Let's TalkSantos + Co — Restaurant Website Design & WordPress Build
A bespoke WordPress website for Santos + Co, a Portuguese-British restaurant and bar in Brewery Square, Dorchester — designed around the food, the family vineyard story and one job above all: getting a table booked.
01
The Challenge
Santos + Co is a restaurant and bar in Brewery Square, Dorchester, founded by two friends and inspired by Quinta Dos Santos, the Dos Santos family’s vineyard, brewery and taproom in the Algarve. The kitchen pairs Portuguese dishes with local British produce; the bar pours the family’s own wines, craft beers and gin.
A new venue with that much story needed a website that could carry it without getting in the way of the one thing a restaurant site has to do: turn a visitor into a booking. The brief came with a specific set of demands.
- A look that belongs to the restaurant. Not a hospitality template. The site had to feel like the room: warm, understated, photographed rather than illustrated, with the Portuguese heritage present but never themed.
- Book a table from anywhere on the site. Reservations run on Toast, so every “Book a table” and “Make a reservation” had to land the guest directly in the live booking flow, on desktop and on a phone, without a form in between.
- Menus that change. Food, drinks, dessert, kids, seasonal and set menus, plus printed posters for steak night, seafood night and Sunday roast. The team needed to swap a menu in minutes, not raise a ticket.
- Events and What’s On. Wine tasting evenings with ticket sales, bottomless brunch, happy hour and seasonal events all needed pages the restaurant could publish and retire themselves.
- Gift vouchers that sell. A voucher page that explains the gift and sends the buyer straight into Toast eGift cards.
- Most guests arrive on a phone. Someone standing in Brewery Square deciding where to eat should reach the menu, the hours and the booking button in two taps.
02
Our Approach
We designed the site first and built it on WordPress second, using an Avada child theme so the design is fully custom while the restaurant keeps a familiar editing experience.
Design around the room, not around a template. The homepage opens on a full-width photograph of the bar with the Santos + Co wordmark and a single reservation call to action. The palette comes from the venue itself: a deep brown, a warm parchment and the bottle green used for the “Book a table” button that sits in the header on every page. Typography is light and spaced, so the food photography and the story do the talking.
Reservations and gift cards wired straight into Toast. Every booking button on the site, and a short /book link for print and social, goes directly to the restaurant’s Toast reservation page. The gift voucher page does the same for Toast eGift cards. No duplicate booking form, nothing for staff to re-key, and the guest never leaves a live, up-to-date availability flow.
Menus the team controls. Each menu is a downloadable PDF managed from the WordPress media library and linked from the Menus navigation, so the kitchen can publish a new seasonal menu, a Christmas menu or a kids menu without touching the design. Printed posters for steak night, seafood night and Sunday roast live in the same place.
Events and What’s On as proper pages. The wine tasting evening has its own page with the format, timings and a ticket link; bottomless brunch, happy hour, Sunday roast and seasonal events sit under What’s On. The restaurant adds and removes them from the WordPress admin as the calendar changes.
The story pages. Our Concept and Our Farm tell the Quinta Dos Santos story, from the vineyard the family bought in 2015 to the restored aqueduct and stone walls, with the Dos Santos beers and wines that end up on the bar.
Contact, newsletter and tracking. A contact form and newsletter sign-up, opening hours for restaurant and bar, and a map to Dray Horse Yard; Google Site Kit for analytics and Search Console, and a Meta pixel for the restaurant’s social advertising.
03
The Result
Santos + Co has a website that looks like the restaurant and does the restaurant’s job.
For guests, the path from “where shall we eat?” to a confirmed table is one tap from any page, on any device, into the restaurant’s live booking system. Menus, hours and what’s on this week are a tap further.
For the team, the site has become a tool they run themselves. Since launch the restaurant has published new seasonal, dessert, kids and Christmas menus, added and retired events, and kept What’s On current from the WordPress admin, without a developer in the loop.
For the brand, the Dos Santos story is told properly, from the Algarve to Brewery Square, in a design that is unmistakably theirs rather than a hospitality theme with the colours changed.
If you run a restaurant, bar or hospitality venue and want a website built around bookings rather than a template, see our web design and restaurant & hospitality SEO services.
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