Selected work · Clifton, New Jersey
The Grand Saloon
A restaurant website and ongoing creative system built to connect menus, ordering, events, local discovery and the day-to-day work of keeping a Clifton bar and restaurant visible.
Website · Local presence · Ongoing creative support · Launched 2024 · Ongoing
The situation
I built The Grand Saloon's first website myself, years back.
It did what a brand-new bar needed: it got them found online. But the business grew past what that first site was built for. No local search foundation for Clifton or the rest of Passaic County, no real system for events or specials, nothing built to scale alongside it.
What I did and why
I gave the site an actual job.
People deciding on a bar want to check the menu, see what's happening this week, and figure out if it's worth the drive. So ordering, events, and private parties each got their own clear path instead of getting buried on one page.
I also built out local-search pages for the specific things people around Clifton are actually searching for, not just a homepage hoping to catch everything, as part of the same website and local presence work I do for every restaurant client.
Beyond the website
The ongoing creative work behind it.
A website and local search foundation matter, but a lot of the week-to-week work is food photography, menu updates, social posts, promotions and getting the word out beyond the site itself.
Before — employee phone photo
After — retouched for the menu and site
Nothing here is staged or generated from scratch. I start with what's actually on the plate and clean up lighting, color and framing so it's ready for the menu, the website and social.
More menu photography, enhanced from on-site phone photos the same way.
Menu design
Billboard advertising off-site
Weekly social posts for specials, events and promotions.
Long-term performance
Two years after launch, the site is still doing the work.
Ranking for “best bar in Clifton” and for the French onion soup local-search page.
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organic sessions, most recent 12 months
The local-search pages I built for things like Happy Hour and the steak menu are earning their own traffic, holding a 69% engagement rate. People are finding what they're looking for, not just landing and leaving.
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sessions from targeted local-search pages
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combined engagement rate on those pages
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online-ordering clicks sitewide
The relationship that grew
One relationship, not three clients.
I built The Heights Bar & Grill's first website and some of their early promotional flyers, back when they first opened. A few years later, I heard through the previous Grand Saloon owner that the same group was buying that spot, so I reached out. That became the Grand Saloon redesign two years ago.
From there I went on to redesign Plank Pizza and The Heights as well. It's one relationship that's grown alongside their business in Northern New Jersey.
Need this kind of restaurant support?