Oakpress Studio Recent work Concept
A website concept for my hometown cafe in Eston.
The Peppermill Cafe on Whale Hill is a few streets from where I grew up. It’s busy, well loved and full of homemade bakes, but all it had online was a Facebook page. So I made it the kind of website I’d want to find on my phone at quarter to eight on a Saturday. This is a concept, not their live website: I made it unasked, to show what a café site can do.
- Business
- The Peppermill Cafe, Birchington Avenue, Whale Hill, Eston
- What they do
- Breakfasts, lunches and homemade bakes, six days a week plus Sunday sittings
- What this is
- A concept I made off my own bat. It isn’t their website and they aren’t a client
- What they had
- A Facebook page, and no website of their own
The question every cafe customer asks: are you open?
On their Facebook page the opening hours were on the cover photo: Monday to Saturday 8:00 to 14:00 with last orders at 13:15, and two separate sittings on a Sunday. Correct, but easy to misread on a phone, and Google can’t read words inside a picture.
So the concept answers it before anything else. A live “Open now” or “Closed” sign works out the time in the UK and shows last orders, and the hours sit on the front page in plain text that Google, Maps and ChatGPT can all read.
Their own counter as the front page
No stock photos of strangers drinking lattes. The front page is the café itself: the teal wall, the crate lights, the cake cabinet and the round Peppermill sign, rebuilt as one clean shot from their own photos. Anyone who has been in recognises it straight away.
The opening hours are handwritten on a page torn from a lined notebook and taped over the photo, the way a small café would actually do it. It feels local and friendly, and it’s still plain text underneath.
Bakes on a chalkboard
The cake cabinet is what people come back for, so it gets its own chalkboard section with the bakes copied from the labels in the real cabinet, and yes, a Peppermint Crunch. Below that: the menu, the full week of opening hours with today highlighted, a photo of the inside, and how to find them on Birchington Avenue.
Built to be found
Even as a concept, it has the same foundations every site I build gets:
- A page title that says what it is and where: a café on Whale Hill, Eston.
- Opening hours, address and what they serve in plain text, so Google and AI tools can repeat them correctly.
- Fast on a phone, with tap-to-call, directions and the live open sign one thumb away.
The menu prices on the concept are placeholders, because a real site would use the café’s own.
Why a concept?
The quickest way to show a local business what a proper website could do is to make one. This one is my hometown café, so it was an easy place to start. If you run a café, shop or salon on Teesside and you’re on Facebook only, see web design in Middlesbrough, web design across Teesside or my prices.
Come in.
Send me your business name and town, and within one working day I’ll show you where you come up on Google, Google Maps and ChatGPT, plus the 3 fixes that would move you up. Free, with no obligation.