Renee — a Modern Restaurant Experience for Nice
Renee is a restaurant founded by Ukrainians from Dnipro and launched in Nice, France. As a completely new name in the local market, the restaurant needed to introduce itself to both residents and tourists while building a recognizable presence from the very beginning.
The brand identity was already established, including its colors, typography, and illustrated bird mascot. Our task was to translate this character into a digital experience and create a website that could communicate Renee’s personality while supporting the practical needs of future guests.
Renee was entering a conservative hospitality market where many restaurants still relied on phone calls and minimal digital experiences. The challenge was not simply to create a modern website, but to introduce new digital habits without making the experience feel unfamiliar or overly technological for a mature local audience.
Our goal was to make Renee easy to discover and understand, give both locals and tourists a convenient way to explore the menu and book a table online, and build trust around a completely new restaurant before and after its launch.
Renee is imagined as a granddaughter who respects tradition but naturally brings something new into it. She loves visiting her grandmother, eating from vintage plates and listening to old stories, while at the same time using modern technology and enjoying contemporary city culture. This metaphor reflects the restaurant’s approach: preserving the warmth and familiarity of classic French hospitality while gently introducing a more modern experience. It helped us create a website that feels fresh enough to stand out in Nice, yet familiar and respectful enough to remain welcoming to a more conservative audience.
The main graphic technique brings playful illustrations of the bird mascot directly into realistic photography of classic French interiors. This creates a visible dialogue between past and present without breaking the atmosphere of the restaurant. To keep the mascot from being overused, food photography is complemented with smaller hand-drawn elements — lines, arrows, handwritten notes, and ingredient or process details. Together, these elements make the imagery distinctly Renee while adding personality and playfulness without overwhelming the content.
The color palette combines a warm cream background with expressive red and deep charcoal. The neutral base creates a sense of warmth and familiarity associated with traditional European restaurants, while red brings energy, appetite, and personality into key messages and interactions.
Dark sections create visual pauses throughout the long page and help food photography stand out, allowing the website to remain expressive without overwhelming a more conservative audience.
DM Serif Text and DM Sans form the core typography system of the website, following Renee’s existing brand guidelines and keeping the digital experience consistent with menus, business cards, and other restaurant touchpoints. The combination of an expressive serif and a clean sans-serif balances classic character with contemporary clarity, supporting the idea of bringing a modern experience into a traditional setting.
Kirang Haerang gives the bird mascot its own recognizable voice, visually separating its playful comments from the restaurant’s main communication. Its hand-drawn, slightly irregular character adds spontaneity and a subtle rebellious touch, helping the bird feel like a real personality within the experience while keeping its interventions light and friendly.
Hand-drawn illustrations, irregular shapes, playful annotations, and the Renee bird transform functional content into part of the brand experience. Instead of relying on generic restaurant UI patterns, these elements create small moments of personality throughout the journey.
The mascot is used as a recurring companion rather than a static logo element — reacting, commenting, and appearing between content sections. Together with the custom icons and illustrated map, this creates recognition without requiring heavy animation or complex interactions.
The experience begins before the main content appears: during loading, Renee’s bird mascot walks across the screen, immediately introducing the playful personality of the restaurant and turning a functional moment into a recognizable brand interaction. The animation then leads into the hero section, where the restaurant’s message is kept intentionally simple and welcoming, with a clear Book a table action available from the start.
Together, these first interactions help a completely new restaurant become memorable without making the experience feel unfamiliar or overly experimental for Nice’s more conservative audience. The mascot creates emotional recognition, while the straightforward structure quickly communicates what Renee offers and gives visitors a direct path to reservation — supporting the restaurant’s main goal of converting first-time visitors into guests.
The about section introduces Renee’s philosophy through a simple contrast: a modern approach built around the warmth of classic hospitality. Instead of explaining the concept only through text, we bring the bird mascot into real restaurant interiors, where its playful comments create a dialogue between the traditional environment and Renee’s more contemporary personality.
This approach helps communicate the restaurant’s difference without making it feel unfamiliar to Nice’s more conservative audience. Short, easy-to-scan copy keeps the message accessible, while the combination of authentic interiors and playful illustrations makes a new restaurant more recognizable and memorable — reinforcing the idea that innovation and tradition can comfortably coexist.
The gallery puts the food at the center of the experience, using large-scale photography and an editorial layout to communicate the quality and attention to detail behind Renee’s dishes. Rather than presenting images in a conventional grid, varied sizes and compositions encourage visitors to explore the menu visually and build appetite before making a reservation.
On mobile, the gallery adapts into an easy-to-browse experience, with individual dishes opening into a focused photo view and a thumbnail carousel for quick navigation. This gives potential guests a clearer sense of what to expect before visiting and helps a new restaurant build desire and confidence through its strongest asset — the food itself.
To build trust around a completely new restaurant, we integrated TripAdvisor reviews directly into the website, allowing visitors to see the restaurant’s rating and guest experiences without leaving the page. The carousel format keeps the section easy to browse on both desktop and mobile while giving social proof a prominent place in the user journey.
Positioned directly before the booking CTA, the reviews help reduce uncertainty at the moment of decision. After discovering the restaurant, its atmosphere, and food, visitors receive additional reassurance from other guests before being invited to book a table — turning external credibility into support for one of the website’s main business goals: driving reservations.
Bringing all the elements together, the final scroll shows how Renee’s personality unfolds naturally throughout the entire website. Playful details appear alongside practical interactions without interrupting the journey, while a consistent visual language connects every touchpoint from discovery to reservation and visit. The result is a cohesive digital experience that feels distinctly Renee — warm and familiar at its core, but fresh in the way guests interact with it.
Even an error page becomes part of Renee’s personality. Instead of a generic system message, the 404 page extends the restaurant’s visual language through humor, custom illustration, and the bird mascot, turning a potentially frustrating moment into another small branded interaction.
The playful copy connects the error directly to the dining experience, while a clear Go to main page action immediately guides visitors back to the website. This keeps the experience useful and intuitive while reinforcing the warm, slightly cheeky character established throughout Renee’s digital presence.
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