Case Study

Secret Menus

Full-stack dev MVC, PHP Restaurant directory Platform: Web

Branding, Web Development, Web Design

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Secret Menus restaurant and menu item screens
Overview

A directory of secret menus, built for browsing

Secret Menus is a website for finding special menus from select restaurants in Vancouver, BC. It is built on an MVC framework in PHP, and I handled the branding, the interface and the build.

Role
Branding, design and full-stack build
Stack
PHP on an MVC framework
Audience
Visitors browsing menus, and admins who manage them
Platform
Web
Browse or search

Category tabs for exploring, a search box for restaurants visitors already know.

Who it serves

Two roles, two jobs

Visitors

Search for a restaurant from the main page, or browse the category tabs at the top. Open a restaurant to see its secret menu items, each with a photo, price and rating.

Admins

Add restaurants on the main page, then add secret menu items under each restaurant page with an image, price, rating and name.

Interface

The homepage: browse, search, add

Secret Menus homepage: category tabs and search in a yellow header, a headline banner, and a grid of restaurant cards with View buttons beside product cards with Shop buttons
Homepage. A yellow header carries the logo, the category tabs and search. Restaurant cards use a View button; product cards use Shop, which links the directory to Amazon.
Add brand form with fields for brand name, category and image upload
Add a brand. The admin form collects a brand name, a category and an image, which is the upload flow the build had to get right.
Branding

A simple identity that lets the logos lead

Secret Menu identity board: a burger-bun logo with the wordmark, typography set in Cheque Bold, Ovo Regular and Roboto Regular, and a yellow and black colour palette
Logo, type and colour. A burger-bun mark with a condensed wordmark, Cheque Bold for display, Ovo and Roboto for text, and a yellow and black palette.
Example restaurant logos used in the directory: Earls, Starbucks and Joey Restaurants
Restaurant logos. The palette is deliberately limited so each restaurant's own logo carries the colour on the cards.
The Challenge

Getting image uploads right

A challenging aspect of this website was writing the PHP code for uploading pictures. Customers needed to be able to upload images of menu items, which took a few iterations to get working reliably.

The upload sits at the centre of the product: every restaurant and menu item is recognised by its picture, so a broken upload breaks the directory.

Feature Breakdown

What the site does

Category browsing

Tabs across the top (All, FastFood, Dine In, International, Coffee Shop, Social Media) filter the directory.

Search

A search box on the main page for restaurants visitors already know by name.

Admin management

Admins add restaurants on the main page and menu items under each restaurant page.

Menu item detail

Each secret menu item carries an image, price, rating and name.

Image uploads

Pictures are uploaded through the PHP back end and shown on the item cards.

Shop links

Product cards (marked Shop) tie the directory to Amazon, so visitors can see must-have products.

PHPMVCHTML / CSS
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