Overview
Snappy's Sandwiches & Snacks is a Portland-based sandwich shop with two neighborhood locations (SE Ankeny and NW 23rd) and a fast-growing catering business. They were running on a WordPress build that didn't need to be dynamic, and it was holding back their retro, fun branding with sluggish load times and templated layouts. We rebuilt the site as a fast, static AstroJS site that fully embraces their visual identity, bold colors, playful typography, and vintage-inspired illustrations, and centers the experience around their biggest growth opportunity, catering. The flagship piece is a comprehensive catering inquiry form with a live, receipt-style summary that updates as the customer fills it out, turning a routine form into a piece of the brand experience.
Services delivered
- WordPress to AstroJS Migration
- Custom Retro Brand Implementation
- Multi-Location Restaurant Website
- Catering Inquiry Form & Receipt UI
- Menu Page Design
- Mobile-First Responsive Design
- Performance Optimization
- SEO Foundation & Local Search
- Square Ordering & Pro Shop Integration
The problem
Snappy's had a great brand and a growing business, but the WordPress site they launched on wasn't keeping up with either:
- Paying the WordPress Tax for No Reason. The site had no dynamic content that actually needed a database. Every page was effectively static. WordPress was adding cost, plugins, hosting overhead, and load time without delivering anything in return.
- A Bold Brand Trapped in Templated Layouts. Snappy's branding is unmistakably retro, fun, and confident. The previous site flattened that personality into a generic restaurant template, fine for a chain, wrong for a brand built on standing out.
- Catering Buried in a Contact Form. Catering is the single biggest revenue lever in the business, but the original site treated it like an afterthought, a generic contact form with no structure for the actual details a catering coordinator needs.
- Two Locations, One Confusing Story. With shops in SE and NW Portland, the site had to make it instantly clear where to go, when each location is open, and how to order from either, without forcing customers to dig.
- Mobile Performance That Matched the Brand. Most lunch decisions and catering inquiries happen on a phone. A slow, cluttered mobile experience was actively costing orders the brand was earning everywhere else.
Snappy's needed a site as fast and confident as their sandwiches, and a catering experience built like a real product, not a contact form.
Our solution
We rebuilt Snappy's on AstroJS as a fast, static site that fully leans into their retro identity and treats catering as a first-class flow:
- Static AstroJS Build, No WordPress Overhead. We migrated the whole site off WordPress to AstroJS. Every page that didn't need a database stopped paying for one. The result is a site that loads near-instantly, is far cheaper to host, and has no plugin update treadmill to maintain.
- Static-first architecture, zero database for content pages
- Significantly faster load times across mobile and desktop
- No WordPress plugins to patch, update, or worry about
- Lower hosting cost and dramatically smaller attack surface
- Retro Brand, Fully Expressed. The new site is built around Snappy's actual visual language, bold mustard yellows and deep greens, chunky display typography, hand-drawn illustrations, and playful microcopy. Every page feels unmistakably theirs instead of feeling like a restaurant template with their logo dropped in.
- Comprehensive Catering Form with Live Receipt. We built a catering inquiry form designed around how catering actually gets quoted, guests, sandwich selections, sides, drinks, delivery details, and timing. As the customer fills it out, a receipt-style summary updates live alongside the form, so they always see exactly what they're requesting before they hit submit.
- Structured fields for guest count, items, sides, and delivery
- Live receipt-style summary that updates as the form is filled
- Clear quantities and selections, no guessing on the kitchen side
- Works seamlessly on mobile where most inquiries originate
- Menu, Locations, and Ordering Made Obvious. The site is organized around the four things visitors actually want, see the menu, find a location, order online, or book catering. Both Portland locations are surfaced clearly with addresses, phones, and directions, and Order Now and Pro Shop links route cleanly into Square and Big Cartel without a clunky handoff.
- Mobile-First Performance. Every page is built mobile-first with optimized imagery, system fonts where possible, and minimal JavaScript. The site stays fast even with bold visuals and full-page artwork, performance and brand are on the same side, not trading off.
- Analytics on the Things That Matter. We wired up event tracking for the moves that actually drive revenue, Order Now clicks, phone calls, Get Directions taps, newsletter signups, and catering form submissions, so Snappy's can see what the site is actually contributing instead of guessing from pageviews.
The process
- 01
Brand & Site Audit
We started by understanding why the current WordPress site was holding the business back:
- 02
Architecture & Information Design
We organized the site around what visitors and the business both actually need:
- 03
Retro Brand Implementation
We rebuilt the visual system to fully express the Snappy's identity:
- 04
Catering Form & Live Receipt Build
We designed and built the catering inquiry experience as a focused product:
- 05
Migration, Launch, and Analytics
We launched the new site cleanly and made sure Snappy's can see what it's doing:
Outcomes
The new Snappy's site looks like the brand, loads like a static site should, and treats catering like the growth channel it is:
- Off WordPress, Onto a Faster Stack. Migrated cleanly from WordPress to AstroJS. The site now serves static HTML, loads dramatically faster, and has none of the plugin and update overhead that comes with a CMS the business didn't actually need.
- A Site That Finally Looks Like Snappy's. The retro, fun branding is fully expressed, bold colors, playful typography, vintage illustrations, and a confident tone of voice across every page. The site reads as Snappy's the moment it loads.
- Catering Inquiries as a Real Product Flow. The catering form with live receipt-style summary turns a routine inquiry into a structured, on-brand experience. The kitchen receives clean, complete information, and customers see exactly what they're asking for before submitting.
- Both Locations, Equally Visible. SE Portland and NW Portland each get clean, symmetric treatment, addresses, phones, directions, and hours surfaced where customers expect them, with the homepage anchor link making location info one tap away.
- Order Now, Pro Shop, and Catering Routed Cleanly. External order flows (Square ordering, Big Cartel pro shop) and the internal catering flow each have prominent, branded entry points, so visitors land in the right place for what they came to do.
- Mobile-First, Performance-Tuned. The site is built for the phone-first reality of restaurant traffic. Pages load fast, images are optimized, and key actions (call, directions, order) are within thumb's reach without compromising the visual punch of the brand.