The fusion restaurant I have created for my final site is titled Bacon & Bliss, and it incorporates bacon into many common dishes. There are not many restaurants that focus solely on the sale of bacon related items, but the ones that do could be considered direct competition for my style of restaurant. One close example would be a restaurant titled “Bakn”, and it is located on Main Street in Carnegie, PA. The examples of items they sell are very similar to the ones my restaurant would be offering. When I first opened Bakn’s webpage at eatbakn.com, I noticed how they utilized a full page layout. This gave me a large image of one of their food options the moment I opened the site. Another thing that stood out was the bold set of info in the upper right corner. It displays their location and phone number, leaving it very easy to find when navigating to the site. As I continued on further I began to realize the website is a one-page scrolling site. The navigation bar only jumped to a certain part of the page, instead of taking me to another one. The color choices they made closely match the choices I had made for Bacon & Bliss. They used red and gray as their two main colors, with warm toned images of their food to help balance everything out against the white background. They also utilized texture in their main logo which gives it a ‘rustic’ look, matching the style of the restaurant.
The only thing I would change about this site layout would be to put the hours somewhere else on the page besides the bottom. This would be fine if it where a multiple page site, but being a one page layout makes it difficult and time consuming for the user to navigate through. This is one main aspect where my site’s layout would work better, because the information is very quick and easy to get to and I also have a navigational tab for it as well. Another part of my site that may work better is how it is totally contained in a wrapper. In my personal opinion, it is easier to read when everything is contained together, and it is much easier to find information. After viewing Bakn’s website, I realized I could add more user interaction with my site in order to draw people in. Branding is also very important when creating a website because it must reflect what the restaurant aims to be seen as to the public. Bakn’s branding incorporates humor into it’s message, and they have a very modern take on their business. This kind of branding is what I aim for when creating a restaurant such as this, and I feel I am working my way towards that goal.
In all, I feel that both restaurant sites share many similarities such as color scheme, menu, and branding, but also differ in their layout and information hierarchy. Both strive to sell a product.