Plate Up! New restaurant theme for WordPress released
I’m proud to announce the release of Plate Up, my latest theme designed for restaurants.
When I began designing Plate Up, I went back to the drawing board in order to come up with a design that was tailored to the business needs of a thriving restaurant. That meant a design that would convert online visitors into diners. So I put together a layout that emphasized online reservations and quick access to phone numbers, maps and more. Plate Up is the result of that effort.
Check out the demo or skip below the screenshot to read more about what went into this theme.
Plate Up builds on the Food and Drink Menu plugin that I released a while ago. I knew I also needed a solid plugin for booking tables. I had a look around, but I was unsatisfied with the options available, so I built my own. Restaurant Reservations was carefully crafted to streamline the reservations process, and with the Plate Up theme I made sure the booking form was painless and even fun to use. I also offered a widgetized version, so you can include the form right on the front page.
Front Page
My first theme, CaféCultura, uses a more traditional design pattern on the front page. But after working with a client and seeing how people used the theme, I knew I wanted to do something different with Plate Up. Most restaurants have a limited number of high quality visual assets. So I ditched the front page carousel and replaced it with a single, bold image, overlayed by a short, persuasive review. This communicates a strong visual presence right away, and restaurants will only need one good photo to make it look stunning.
The other big thing I wanted to do was emphasize the contact details that many restaurant website visitors want. So the theme incorporates easy ways to show a Google Map, opening hours, address and phone number details in the header, the footer and right on the front page.
Mobile First
Plate Up is designed with a mobile-first, responsive design strategy. That means that visitors accessing your site from their phones or tablets will get an experienced optimized for their needs.
Today, mobile visitors can easily account for 30-50% of web traffic. That number is bound to increase in the next few years. That’s why Plate Up is focused on making it as easy as possible for these visitors to use your site. Learn more.
Restaurant Features
Plate Up caters to the full range of needs for a restaurant by adding support for two plugins I have not yet released publicly. Good Reviews for WordPress provides an easy, attractive tool to manage and display your best reviews. Business Profile makes it easy to set up all of your contact details. And of course it comes with support for two of the most popular contact form plugins as well as the well-known WordPress SEO by Yoast.
Solid Foundations
With this release I’ve finally put in place the foundations of a suite of plugins for managing a restaurant website for WordPress. I’m really looking forward to expanding on this in the future by releasing my reviews and profile plugins, adding new features to my menu and reservations plugins, and building more themes to take advantage of these features.
If you’re still reading, good job! Now go check out Plate Up.
