Taste Social

Taste Social is a Chinese tapas and cocktail bar on Saint Mary’s Road in Market Harborough. The kitchen cooks sharing plates in the wok, the bar takes its cocktails seriously, and the lunchtime Quick Lunch, ten one-plate meals at a single price, has become a local favourite in its own right.

Lune Studio designed and built the restaurant’s website, from the menus through to table requests, offers, events and private hire.

The brief

A restaurant website gets used in a hurry. Most visitors want to see the menu, check when it is open or book a table, usually on a phone and often on the same day.

Taste Social also has more going on than most restaurants. There are midweek drinks offers and a birthday offer, evening events such as a paint-and-sip night with a local artist, private hire from a table for ten to the whole room, and music written for the restaurant by its owner. All of it needed a place on the site without crowding out the basics.

Built around booking a table

Book a table sits in the top corner of every page, and the homepage leads into a table request asking for the date, time and party size, with the phone number beside it for anyone who would rather call. The team confirms each request by phone or email.

Every offer ends in its own booking button, so someone reading about Taste Tuesdays can reserve a table for it there and then.

A menu you can read on a phone

The full menu, food and drink, is on the site as text rather than a downloadable PDF. It is split into seventeen sections you can move between, from Quick Lunch, small bites and bao to cocktails, mocktails and tea, so it reads properly on a phone and anyone looking for one thing can go straight to it.

Dishes are labelled vegetarian, vegan or gluten free, and the sharing plates list their allergens beside each dish, with a clear note that the kitchen handles all the major allergens. Someone checking whether they can eat there can find out before they book.

Room for everything else

Offers, events and private hire each have their own page. Each offer sets out its days, times and conditions. Events carry the date, the time and a link to book. Private hire explains the options, from a semi-private table for ten to a full buyout with its own menu, before a short enquiry form asks for the date, the numbers and what the occasion is.

The music has a page too. The owner, Philip, writes and records the soundtrack that plays in the room, which is shared across the restaurant’s sister venues. Guests ask about it often enough that it earned a place in the main navigation.

Finding it, and coming back

The contact page covers what someone needs on the way there: the address with a map, the walk from the station, where to park in the evening, and the opening times for lunch and dinner. A newsletter sign-up for offers, events and new music sits on the homepage, and every page links to leave a Google review, so a good evening can turn into a return visit or a recommendation.

The look

The site is led by the food. A rotating set of full-screen photographs by JROCK Photography opens the homepage, with tall condensed capitals over the top and the restaurant’s red-dot logo in the corner. The rest of the design stays dark and plain, which leaves the dishes to do the selling.

The outcome

The questions most visitors arrive with, what is on the menu, when it is open and whether there is a table, are each one tap from any page. The offers, events, private hire and the restaurant’s own music all have a home as well, and each of them ends in a way to book.