clear communication and trust with the onboarding manager to make sure we provided the best design for Rusty Pelican. This meant having in-person meetings and being available to chat about the website at any time. Although certain elements did slip through the cracks, we were always able to resolve them by having a quick touchbase.
Experimentation is fun!
I was able to approach this design with an experimentative process, and I explored a lot of new CSS to achieve the design I wanted for this website. Most of which has not been used on any of my previous sites. I took the time to play around with layout and typography to give this website a completely different look and elevate their branding.
Accept Change.
I was so excited about my initial design for the website that I was sure the customer was going to love it. When I received the feedback from the customer, they were very satisfied with the design but wanted to tweak some elements. I was able to complete all of the revisions and provide the customer with a website that they loved!
Takeaways:
- Communication is key!
- Experiment!
- Be Flexible!
Written by Anastasiya “Stacy” Krokha
Happy Cooking Hospitality
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Selling the lifestyle
Showcasing the spaces, events and people
Happy Cooking Hospitality is more than just a collection of restaurants. Gabe and the team have built something that feels like an extension of a lifestyle. One of the most important aspects of translating the group’s restaurants to the internet was ensuring that this vibe was felt. Photography played a major role in this, and I’ve always approached the design of their websites with photography as the foundation. Setting the stage with high quality photography helps with any web design project, especially for a high profile restaurant website.
Content overload
Effectively designing around a variety of content
In addition to designing around photography, I’m often tasked with designing around a wide variety of content types, page layouts and user goals. Whether it’s showcasing private event spaces, presenting a collection of products for sale, or laying out a timeline of the company’s history, you can bet on hospitality groups having quite the range of content to design for.
Meeting the team
Highlighting owners & team members
Throughout the entire process, working closely with the team behind Happy Cooking Hospitality was an integral part of delivering on their vision. Like many other hospitality groups, a company this prolific has quite a number of stakeholders and people behind the magic relying on the website’s success. Additionally, highlighting all of these people is pretty important to telling the story behind the company.
Takeaway
Different but alike
Capturing each restaurant’s uniqueness while maintaining a standard approach is key to a successful web design process for organizations like hospitality groups, and multi-unit restaurants.
Written by AJ Camara
