The Chicken Cart
A beloved 30-year-old restaurant was stuck with PDF menus on WordPress — no online ordering, no mobile experience, no easy way to update anything.
Est. 1996
Nearly 30 years in business
1 file
Menu updates in one edit
DoorDash
Online ordering integrated
~2 months
Development timeline
The Problem
The Chicken Cart had been running a basic WordPress site that wasn't doing the restaurant justice. The menu and about pages were literally embedded PDFs — not mobile-friendly, not searchable, and impossible to update without regenerating and re-uploading files. There was no streamlined path from browsing the menu to placing an order. Professional food photography sat unused because the WordPress template couldn't properly showcase it. With the majority of restaurant searches happening on mobile, the PDF-heavy site was failing its most important audience.
The Solution
A modern single-page React application with three focused sections — Hero, Menu, and About Us — streamlined to match how customers actually interact with a restaurant website. The most impactful upfront work was menu data extraction from food photography: we analyzed every image of menu boards, daily specials, and pricing sheets to extract exact items, prices, categories, and special tags into structured JavaScript data. All menu items now live in a single data file, making updates trivial — edit a number instead of regenerating a PDF. DoorDash integration provides a clear path from "that looks good" to "Order Now."
Key Features
Data-Driven Interactive Menu
All menu items, prices, daily specials, meal sets, family packs, and extras live in a single menuData.js file. Price changes are a one-line edit — no more PDF regeneration cycles.
AI-Powered Menu Extraction
Used Claude to analyze professional food photography and extract structured data — exact items, prices, portion sizes, and special tags — saving hours of manual transcription.
Integrated Online Ordering
DoorDash storefront linked through prominent CTAs across the Hero, Navbar, floating mobile button, and Footer — every section has a clear path to ordering.
Brand-Extracted Design System
Color palette pulled directly from the restaurant's logo (#E8923A primary orange, #D4536D accent) with custom Tailwind tokens keeping the entire site on-brand.
Scroll-Based Single Page Architecture
React Scroll handles smooth navigation between sections without router overhead — matching how restaurant customers actually browse: see the food, read the menu, order.
Results & Impact
- Replaced a static WordPress site with a fast, modern React application that properly showcases the restaurant's nearly 30-year legacy.
- Menu updates went from 'regenerate PDF → export → re-upload to WordPress' to 'edit one line in a data file' — dramatically reducing maintenance friction.
- Mobile-first responsive design serves the majority of restaurant searches that happen on phones.
- Integrated DoorDash ordering creates a direct path from browsing to purchasing that the previous site completely lacked.