Restaurant — Waregem · 2026

Cottage Waregem

Migration from Squarespace to Next.js. Reservations, seasonal menu, jobs page, Open Graph cards. Faster and cheaper to maintain.

The real site. Click to open it large and live — click around, you stay here.

The brief

Squarespace was slow, expensive and hard to change. Updating the menu for a new season was always a hassle, and mobile visitors bounced.

The solution

Full rebuild in Next.js with a custom admin for menu, jobs and opening hours. All existing content migrated with permanent redirects to preserve SEO. Open Graph cards for clean shareable links.

Result

From slow Squarespace to near-instant load
Editing the menu: from a chore to a few minutes
Jobs with NL/FR email flow

Cottage is an established restaurant in Waregem with a loyal audience, but the Squarespace site worked against the business. Every menu change meant fiddling in a slow editor, mobile visitors (the majority) waited 5+ seconds, and the cost rose yearly with nothing in return.

In numbers

PageSpeed (mobile)

top

before: weak

Update the menu

a few min

before: a chore

Above-the-fold load

near-instant

before: slow

Key decisions

No page builder, but a menu model

Instead of free text blocks I built a structured menu (dish, price, allergens, season). A seasonal switch becomes a few clicks instead of layout fiddling.

Permanent redirects before launch

Every old Squarespace URL got a 301 to the right new page. The ranking moved with it — no Google dip after the switch.

Jobs as its own module

Hospitality constantly hires. A jobs page with NL/FR mail flow seemed secondary but became one of the most-used parts.

Timeline

Week 1 — Scope
Inventory of all existing pages and URLs, agreements on what the business wants to manage itself.
Week 2 — Design
First clickable version on staging, owner feedback incorporated.
Week 3 — Build + admin
Menu, jobs and opening-hours modules + content import from Squarespace.
Week 4 — Soft launch
Redirects live, sitemap submitted, ranking monitored. No downtime.

What I'd redo

The menu structure was a touch too strict at first — some dishes don't fit neatly in boxes. I added a free 'note' field so the chef stays flexible. Lesson: structure, but always leave one escape valve for the reality of a kitchen.

Other work

See all →

Bistro — Brussels

Bar'Botte

Bilingual (NL/FR) restaurant site with menu and reservations. Cottage's little sister, its own identity.

Next.js 16Tailwind v4Supabasei18n

Interior styling — West Flanders

Céline Intérieur

Portfolio + admin as three separate PWAs: shop, projects and rental. Photos, clients, quotes, all in one place.

Next.js 16SupabasePWATailwind v4

Wildlife photography — webshop

Allard Philippe

Full webshop for fine-art prints. Mollie payments, gift cards, discount codes, newsletter, customer portal. NL/FR.

Next.js 16SupabaseMollieResendi18n

A similar project?

Let's talk about what you want to build.

Get in touch

Back to work