🍺 Pub & Bar · Richmond, Melbourne
Built in 1888. Reborn for Richmond.
Research Phase
Before writing a single line of code, our research agent studied The Grand Hotel Richmond — their current website, social presence, reviews, team, and services. Here's what stood out.
Established in 1888 — over 135 years of history on Burnley Street, making it one of Richmond's oldest surviving pubs
Five distinct spaces: Sports Bar, Bistro, Beer Garden ('sun-drenched by day, fairy-lit by night'), Wine Room, and Courtyard
Current site rates 4/10 — a heritage pub with this much character deserves a website that matches
Design Phase
Every design decision was intentional — informed by the research, not pulled from a template library.
Visual Direction
Heritage-meets-modern pub design with area-specific iconography, warm photography, and a layout that showcases the venue's five distinct spaces.
Design Rationale
A pub built in 1888 that's been 'reborn for Richmond' needs a website that bridges history and energy. The five distinct spaces are the selling point — each gets its own showcase, letting visitors picture exactly where they'll be spending their evening.
Build Phase
Site Architecture
// Next.js App Router
Methodology
Spark (research agent) scraped The Grand Hotel Richmond'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 Grand Hotel Richmond. 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 7-page Next.js application from scratch — 3 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 grandrichmond.com.au, Google reviews, and social media profiles. All business data — services, team, pricing, hours — extracted and verified from public sources.
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 Grand Hotel Richmond's site in 5 minutes. Same process, same quality — a custom website built for you, not a template.