🏢 Cafe / Restaurant · Moonee Ponds, Melbourne
A backstreet cafe with all-day breakfast
Research Phase
Before writing a single line of code, our research agent studied Darling St Espresso — their current website, social presence, reviews, team, and services. Here's what stood out.
Hidden in a renovated corner store at 146 Athol St, off Moonee Ponds' main streets — the 'backstreet' location is a deliberate brand identity, with a dog-friendly courtyard out back that doubles as a pram-friendly family space
The menu blends Australian brunch with distinct Asian-fusion influences: miso caramel pork belly eggs benny with yuzu hollandaise and furikake ($28), chorizo chilli scram with fermented peri peri and curry leaves ($26), and French toast with lemon myrtle maple drizzle ($25)
Uses Industry Beans coffee (flat white $5/$5.50) with everything made in-house from locally sourced ingredients — research confirmed a 20-item food menu and full drinks menu extracted from November 2025 website menu images
Design Phase
Every design decision was intentional — informed by the research, not pulled from a template library.
Visual Direction
An 8-page site (the largest in this batch) with 9 components including a bespoke Daily Menu Board, Accordion for FAQs, ImageGallery, TestimonialCarousel, and FloatingCTA. Dedicated pages for catering, events, and gallery extend the site well beyond a basic cafe presence into a fully featured business platform with Framer Motion animations throughout.
Design Rationale
Darling St Espresso's existing WordPress site (built with Bricks theme, 'Powered by Busboy') serves basic needs but undersells their creative menu and hidden-gem positioning. The Daily Menu Board component brings the cafe's rotating specials culture online, while the 8-page structure (including catering and events) reflects a business that's more than just a brunch spot. The design leans into the 'discovery' narrative — you have to know about this place — which is exactly the story their backstreet location tells.
Build Phase
Site Architecture
// Next.js App Router
Methodology
Spark (research agent) scraped Darling St Espresso'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 Darling St Espresso. 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 8-page Next.js application from scratch — 9 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 achieved high data completeness across 8 sources, with the official website providing the richest data — including full menu extraction from November 2025 menu images (food and drinks). JSON-LD schema data confirmed the address (146 Athol St, Moonee Ponds 3039) and hours. An important correction was made: the business is in Moonee Ponds, not Braybrook as initially assumed. Instagram content was inaccessible (login required) and Google reviews unavailable due to API limits.
For Reference
Darling St Espresso's current website: darlingstreetespresso.com.au
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 Darling St Espresso's site in 10 minutes. Same process, same quality — a custom website built for you, not a template.