Welcome to Lefty's Neighborhood Sandwiches
Lefty has always been a simple man. Growing up, he wasn't that smart, but he is a good man. He was born and raised in this town, and everyone in the neighborhood loves him. After barely making it through high school, Lefty went on to become a steel worker. At the steel mill, Lefty learned to be surly and judgemental. Unsatisfied with the lame cheese sandwiches sold daily at the steel mill cafeteria, Lefty started making his own sandwiches. Soon, people became jealous of Lefty's sandwiches that contained fresh ingredients instead of stale bread and cheese, "if you can call that bread and cheese", Lefty could often be heard muttering to himself. Lefty's coworkers would ask to share his sandwiches with them, to which he'd often reply, "NO!! GET YOUR OWN, HIPPIE!". Eventually Lefty realized that it was really, very annoying to have all his coworkers bugging him for food all the time. However, it would be much less annoying if they paid him for sandwiches. It was at that moment, Lefty realized that his passion wasn't in forging rebar, it was making delicious sandwiches! (and making a profit from doing so.. yay!) And thus, Lefty's Neighborhood Sandwiches was born.
For the record, this isn't Lefty, but it sure looks like him.
About
I created this website for Uncle Lefty, who wanted to grow his business, but still appeal to his customers his way. Lefty's customers came because of his sandwiches, but stayed for the atmosphere and Lefty's character. The initial goal was to create a website that allowed people to place orders online, then allow them to go to Lefty's shop and pick up their order. I feel that it accomplishes this goal, and is a great start. It does this by taking a simple task and presenting it online for users to do themselves. All Lefty needs to know is who you are, and what you want. The website allows you, the hungry user, to give him that information. I have ordered sandwiches online before, and always found the configurators easy to use. As a budding developer, I figured I could accomplish the same method using the checkbox forms we learned about in class that allows users to build a sandwich that is as simple or as crazy as you wanted. I simply copied that method with some simple ingredients.
I chose an online sandwich configurator because it would be fun and simple, yet still allow me to show off some HTML skills I learned. In the real world, these sites really don't need to do much beyond showing you what's on the menu and allow you to place an order. What is missing from my site that prevents it from being a full solution is the backend software that accepts the orders and communicates them to the restauranteur. I digress.
I chose the color palette simply because I liked it, and it works. I liked the muted blue background and gray text boxes. I added the dark red border because it doesn't strain your eyes (like a brighter red would), and is a clear border that separates the text boxes from the blue background. I kept the font basic with sans-serif because it works. Anything more would be overstyled. Headers and other important elements are bolded, with the customer input options or supporting information text remaining unbolded. I did this because it's a familiar format that will make sense to anyone. I increased the font size to make things easier to read. I wanted the website to communicate Lefty's persona of simple, effective, and capable of making one hell of a sandwich.
Lefty may be willing to start franchising down the road, and the website will need to grow with that. There are numerous opportunities for enhancement without compromising the theme. Ideally, I'd like to strenghthen the sandwich configurator with some kind of logic, or give the users more control over the ingredients that they want on their sandwich. Right now, it only lets you create one meal. The next logical step would be to allow users to add multiple sandwiches on one order. We could also add the ability for customers to pay for their orders online with a credit card, or even set up delivery.