The owners of this restaurant/ bar bought the old Brass Duck Restaurant, and planned on renovating the building, adding their own kitchen, and opening this new place. They called me almost as soon as the papers were signed. They’d seen my name at the bottom of Out of the Fire Café’s website, and called to hire me almost on the spot, over the phone, due to the success of Out of the Fire, and they liked the website and what they saw there too.
Before they even opened, we bought a domain, I began creating their website, started a Facebook page for them, announced an opening, and as things went along I kept her growing audience apprised of what was happening. We got them onto an email subscription service right away to begin collecting email addresses.
I came in several times to take photos, just to put something together, and as they grew, over time I would come back in at night, hang out, take photos in the kitchen of the food, anything I saw, and this continued the entire time they were open, for 10 years. Then go back to the office with my hundreds of photos, and place them on the site, use them for email blasts, ads, billboards, etc.
A weekly or monthly project was doing email blasts, as they had many events there. Back then, the site wasn’t WordPress, it had to be changed by me. Eventually I redeveloped it in WordPress.
Eventually, someone joined their team who was very familiar with Facebook, and was very good at capturing photos, eliminating the need for me to go there as frequently to capture the atmosphere and food. That is a constant with restaurants, to the best solution is to have someone there every day, grabbing photos as you have content. Over time the site fills up with a nice selection and variation of subjects, and becomes an excellent representation of the actual dining experience there.
Happily, they developed a following, became very successful and had a nice run. Due to retiring they eventually sold the business, and I winded the website back down, put notices on Facebook and walked them back out of the business, just as I walked in with them and did everything needed.
