☕ Cafe · Thornbury, Melbourne
Specialty espresso tucked away on a Thornbury backstreet
Research Phase
Before writing a single line of code, our research agent studied The Brickie & The Barista — their current website, social presence, reviews, team, and services. Here's what stood out.
Backstreet espresso bar on Hutton Street with 20 years of hospitality experience — self-described as 'away from the mainstream and mayhem'
Menu features espresso from $4.00, flat white $5.00, cold brew steeped 18 hours for $6.00, and a brekkie roll with house-made relish at $12.00
Dog-friendly with outdoor seating, opens 6:30 AM weekdays — 'our quaint little hole in the wall is for all you caffeine addicts'
Design Phase
Every design decision was intentional — informed by the research, not pulled from a template library.
Visual Direction
Warm mortar and brick tones, DM Serif Display headings, coffee ring decorative elements, and a grain overlay for artisan texture.
Design Rationale
The hidden backstreet charm needed a design that felt intimate and handcrafted, not corporate. Coffee-ring CSS shapes add playful authenticity.
Build Phase
Site Architecture
// Next.js App Router
Methodology
Spark (research agent) scraped The Brickie & The Barista's current website, Google reviews, social media, and business listings. Every piece of real data — team names, service pricing, business hours, unique details — was extracted into a structured profile.
Based on the research, a bespoke design direction was created specifically for The Brickie & The Barista. No templates — the typography, color palette, layout patterns, and visual effects were all chosen to match this business's personality and industry.
Pixel (design agent) built the entire 4-page Next.js application from scratch — 2 custom components, real content from the research phase, App Router with proper routing, and production-grade code.
Sentinel (QA agent) verified the build compiles cleanly, checked for placeholder content, validated all routes render correctly, and confirmed the design is unique (not recycled from another demo).
Additional Notes
Research sourced from public sources. All business data extracted and verified.
For Reference
The Brickie & The Barista's current website: thebrickieandthebarista.com.au
View Our Version →More from the experiment
This case study is part of the AI Web Lab — a 30-day experiment where AI agents build bespoke websites for real Melbourne businesses. Every site is researched, designed, and built from scratch by a team of five specialist AI agents. The full methodology, code, and results are documented transparently.
This study is being prepared for publication as part of a research paper on AI-assisted web development at scale.
We built The Brickie & The Barista's site in 4 minutes. Same process, same quality — a custom website built for you, not a template.