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Concept redesignGrowth packageWeb designCopywritingDay/Night theme

Porchlight Coffee & Taps

Coffee shop & taproom · Greer, SC

Coffee and pastries by day, local beer on tap by night — and a website that only told half the story. Rebuilt with a day/night switch so the site changes with the shop.

porchlighttaps.com
The redesigned Porchlight homepage in day mode — warm paper tones, an hours bar, a lantern logo, the serif headline "Slow coffee, front-porch mornings." with a handwritten "good morning, Greer" note, an illustrated sunrise porch with a rocking chair and a mug on the railing, an "Est. 2016" stamp, and a menu board with prices.
The old Porchlight site — a 2011 blog template on a speckled brown background with a papyrus-style banner, rambling blog posts that bury "AND NOW WE HAVE BEER!!!" in a paragraph, a music player widget, and a visitor counter.
BeforeAfter

Drag the handle, or focus it and use your arrow keys. Use the Day / Night switch in the top bar to flip the redesign.

The problem

A great business, hiding behind its website.

  1. 01

    The website only talked about coffee. The beer — half the business — was buried in a blog post that said "AND NOW WE HAVE BEER!!!"

  2. 02

    There was no tap list. People had to call or just show up to find out what was pouring.

  3. 03

    Evening events like trivia lived on Facebook only, so the website never mentioned them.

  4. 04

    A free blog template with mismatched fonts made a thoughtful, local business look thrown together.

What changed

New design. New words. Same great business.

Old headline

~*~ Welcome Coffee Lovers ~*~

New headline

Slow coffee, front-porch mornings. / Cold pints, warm porch nights.

Design

  • A day/night theme switch, built just for this site, that flips the homepage between coffee shop and taproom.
  • A layout that feels like the shop itself — warm paper texture, a serif headline, hand-lettered notes, and an illustrated porch instead of stock photos.
  • The details a real neighborhood spot needs up front — today's hours, the address, and when the taps start pouring.
  • A menu board with real prices by day and tonight's taps by night, both easy for staff to update from their phone.
  • Cream, espresso, and copper by day. Deep plum and amber by night — like the porch lights coming on.

Copy

  • Two headlines, one for each mood — "Slow coffee, front-porch mornings." and "Cold pints, warm porch nights."
  • Short, friendly descriptions for each coffee and each beer on tap, written for regular people, not snobs.
  • One clear line that explains the whole place — coffee by day, local taps by night.
Built for this site

A Day / Night switch that changes with the shop

Porchlight is two businesses under one roof. So the site has two moods. A single tap in the navigation flips the whole homepage between the morning coffee shop and the evening taproom — colors, headline, menu highlights, and all.

  • Switches automatically at 5 PM, when the taps open, and remembers each visitor's choice after that.
  • Same layout in both modes, so nothing jumps around. Only the mood, words, and featured items change.
  • Night mode puts the rotating tap list, events, and porch seating front and center. Day mode leads with ordering ahead.
  • Both color schemes are checked for readability, so text stays easy to read in either mode.
The redesigned Porchlight homepage in day mode — warm paper tones, an hours bar, a lantern logo, the serif headline "Slow coffee, front-porch mornings." with a handwritten "good morning, Greer" note, an illustrated sunrise porch with a rocking chair and a mug on the railing, an "Est. 2016" stamp, and a menu board with prices.
Day mode
The same Porchlight homepage in night mode — deep plum and amber, the headline "Cold pints, warm porch nights.", the porch illustration under glowing string lights with a crescent moon and a pint on the railing, and tonight's tap list with prices.
Night mode

Built to deliver

What this redesign is built to do.

one site for the coffee shop and the taproom
2 modesone site for the coffee shop and the taproom
to flip between day and night
1 tapto flip between day and night
when the site switches itself to night mode
5 PMwhen the site switches itself to night mode

Concept redesign: a fictional business used to demonstrate my process. These are design outcomes, not measured client results.

The situation

Porchlight started as a small-batch coffee shop in Greer. A few years in, they added a dozen taps of local beer and started staying open late. The evenings took off. The website never caught up. It was still a free blog from 2011, all about lattes and Wi-Fi, with the beer mentioned once, in capital letters, halfway down a post.

The approach

Porchlight is really two places: a bright morning coffee shop and a cozy evening taproom. Instead of cramming both onto one page, I gave the site two moods that match the shop. The layout stays the same, so it feels like one business, but the colors, headline, and featured items change with the time of day.

A visitor at 8 a.m. sees coffee, pastries, and “order ahead.” A visitor at 8 p.m. sees what’s on tap, what’s happening tonight, and an invitation to grab a seat on the porch.

What it’s built to do

This is a concept redesign, so I’m not quoting made-up numbers. It’s built to make the evening business as visible as the morning one, to keep the tap list and events on the website instead of scattered across social media, and to give a local favorite a website with some personality.

Next case study

Poole & Schmidt, P.A.

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