El Café de Manuela: the first job was getting rid of a bill.

What we found

• They were paying for hosting that wasn't hosting anything The plan had been running since April and the domain was parked: it didn't lead to any page.
• Every voucher was sorted out by hand They sell a brunch for two on BonosVip. Anyone who bought it had to send a WhatsApp message, Wednesday to Friday, 9am to 2pm, to ask for a date. If they bought it on a Saturday, they had to wait until Wednesday.
• There was no way to check bookings Knowing how many vouchers were left for a Saturday depended on someone remembering, not on looking it up anywhere.

They weren't doing anything wrong. Answering by hand works perfectly well until the voucher starts selling, and then the message always arrives in the middle of service.

Before selling them anything, we got rid of a bill

The first step was to look at what they were already paying for. The hosting cost €203.88 a year, plus tax, to host a website that didn't exist. The plan was left to expire, and the new website costs them nothing in hosting. The domain is still in their name and is renewed separately, for €16.99 a year.

What we did

• Multi-page website in Spanish and English Home, menu, brunch, vouchers, gallery, bookings and contact, with every page fully translated, not just the menu.
• The whole menu, inside the website No PDF to download and no jumping to another platform, organised by section and with the allergens shown as icons.
• The voucher date is booked on the spot A calendar shows the coming weeks with the full days already marked. You can request a date at eleven o'clock on a Sunday night just as easily as on a Tuesday morning.
• If Saturday is full, the website suggests Wednesday Nobody is left with a no: tap a full day and it offers the weekdays that still have space, which are exactly the ones the café wants to fill.
• A private dashboard for the café From their phone they decide how many vouchers they accept each day, close off a single date or change the times, without calling us and without every change costing money.

The limit is about margin, not capacity

The voucher comes with a discount. Without a limit, the weekend fills up with vouchers and à la carte dishes stop selling. That's why there's a cap on Saturdays and Sundays and none on weekdays, and that's why they set the cap themselves, day by day, instead of it being written into the code.

What you don't see, but holds the system up

• Bookings can't be read from outside The browser can request a slot, but it can never see who requested it.
• We don't store email addresses A name and a phone number are enough. What isn't collected can't be lost.
• Nothing gets deleted Cancelling keeps the record with its date, and the history can be exported and saved separately.
• The last slot is never sold twice If two people request the same day at the same time, whoever gets there first gets it, and the other person sees a notice.

Results

The website is live and the voucher system is up and running. It's still too early to show visit or booking figures, and we're not going to make them up: once there's enough data, we'll publish it here exactly as it comes out. What has been measured since day one is the saving, €203.88 a year on hosting, and the technical quality: 100 for accessibility, best practices and SEO in Lighthouse, measured on mobile.