Design Inspiration
The Best Cafe and Coffee Shop Websites of 2022
February 17, 2022
A roundup of cafes and coffee shops with beautiful, revenue-driving websites.
Like all restaurants, cafes and coffee shops struggled during the pandemic. Their business models rely on commuters who buy to-go drinks, along with in-person diners who come to work, read or enjoy the relaxing ambiance.
Restaurant websites helped cafes and coffee shops diversify revenue when they needed it most — and now, as the world returns to normal, they continue to help those businesses stand out and drive profits. Here are several of the best cafe and coffee shop websites on the internet, along with a look at why they're successful.
Cafe Patachou
Cafe Patachou has such a friendly, congenial vibe that it has long been called a "student union for adults." Owned by Martha Hoover, a four-time James Beard Award semifinalist for outstanding restaurateur, it has also been named among the nation's Top 10 breakfast spots by Bon Apetit. Its website design is sunny, colorful and full of food photography that captures the premium scratch cooking on its menu. The website also features a robust merchandise store that sells apparel, mugs, coffee and the restaurant's signature cinnamon-sugar blend.
Lula Cafe
Lula Cafe is an inventive, market-driven restaurant that serves one of Chicago's most popular brunches. Chef Jason Hammel started the restaurant with his wife Amelia Tshilds in 1999, and although he was self-taught, he has grown into a two-time James Beard Award finalist for Best Chef Great Lakes. The cafe's website opens with large, photography-based thumbnails that direct guests to key sections of the website (reservations and menus) with clickable buttons. The menu page is text-based — a key SEO tactic for restaurants — and includes beautiful pictures of menu items.
Saxbys
Saxbys is a coffeehouse chain with more than 20 locations, many of which are at mid-atlantic colleges. Having already built brand awareness with many guests in its target audience, its website focuses on building brand equity through purpose-driven campaigns and initiatives. This includes a description of its Experiential Learning Platform, which helps provide education to student employees, along with full pages about its social impact and mission. Its merchandise store is filled with at-home coffee supplies, making it easy for site visitors to support them and their mission — while also brewing a great cup of joe.
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Like all restaurants, cafes and coffee shops struggled during the pandemic. Their business models rely on commuters who buy to-go drinks, along with in-person diners who come to work, read or enjoy the relaxing ambiance.
Restaurant websites helped cafes and coffee shops diversify revenue when they needed it most — and now, as the world returns to normal, they continue to help those businesses stand out and drive profits. Here are several of the best cafe and coffee shop websites on the internet, along with a look at why they're successful.
Friends & Family
Friends & Family is a seasonal cafe and marketplace in East Hollywood, CA. Founded by a pair of industry veterans, pastry chef/baker Roxana Jullapat and chef Daniel Mattern, the cafe is dedicated to locally sourced artisan food. As the name suggests, Friends & Family has an inviting air about it, which the site reflects with warm orange accents. Site visitors can browse menus, inquire about catering or purchase Jullapat's cookbook, "Mother Grains," through the merchandise store.
Buzz Coffee
When guests arrive on Buzz Coffee's website, they are greeted with an alluring piece of copy, which brands it as an "underground coffee shop." It doesn't elaborate on what that means, which adds to the intrigue and tacitly positions it as a place locals and insiders would know about. Elsewhere on the website, guests can view the no-frills drink menu, which only includes eight items and no descriptions — another sign of confidence and intrigue. On a more practical level, the website also has a jobs page where workers can submit applications, removing a manual step from the increasingly tiring job of hiring restaurant staff.
Founders Coffee
With a mix of sunny photography and mint-green textures, Founders Coffee's website exudes freshness. This is fitting for the Las Vegas coffee shop, which is focused on local ingredients and handcrafted beverages. But the web design isn't just for branding: It also directs all attention to the "Order Now" button, ensuring guests see its most important call-to-action. If guests don't want to order food or drinks online, they can browse the playful t-shirts in Founders' merchandise store.
Sami & Susu
After a successful pop-up in the summer of 2020 drove huge demand and critical acclaim, Sami & Susu set roots on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The cafe is named after an Israeli kids show that aired in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and it uses food to channel the cartoon's message of Israeli-Palestinian harmony. This is also reflected on the cafe's website, where its logo — a pleasant illustration of a man and woman embracing — is prominent, and the rest of the website matches the logo's black-and-white color scheme. While simple, this color scheme allows the beautiful food photography to pop across the site, arousing the senses of guests as they browse through menus and place online orders directly through the website.
Superba
Great web design is achieved through a harmony of standout typography, supporting color schemes and intuitive functionality. Superba’s website achieves this with clean sans serif fonts and a simple black and yellow color scheme. High-resolution photography helps site visitors get a sense of the brand, its offerings and general vibe, while gestural illustrations on the homepage help guests navigate to sections for each of the shop's four locations.
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