KOZA – Fusion Restaurant Scaling Up

Client’s goal

KOZA first started in 2017 as a cafe/bar/restaurant that offered fusion cuisine inspired by Japanese, Vietnamese, and Thai cuisines. We helped them create the first brand image, a website, and other media around it. The business has grown to multiple locations, and we were hired again for a redesign in 2020. The goal was to create a new website to represent the chain of restaurants with a fresh and modern look and to create a unique way of telling the story of the restaurant. Other goals were to have a functional food menu, an online shop, and an English version.

1. Consultation & Brainstorming session

Within the initial consultation, we went through a series of questions to figure out the goals and needs, and the possible implementations for those. It was also crucial to identify the key challenges early on in order to avoid or minimize a delay. We then worked out a proposal, project timeline (milestones), and a contract agreement.

2. Research & Mood board

Based on the information the client has sent, we started a competitor analysis and other research. While gathering the necessary information, we used Pinterest to collect visuals together with the client. We then connected the results of our analysis with the collected visuals to turn it into a mood board and to create customer personas for the various target groups.

3. One Logo For Different Needs

Together with our client, we defined the different use cases of the logo depending on the channels and target audience groups. Another crucial requirement was for the logo to be adaptable to different seasonal styles and sizes, so it had to be a thought-out responsive logo design.

4. Information Architecture, Wireframe & Mockups

Once the research results were discussed and confirmed, we started to structure the website using a mind-mapping tool. We walked our client through this structure and then started to create a wireframe and a mockup of the home page. The main challenge was to create a website that stood out strongly from the competition. Of course, the website still should be user-friendly, functional, minimalistic, and elegant.

5. Website Development & Training

As with all our clients, we use Google sheets and set up a staging website where we integrate them in the process so that they can see the progress and stepwise learn how to manage the website. It speeds up the process because while we’re developing the website, the client can already upload the photos and texts.

And it is an ongoing process as new functions are being released gradually, for example, online table reservations, an online shop, and more.

6. QR Landing Page & Food Menus

The restaurants needed an easy solution for the customers to access the digital food menu (especially once Covid-19 hit), so we designed a QR landing page to bind it to a fixed permanent address and to modify the contents whenever necessary.

As for the food menus, we designed a solution that allows creating of any number of separate food menus that can have both a synchronized core and custom items. This way each branch can have a centrally managed main menu and offer their own specials without too much editorial work.

7. Covid-19-Checkin

While we were developing and gradually releasing the new website, a very unexpected thing called Covid-19 happened. After a series of lockdowns, Germany started to ease in the policies and so we had a new urgent feature to release, a Covid-19 check-in (complying with the local law and GDPR). Guests would register their personal information every time they were dining in. On the backend, the restaurant crew would add the table record to every guest entry.

8. Koza Story

Another key challenge was to give the founder of KOZA a way to visually tell the story of how everything started and has developed until this day. That was an opportunity to integrate Google’s newly released AMP-powered Web Stories tool that closely resembles the stories from the other well-known social media.

9. Preloader

A preloader is a great way to introduce the business’s key message, mission, or brand identity. From the technical perspective, it ensures that once the website is displayed to a visitor, the necessary assets are already loaded, and there won’t be any layout shift (which is the visual process that happens when a website is loading).

10. 2017 Version– Video Animation Inside the Logo

Back in 2017, when KOZA was just one single restaurant, we developed the first version of the website. One unique feature of it was a video recording playing inside the logo shape. It presented the unique cuisine KOZA was offering and also set KOZA apart from the competition.

11. Event Photography & Social Media Management

In the early days of KOZA, we were also helping with taking photos at several events and crafting the social media strategy. Both tasks were then handed over to KOZA’s internal marketing team. Finally, we also created event posters and banners for bigger events.

12. Brand Collateral – Business Card

We created two types of business cards: a square-shaped one for the guests, and a rectangular one for the employees.

13. Brand Collateral – Food Menus & Brochure

The first version of the menu template was created back in 2017, and then in 2018, it was redesigned for a different look.

14. Brand Collateral

Over the years, we’ve been adding more different types of brand collaterals as the business has kept growing.