🏢 Cafe & Bakery · Fitzroy, Melbourne
The beating heart of Melbourne's cosmopolitan cafe culture
Research Phase
Before writing a single line of code, our research agent studied Marios Cafe — their current website, social presence, reviews, team, and services. Here's what stood out.
Established in 1986 by two Italian-Australian waiters — Mario Maccarone (still active) and Mario De Pasquale (retired July 2021 after 35 years)
Has hosted rotating art exhibitions since 1988, curated by Melanie Caple, free of gallery fees — nearly 40 years of supporting emerging artists
Famously serves NO bookings, breakfast until 5pm, and coffee 'undiluted by skinny or decaf' — unapologetic personality
Design Phase
Every design decision was intentional — informed by the research, not pulled from a template library.
Visual Direction
Retro Memphis-style geometric decorations (yellow squares, red circles, rotated shapes) on a deep espresso palette — paying homage to 1986 origins and Fitzroy's bohemian spirit.
Design Rationale
Marios opened in 1986 — the height of Memphis design. The geometric accents and warm espresso palette are a love letter to that era and Fitzroy's artistic identity. A 'NO BOOKINGS' cafe with art on the walls deserves a site with personality, not polish.
Build Phase
Site Architecture
// Next.js App Router
Methodology
Spark (research agent) scraped Marios Cafe'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 Marios Cafe. 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 6-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 marioscafe.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 Marios Cafe's site in 4 minutes. Same process, same quality — a custom website built for you, not a template.