Consultancy, publishing, and craft.

Ungarnished is a London-based cocktail studio founded by world-class mixologist Angelos Bafas. The studio designs high-impact beverage programmes, streamlined bar systems, and drinks that define venues. Beyond consultancy, the brand needed a digital platform to showcase their work, share industry-leading recipes, and drive direct-to-consumer e-commerce—starting with Angelos’ debut cocktail book, Hyper Drinks, with upcoming merchandise and further publications in the pipeline.

Headless Shopify with an elevated UX.

Taking inspiration from the photography style and the raw, minimalist aesthetic of the book, we created the visual brand identity for Ungarnished from the ground up. We translated this direction into a fast Headless Shopify store and marketing platform tailored to the brand’s luxury, systemised ethos.

At the core of the e-commerce experience is a highly polished custom cart featuring optimistic UI updates and cross-browser tab synchronisation, ensuring state is preserved seamlessly across tabs and windows without friction. To support content and organic reach, we integrated a dynamic blog engine capable of publishing detailed cocktail recipes and editorial stories, complete with embedded, shoppable product cards. Under the hood, nested Schema.org structured data was implemented across the site to maximise search engine visibility for both products and recipe content.

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One venue, three experiences.

Cato is a high-end cocktail bar in Covent Garden with three distinct spaces, each with its own identity and purpose. The ground floor, The House of Julep, is a lively New York tavern serving walk-ins; the basement, Cato, is an intimate, reservation-focused space with a colour theory-inspired menu; and Cato’s Study is a private “chef’s table” laboratory available for hire, experimentation, and activations.

The venue’s ambitious vision — to celebrate the legacy of Cato Alexander, the world’s first celebrity bartender, while pioneering contemporary cocktail culture — demanded a website that could reflect the sophistication and nuance of each space. Beyond marketing, they needed a platform that could handle reservations, showcase events, support a merchandise and canned-cocktail e-commerce store, and enable diners to customise menus based on dietary needs. The site had to be as intentional and craft-led as the venue itself.

Performance, colour accuracy, and thoughtful UX.

The website was built using a modern JavaScript framework to ensure fast, responsive performance across devices. All menu and event data are stored in a PostgreSQL database with key-value caching, allowing the team to update offerings in real time without impacting site speed — critical for a venue that regularly updates menus, runs pop-ups, and limited-time events. The site consistently achieves 100s on Lighthouse and passes all Core Web Vitals, ensuring a snappy experience regardless of connection speed or device capability. The e-commerce platform is a headless Shopify instance, giving flexibility to sell merchandise and pre-batched cocktails while maintaining design cohesion with the main site.

A defining technical and creative challenge was honouring the colour theory foundation of Cato’s main drinks list. In the physical space, each colour group in the menu comes with a coloured paper insert containing key ingredient details. To translate this tactile, visual experience online, a modal system was designed: each cocktail features a plus-symbol button that opens a colour-matched modal displaying details about the key ingredients’ origins. This preserves the visual storytelling of the physical menu while creating an intuitive, discoverable interface that feels native to the digital experience. The menu system also includes intelligent filtering by dietary requirements, allowing guests to view a customised menu before arrival.

Equally important was ensuring true-to-life colour accuracy. A custom image pipeline ingests photography in the Display P3 colour profile — a wider gamut that captures more of the vibrant, nuanced colours our eyes are capable of seeing. These images are exported at multiple sizes in both Display P3 (for devices that support it) and sRGB (for broader compatibility), meaning visitors on modern screens experience photography closer to the in-venue reality, while all users benefit from optimised load times and responsive images.

The e-commerce experience prioritises performance and transparency. The cart uses optimistic UI updates, providing instant feedback when products are added — no waiting for Shopify’s APIs to respond. Cart state is persisted in local storage and validated against Shopify’s backend, ensuring data integrity without sacrificing responsiveness. A key feature: the cart syncs in real time across browser tabs. If a user is browsing merchandise in multiple tabs, they see the true cart subtotal everywhere — a small detail that prevents the confusion of fragmented shopping experiences.

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A new concept from a repeat customer.

We've worked hand-in-hand with Bart & Taylor, creating their venues' websites and corporate site. Trickle is their latest concept, boasting 24 taps, pouring a wide variety of beers, wines, and cocktails on draught, along with hand-stretched pizzas. Trickle’s ambition is to create its own line of kegged and bottled cocktails that will be available to purchase by consumers and other venues alike.

Edgy look for a craft-focused venue.

The Trickle symbol is an abstract swirling letter T. It’s used throughout the site, enlarged and rotated to create patterns and image masks combined with typographic elements to give this site an edgy feel. Page transitions add a sense of drama and style. The Trickle website is built using a javascript framework, providing flexibility to easily add e-commerce and a wholesale portal in the future when Trickle’s line of packaged cocktails is in production.

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From B2B to B2C.

Private Venue Hire has historically focused on business-to-business event venue hire. They wanted to expand into the business-to-consumer market. They acknowledged that many of the existing online platforms for venue hire either automate a lot of the process or aren't very simple to use. They wanted a more human approach. They wanted a web application that made it convenient to filter and find what you're looking for.

Feature-packed full-stack web app.

We developed a lightweight and fast full-stack web app hosted on the edge. Users can make a venue hire enquiry, check on the status of their enquiry, add venues to favourites, write reviews, and filter down venue search results. On the backend, admins can assign enquiries to advisors who will handle a user’s enquiry personally. Throughout the application, we placed calls to action to call and speak to an advisor on the phone, unlike other private hire platforms.

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A fresh look for a visual business.

Collective Design is a multi-award-winning interior design firm based in Newcastle upon Tyne. They specialise in commercial interiors, particularly in the hospitality sector, retail, and offices. They had an ageing website which didn’t include case studies. They wanted to modernise their website and showcase their best work for all to see with details about their projects.

Plans, licensing drawings, and more.

We built a fast and responsive marketing website, taking technical SEO into account. A content management system (CMS) was set up to allow the Collective Design Team to update and manage their case studies easily. We also built a client portal on top of the marketing site to allow Collective Design’s clients to log in and access and download their plans, licensing drawings, and design files, along with a simple interface for the Collective Team to manage the portal contents.

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The home of Delhi‑cious Indian street food.

My Delhi Indian Streetery is a multi-award-winning Indian restaurant group. Its restaurants are fun, vibrant, and eclectic, serving authentic favourites inspired by Delhi’s roadside stalls. Following a recent rebrand, the team wanted to introduce its restaurants’ fun, lively, and eclectic feel to its website. My Delhi is also incredibly proud that its menu is nut-free — a rarity in Indian restaurants — and it has worked hard to reduce other common allergens where possible.

Filterable responsive food menus.

We worked with My Delhi's branding agency and built a vibrant and interactive website true to their brand. The website is filled with motion and unconventional shapes. To emphasise My Delhi’s commitment to reducing common allergens in its restaurants, we built a “dietary filter”, allowing users to remove items from the responsive food menus they cannot eat. Their preferences are stored in the browser’s local storage, allowing them to browse between different menus without updating their preferences with each page load.

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A love letter from a Bombay canteen.

Dakwala is a brand-new restaurant in Newcastle upon Tyne, inspired by Mumbai’s traditional Khanawal eateries. Dakwala is derived from “postman” and symbolises “a messenger of flavours”. They wanted a premium editorial-looking microsite which captured a vintage feel from when migrants relocated to Bombay in the early 1900s whilst appearing modern and interactive.

An immersive cultural experience.

Dakwala’s branding agency, Ground, provided the initial design for the website. Based on their prototype, Studio Smith-Cordell developed a fully responsive microsite in Webflow. The finished website emulates Dakwala's brand goals and is highly optimised.

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One group, many voices.

In today's digital age, a brand's online presence speaks volumes about its ethos, ambition, and commitment to excellence. Having previously completed websites for each of their unique venues, Bart & Taylor approached Studio Smith-Cordell to design and build a website for the group.

Bart & Taylor poses a powerful vision — to redefine local hospitality from London to the North of England. They sought a digital platform that echoed their passion, resonated with their audience, and established them as pioneers in an evolving industry. Our challenge was to craft a website showcasing their unique restaurant offerings on a single platform and to highlight their broader mission of community involvement and upliftment.

Weaving the mission into every pixel.

With a deep understanding of Bart & Taylor's ethos, we embarked on a holistic approach to digital storytelling. A blend of rich visuals and compelling copy transformed their website's About page into a vibrant digital canvas, echoing their brand values. Additionally, we integrated an intuitive job board into the careers page, prioritising user experience to attract the brightest talents to the Bart & Taylor family. The result? A seamless, engaging digital platform that positions Bart & Taylor as the benchmark in local hospitality.

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From dawn ‘till dusk.

Bart & Taylor engaged Studio Smith-Cordell to prototype and develop a premium bespoke website to showcase their latest establishment: Fern. Fern is a luxurious restaurant and bar open all day, every day, located within the Ten Degrees Tower. The concept for the venue is that the atmosphere and offering would evolve throughout the day into the evening — from breakfast to a nightcap.

Storytelling and interactions.

To get the message across, Studio Smith-Cordell used storytelling and interactions on the homepage to communicate their evolving offering throughout the day while providing call-to-actions to different menus and table reservations. Interactions throughout the site give a sense of luxury. The food and drink menus were built responsively using HTML and CSS — rather than relying on PDFs — to adapt to different screen sizes providing a better user experience (UX). The website was built on Webflow utilising a custom CMS, allowing Bart & Taylor to edit the website and keep their menus up to date.

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Doner Shack's new rebrand.

Doner Shack is a fast-casual restaurant group focused on kebabs, chicken, and loaded fries. After successfully launching a website previously with Studio Smith-Cordell, they decided to engage us again as they underwent their new rebrand.

This website had to prioritise function yet be interactive and fun.

Doner Shack’s branding agency, Ground, provided the initial design for the website. Based on the mockups, Studio Smith-Cordell created responsive layouts before developing the site in Webflow. The finished website emulated Doner Shack’s brand goals while including animation and interaction to keep it feeling young and fresh.

Check out the full case study on smith-cordell.com