# Eddyline Restaurant at South Main: Website Design Brief and Process **Prepared:** 2026-09-21 **Prepared by:** Claude (Anthropic), working with Brian England, co-owner, Eddyline Brewing LLC **Purpose of this document:** Explain how the four website mockups for eddylinerestaurant.com were researched, designed, and built, so a second AI (or a human designer) can audit the work, challenge the decisions, and recommend improvements before the site is built in Wix. --- ## 1. The assignment Brian asked for a fresh, standalone website for **Eddyline Restaurant at South Main**, to be hosted on Wix at **eddylinerestaurant.com**. His brief, in his words and mine: | Item | Decision from Brian | |---|---| | Relationship to existing site | Separate from eddylinebrewery.com (the brewery's Shopify store). Cross-links both ways: brewery site links to the restaurant, restaurant site links to "find Eddyline beer." | | Header text | "Eddyline Restaurant at South Main" | | Primary job of the site | Showcase the restaurant and set the vibe and expectations. The menu should be featured on the site itself, and its look should mirror the printed Summer 2026 menu deck. | | Inspiration sites | https://mtnstandard.com (Mountain Standard, Vail) and https://thestillwhiskeysteaks.com (The Still, owned by Cody's brother). "Steakhouse vibes, but the building itself is very open and bright, light colors." | | Photos | Professional shoot on Dropbox, folder "Professional Photography / WEB RESOLUTION" (about 520 JPGs, 3 to 7 MB each). | | Facts (hours, address, phone) | "Start with what you can grab from the internet and current site." | | Instagram | @eddylinerestaurant | | Wix | New Wix Editor account; domain already connected. | Brand spec supplied by Lauren Hafner (Eddyline's designer): - Colors: `#00293e` dark blue, `#005288` medium blue, `#59abdf` light blue, `#ababab` gray. - Fonts: **Montserrat**. All-caps Light for titles, all-caps Bold for menu items, Medium (no caps) for body text. **Billion Dreams** script in medium blue as the decorative font. --- ## 2. Inputs gathered before designing ### 2.1 Content sources (all real, nothing invented) | Source | What it supplied | |---|---| | Google Slides deck "EDDYLINE RESTAURANT SUMMER 2026 MENU" (ID `1m7NKaMGKbU3UMypjs2GdYRkV5DokiHEwBLexqKw0GqA`), exported to PDF and text | Every menu section, item, description, price, and modifier used on the site. Also the "Few restaurants cook like this" 1,000°F pecan-wood grill copy and the culinary philosophy paragraph. Its visual style (light caps headers, bold caps items, script sub-labels in bordered boxes, small blue GF marks) was the model for the on-site menu. | | eddylinebrewery.com (current Shopify site) | Address 926 South Main, Buena Vista, CO 81211; phone (719) 966-6000; hours Tue–Thu 11–8, Fri–Sat 11–9, Sun 11–8, closed Monday; online ordering link (Heartland, `eddyline.hrpos.heartland.us/menu`); the sister location Eddyline Brewery & Pub at 102 Linderman Ave. | | Eddyline University training content (internal repo, `content/university/`) | Company story (1999 Socorro Springs NM, 2009 Buena Vista opening, 2011 CrankYanker in 16 oz cans, 2018 Brian and Melissa become 50/50 owners), the meaning of "eddyline," dog-friendly policy, parties of 8+ single-check with 20% gratuity, the cocktail program's local distillery partners (Deerhammer in BV, Pure Distilling, Montanya, Strongwater), brand voice ("Adventure Buddy teaching a friend"). | | Restaurant SEO audit of eddylinebrewery.com, run 2026-07-21 with the Owner.com playbook | Score 38/100. P0 findings: no "{type} in {city}" H1, 55% of images missing alt text, no Restaurant/LocalBusiness schema, no FAQ block. The new site was built to pass all of these from day one. | | Google Drive "Eddyline Brand Standards Master" | Script logo (black and white PNGs), triangle logo, Beer Assets product photos. | | Dropbox "WEB RESOLUTION" photo folder | 47 of about 520 frames sampled (every 12th file) and reviewed on contact sheets. 15 frames selected. | ### 2.2 Photo selection Frames used (Dropbox filenames abbreviated, S = "Eddyline Selects for social (N of 328)", F = "Eddyline Fall Shoot for social (N of 188)", X = "Eddyline For Social (N of 11)"): | Frame | Subject | Where used | |---|---|---| | S109 | Pecan wood burning in the grill, landscape | Hero, all versions | | S181 | Flames and cast iron inside the oven, portrait | Wood-fire section | | S253 | Steak frites with herb butter, square | Signature plate, annotated photo | | S241 | Sliced steak with broccolini | Elk strip card | | F133 | Ribs, mac and cheese, pint | Ribs card, events | | S229 | Three cocktails in Eddyline glasses | Bar section | | S217 | Bartender pouring Deerhammer bourbon | Beer strip, plates rail | | S205 | Bartender shaking a cocktail | Room grid | | X189 | Dining room with aspen mural, daylight | Room hero | | S157 | Server laughing with guests at window table | Room grid | | S145 | Two burgers, sweet potato fries, pints | Room grid | | S133 | Stacked burger, portrait | Room grid, plates rail | | F049 | Nashville hot chicken sandwich | Plates rail | | F145 | Group toasting over ribs at the bar | Room, events | | F169 | Couple walking a dog by the river | Dog-friendly proof | | F181 / X200 | Friends holding Eddyline cans at the river | Story, beer wall | Photos not found in the shoot and still worth taking: exterior on South Main with the peaks behind, the patio with a dog, plated elk strip, pork chop, and mahi mahi. ### 2.3 Competitive and trend research Sites reviewed for structure, tone, and devices: - **Mountain Standard (Vail):** dark ground, "Wood Fired Cuisine in Vail Colorado" H1, sections Food / Drinks / Wine / Groups / About / Gift Cards / Press / Newsletter, menus on separate pages, "Reserve a Table" repeated. - **The Still Whiskey Steaks:** casual, anti-pretentious copy ("we don't offer to-gos"), sticky nav, menus as external links, Resy reservations, log-cabin neutrals. - **Sweet Basil (Vail):** full-bleed entrance photo hero with tagline, modular grid, generous whitespace alternating with full-bleed food photography, a recurring icon as a visual anchor, testimonials as design elements. - **Guard and Grace (Denver):** near-black ground, cream and tan accents, dramatic whitespace, horizontal hairline dividers as punctuation, award badges clustered for credibility, image-right/text-left alternation. - **Hopdoddy:** question-led hero ("what makes a Burger worth it?"), annotated close-ups explaining ingredients, italic accent words, custom arrow graphics, irreverent personality. - Roundups: Framer, Squarespace, Colorlib, Webflow steakhouse showcase, RichMenu, Web Tonic (2026 editions). Patterns that recur across the well-regarded sites, and that all four mockups follow: 1. A full-screen photo or video hero that shows the food or the fire rather than describing it. 2. One or two hero shots per menu section, not a photo for every item. 3. Full-bleed photo bands between sections to create rhythm. 4. A consistent page spine: hero, menu preview, order or reserve, gallery, story, location, footer. 5. Restraint over promotional energy; established places signal status through confidence. 6. A single primary call to action repeated (here "View the menu" and "Order online," since there are no reservations). --- ## 3. Design decisions common to all versions - **Palette is Lauren's, unmodified.** Dark blue for ground or text, medium blue for links and script, light blue for rules, marks, and small blocks, gray for captions. Warmth comes only from the photography (fire, food), which creates a deliberate cool-vs-warm tension on brand. - **Typography is Lauren's spec.** Montserrat 300 caps with wide tracking for titles, 700 caps for item names, 500 for body. Billion Dreams is not on Google Fonts and not in the Drive Fonts folder, so **Yellowtail** stands in for it in the mockups. The Wix build must upload the real Billion Dreams font. - **The on-site menu mirrors the printed deck:** two-column layout, light caps section titles, bold caps items with right-aligned tabular prices, italic intro lines, bordered "additions" boxes with script titles, a filled-blue "Customer Favorite" box, GF circle marks, the raw/undercooked disclaimer, tabs for Food / Drinks / Kids & Sides / Dessert. - **Copy voice:** short, warm, specific. "An eddyline is the calm water where the river slows down" is the through-line; "Catch your breath here." is the script tagline. Local proof points are named (Deerhammer distilled a few blocks away, grass-fed beef from Nathrop, Pappardelle's pasta). - **SEO built in:** H1 contains cuisine plus "Buena Vista"; every image has descriptive alt text; JSON-LD `Restaurant` + `LocalBusiness` with address, phone, openingHoursSpecification, servesCuisine, priceRange, hasMenu, sameAs; a FAQ section (reservations, dogs, kids, gluten free, takeout, restaurant vs. pub, parking) ready to wrap in `FAQPage` schema; on-domain hours and address as plain text; click-to-call. - **Accessibility:** semantic headings, ARIA tabs, keyboard focus rings, `prefers-reduced-motion` respected, minimum 16px gutters, single-column stacking below 900px, no horizontal scroll. - **Sister-site strategy:** header and footer link to eddylinebrewery.com, "Find our beer," and the Brewery & Pub at Linderman Ave, and the FAQ explains the difference between the two locations. - **Single-file mockups:** each HTML file embeds its photos as data URIs so it can be emailed or opened offline; only the Google Fonts load from the network. --- ## 4. The four versions ### v1: baseline (bright, split hero) https://claude.ai/artifact/4gWrNXvxuL9FGUeTj1hTjv White ground with a pale-blue tint band. Split hero: left column light-caps headline, script tagline, lede, three CTAs; right column the fire photo. Three feature tiles (Wood-Fired Kitchen, Eddyline Beer & Bar, Bright Room). One dark-blue section for the 1,000°F story. Menu on white. Photo grid for the room, four "perks," story with timeline, dark events block, FAQ, visit with hours table and map placeholder, dark footer. A floating "Mockup notes" panel lists open questions. Brian's reaction: "pretty good." ### Direction A: Ember (dark steakhouse) https://claude.ai/artifact/DNMau1XUeMtkUJAYDAozWk Navy ground throughout. Transparent nav over a full-bleed fire hero with a bottom gradient and the headline set on the photo. Hours strip. Two-column wood-fire section with a very large thin "1,000°F." Three signature-plate cards with gradient captions and prices. Menu on a cream "paper" panel so it stays readable on dark. Full-bleed bar band with counts (12 taps, 24 cocktails, 4 mocktails, 7 wines). Room grid, reversed story spread, full-bleed events band, FAQ, visit, near-black footer. Lineage: Mountain Standard, Guard and Grace, STK. Trade-off: strongest "steakhouse" read, weakest match to Brian's "open and bright" note. ### Direction B: River Light (airy editorial) https://claude.ai/artifact/AFMRmQdExZWvwBQob9g9wo White ground, centered nav with the logo in the middle, right-side dot navigation. Hero is the script tagline at very large size on white, then the fire photo full-width below it with a small caption. A centered pull-number section ("1,000°F" at up to 11rem). Magazine spreads: square photo one side, pale-blue text block the other, alternating. A horizontal scroll-snap rail of five signature plates. Menu section titles set in the script face. Full-bleed dining-room photo band. Trio gallery, centered story, events spread, FAQ, visit, minimal centered footer. Lineage: Sweet Basil, fine-dining editorial. Trade-off: the most elegant and the best fit for a bright building; relies on photography quality, which the shoot supports. ### Direction C: Basecamp (bold adventure brand) https://claude.ai/artifact/SXorLkL6iHtna5LzPeh2jX Navy nav bar. Hero is a light-blue color block with heavy 800-weight caps ("WOOD FIRE. RIVER TOWN. BEERS FOR ANY ADVENTURE.") beside the fire photo. A scrolling marquee strip of proof points. Rotated sticker badges (dog-friendly, kids menu, GF, parties of 8+, closed Mondays). An annotated steak frites photo with callout labels (Hopdoddy's device). Navy "fire block" with a giant light-blue number. Menu as a navy "board" with light-blue prices and chunky tab buttons. Beer wall (two photos flanking a light-blue block). Room grid interleaved with stat tiles (2009, 16 oz, 8+). Buttons carry hard offset shadows. Triangle logo in the footer. Lineage: Hopdoddy, brewery-brand energy. Trade-off: most fun and most connected to the beer brand; riskiest for a steak-and-elk price point. ### Recommendation given to Brian River Light as the base, with Ember's dark wood-fire section dropped in as the single moody moment. Basecamp if the goal is to read as the brewery's sibling first and a steakhouse second. --- ## 5. Assumptions, gaps, and known weaknesses (please audit these) 1. **Reservation policy is assumed** as "walk-ins first come, first served; call for parties of 8+." Not confirmed by Brian. 2. **Private event capacity** ("groups of 8 to 60") and the contact email (info@eddylinebrewing.com) are placeholders pending confirmation. 3. **Parking copy** ("street parking on South Main") is assumed. 4. **Happy hour** is not mentioned because it is unknown. 5. **Hours and phone** were scraped from the brewery site's Southmain listing on 2026-09-21, not confirmed against Google Business Profile. 6. **Billion Dreams** is substituted by Yellowtail in the mockups. 7. **No Google Map embed, Instagram feed, or reviews block** yet; those are Wix-native and were left as labeled placeholders. 8. **No reservation or waitlist integration** exists; if the restaurant adds one (Resy, OpenTable, Yelp Waitlist), the primary CTA should change. 9. **Menu photos:** the plates rail uses the closest available frames; elk strip, pork chop, and mahi mahi were not photographed. 10. **The "12 Eddyline beers on tap" count** comes from the printed menu's beer list and may drift with seasonals. 11. **Mobile was tested only by CSS media queries and a 1280px desktop render**, not on a physical phone. 12. **Performance:** each mockup is 1.8 to 2.6 MB because photos are embedded; the Wix build will use Wix's image CDN, so this is not representative of production. 13. **Wix cannot import HTML.** The chosen mockup is a spec for a manual rebuild in the Wix Editor, so any audit should focus on layout, hierarchy, content, and SEO logic, not on the mockup's code. --- ## 6. Questions an auditor could usefully answer - Which direction (or combination) best serves a guest deciding, on a phone, whether to walk in tonight? - Is the on-page full menu the right call versus a menu preview plus PDF, given Wix and mobile scroll length? - Does the "steakhouse but bright" tension resolve, or does one side need to win? - Are the H1, title tag, and meta description optimal for "restaurant Buena Vista" and "steakhouse Buena Vista" queries? - What is missing from the FAQ and schema for local-pack ranking? - Is "Catch your breath here." strong enough as the tagline, or should "Beers for any adventure" lead? - Should the site push online ordering as hard as it does, given the restaurant's dine-in positioning? - Any accessibility or contrast problems with light-blue text on navy, or the script face at small sizes? --- ## 7. Files and links | Item | Location | |---|---| | v1 baseline | https://claude.ai/artifact/4gWrNXvxuL9FGUeTj1hTjv and `Downloads/eddyline-restaurant-mockup-v1.html` | | Direction A, Ember | https://claude.ai/artifact/DNMau1XUeMtkUJAYDAozWk and `Downloads/eddyline-restaurant-ember.html` | | Direction B, River Light | https://claude.ai/artifact/AFMRmQdExZWvwBQob9g9wo and `Downloads/eddyline-restaurant-riverlight.html` | | Direction C, Basecamp | https://claude.ai/artifact/SXorLkL6iHtna5LzPeh2jX and `Downloads/eddyline-restaurant-basecamp.html` | | Menu source | Google Slides "EDDYLINE RESTAURANT SUMMER 2026 MENU" | | Photos | Dropbox "Professional Photography / WEB RESOLUTION" | | Inspiration | mtnstandard.com, thestillwhiskeysteaks.com, sweetbasilvail.com, guardandgrace.com, hopdoddy.com | | Prior SEO audit | eddylinebrewery.com, 2026-07-21, Owner.com playbook, score 38/100 | The artifact links are private to Brian's Claude account. The HTML files in Downloads are self-contained and can be attached directly to an audit request.