Himalayan Station serves Auckland’s best dal bhat to a clientele that finds the restaurant on their phone, on the bus, with one hand busy. The old site was a brochure. The team wanted a menu that opened in one tap, bookings that took two, and orders that took three.
They were also tired of editing PDFs whenever the chef changed a dish.
We watched fifteen real customers try to place an order before we wrote a single line. The pattern was painful but consistent:
One screen, three jobs. The home view collapses to three intents — see the menu, book a table, order to go — each one tap from anywhere on the site.
Menu as an app, not a document. The menu is a JSON the kitchen edits through a small Notion-style admin. Photos lazy-load with blur placeholders. Filters for vegan, gluten-free and “what’s on right now” are honest, not aspirational.
Status, not silence. A live banner answers the open-right-now question without anyone picking up a phone.
We launched after ten weeks of design, build and a quiet two-week soft launch with the regulars. The numbers settled where we’d hoped.