🏢 Cafe / Restaurant · Pascoe Vale, Melbourne
Serving you with love, passion and pride.
Research Phase
Before writing a single line of code, our research agent studied st.derby — their current website, social presence, reviews, team, and services. Here's what stood out.
Founded by Danny and Paula in the summer of 2013, st.derby has built a fiercely loyal Pascoe Vale following — rated 4.8 stars from 949 reviews on Restaurant Guru, with Google reviewers describing the coffee as 'directly syphoned from Mount Olympus' and 'fit for the gods'
The cafe operates 7 days a week (6:30 AM–4:00 PM weekdays, 7:30 AM–3:00 PM weekends including public holidays) with a kitchen close at 2:30 PM — a genuine community hub with dedicated Kids Club menu alongside all-day breakfast and lunch
Reviewers consistently single out two signature items: the chicken burger ('the best chicken burger in my whole life') and hash browns ('definitely 10/10') — word-of-mouth staples that drive repeat visits to this family-run operation
Design Phase
Every design decision was intentional — informed by the research, not pulled from a template library.
Visual Direction
A 6-page site with 9 components including a bespoke Rush Predictor interactive feature, TestimonialCarousel, and a dedicated gallery page. The structure includes separate menu and order/book pages alongside the core about and contact sections. A Marquee component adds dynamic movement, while the FloatingCTA keeps ordering accessible throughout the browsing experience.
Design Rationale
Danny and Paula built st.derby on three pillars — quality, consistency, and customer service — and the design mirrors that community-first identity. The Rush Predictor is a playful, practical tool that fits a cafe where regulars plan their week around visits. The warm visual approach and testimonial-forward layout reflect a business where reviewers say 'everything about this place is so good, from the staff to the food and the vibe' — the design needed to feel as welcoming as walking through the door.
Build Phase
Site Architecture
// Next.js App Router
Methodology
Spark (research agent) scraped st.derby'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 st.derby. 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 — 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 covered 8 sources including the official website (stderby.com.au), Restaurant Guru listing (4.8/949 reviews, address at 161 Derby St), DuckDuckGo search results confirming founders and establishment date, and Yelp (4.3 stars). The menu is a downloadable PDF that couldn't be fully scraped, so menu categories were captured from the website structure. No Instagram handle was confirmed.
For Reference
st.derby's current website: www.stderby.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 st.derby's site in 10 minutes. Same process, same quality — a custom website built for you, not a template.