Hospitality · Brand Identity, Visual Storytelling & Web
317 BBQ
For restaurants, the decision to visit often gets made before anyone smells the food.
The strategic insight here was that a restaurant website has one job: create appetite and remove friction between that appetite and an action. Signal: 120% increase in time on site
120% increase
in time on site
40% order
conversion lift
2× catering
inquiries
This build supports Conversion Optimization
Why this mattered
For restaurants, the decision to visit often gets made before anyone smells the food. Someone searches, lands on a site, scrolls for about ten seconds, and makes a call: is this worth my time and money? If the visuals are weak, if the menu is buried, if it doesn't feel like a place they want to be — they're already gone.
317 BBQ is a Broad Ripple restaurant with real identity. The food is genuine, the atmosphere is local, and the "Proudly Indiana" personality isn't a marketing line — it's built into how they operate. The problem was that none of that translated online. The site was failing the product. Weak visuals were muting the food. The menu took work to find. Catering — a significant revenue stream — was practically invisible. And mobile visitors, who make up the majority of restaurant traffic, were landing on an experience that wasn't built for them.
The brief was clear: make the digital experience match the real one. Stop selling the restaurant with words that don't convert and start selling it with the thing that actually does — the food itself, shown at its best, placed exactly where a hungry person's eye goes first.
What got rebuilt
On-Site Photography & Video
I planned and executed an on-site shoot designed to capture the full sensory range of the 317 BBQ experience: close-range food photography showing texture, glaze, and smoke, atmosphere photography showing the space and energy of the room, and video content capturing the preparation, ambiance, and personality of the brand. Photography directed for appetite appeal — smoke, bark, glaze, color — not just composition.
Brand Identity
I built a visual identity around 317 BBQ's existing personality: bold, rustic-yet-refined, authentically Indiana. The mark and brand system used classic BBQ visual cues modernized with contemporary typography and a visual weight that works at every scale — from a website header to a takeout bag.
Menu-First Website Redesign
The homepage was rebuilt around a single strategic priority: get to the food fast. Signature dishes — pork belly burnt ends, smoked wings, brisket, ribs, deviled eggs, local Amish chicken — are surfaced in the first scroll, each with photography and direct order calls to action. Multiple "Order Now" CTAs route directly into Toast for pickup ordering.
Catering & Private Events Pathway
Catering was an underperforming revenue stream not because demand was low — it was because the site buried it. I built a dedicated catering section structured around event intent rather than marketing copy: buffet service details, meat-by-the-pound options, side information, and a clear catering-request flow. Catering inquiries doubled after launch.
Mobile-First Conversion Design
Restaurant traffic is overwhelmingly mobile. I rebuilt the layout for mobile-first usability: fast load times, legible text, thumb-friendly navigation, and a clear order path that didn't require pinching or hunting.
Local Identity & Operational Clarity
The "Proudly Indiana" positioning was already there. I made it visible. Local identity signals — the Broad Ripple address, Indiana references, community messaging — were built into the site. Hours, phone, and directions were surfaced where they needed to be.
Results and operating impact
The behavioral shifts told the story before the revenue numbers did. Time on site grew 120% — people were actually exploring the site rather than bouncing. Menu page visits climbed 85%. Order conversions improved 40%. Catering inquiries doubled. Web traffic rose 30% overall. Within the first 90 days, sales had grown 20%.
What those numbers prove is that the problem was never the food. The food was always good. The problem was that the site was failing to communicate it — and that failure had a direct cost in unconverted visitors, unmade orders, and catering opportunities that never came in.
If your restaurant has a strong product but a weak digital presence, you're not losing customers because the food isn't good enough. You're losing them because the screen isn't doing what the plate does in person. That's a solvable problem. That's what I build.
This build supports Conversion Optimization
Ready to make your food as irresistible online as it is in person?
Let's talk about what that looks like.