Work / Website Design & Development
A lakeside restaurant, rebuilt as the web grew up.
Three generations of website over roughly fifteen years, from static HTML to a custom CMS to WordPress, plus a mobile site, online gift cards, and a stripped-down vabene.link landing page.
At a glance
Va Bene, vabenecaffe.com
Sector
Italian lakeside restaurant
Location
Duluth, MN
Timeline
~2006-2020
Built on
HTML, custom CMS, WordPress
The challenge
A beloved lakeside restaurant earns loyalty over years, and its website has to age gracefully alongside it. Menus change, seasons turn, and every few years the whole web moves under your feet. The site needed to keep up without ever losing the charm of the place.
What we did
We rebuilt the site three times as the technology matured: first as a hand-coded static HTML site, then on our own custom CMS so staff could make updates, and finally on WordPress. Along the way we added a mobile site for guests on the go and an online gift-card system so regulars could share a favorite spot. We also built vabene.link, a stripped-down, link-in-bio landing page that answers the moment on a phone: hours, menu, and the essentials, loaded instantly.
The outcome
Roughly fifteen years of continuity through three full generations of the web. The restaurant always had a current, welcoming home online, and never had to start over with a stranger to get there.
When we first came to you we had nothing but a vague idea of what we wanted; your rough draft was everything we had envisioned and more! The graphics, colors, and layout were perfect and accurately represented our restaurant. Thank you again for making our online presence such a huge success!
Mary Kay Berarducci, Va Bene
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Next step
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