Case study · Visit Leeds

A restaurant guide for a whole city, built from scratch.

The Leeds Restaurant Guide is the official place to discover where to eat in Leeds. We built the whole platform for Visit Leeds: the directory, AI search, restaurant owner accounts and a review dashboard for their team.

Client: Visit Leeds
Sector: Tourism and hospitality, Leeds
Services: Custom web platform, AI search, dashboards
Year: 2026, launching soon
Related services: Websites & Systems · AI Solutions

The brief

Not just a website. A whole system.

Visit Leeds wanted one official guide to the city's restaurants that stays accurate without their team rewriting every listing by hand. We designed and built the platform from scratch.

Restaurant owners sign up, apply for their restaurant to appear, and submit offers. Visit Leeds is notified, reviews each draft in its own dashboard and decides what gets published. Once a restaurant is live, its owner has their own login to keep the page up to date, from opening hours to new offers.

Behind it, WordPress handles only the user accounts and roles. The directory, the sign-up and approval flow and both dashboards are custom built, so nothing looks or feels like WordPress.

What we built

A custom restaurant directory with filters
AI search that understands plain-English requests
Restaurant owner sign-up, applications and offers
A review and publishing dashboard for Visit Leeds
Unique logins for every restaurant

UX decisions

Every decision, and why we made it.

The guide serves three kinds of people at once: hungry visitors, restaurant owners and the Visit Leeds team. Each one gets a route designed around what they came to do.

Search the way people actually talk
The hero is a single search box: "Tell us what you're looking for". Visitors can type something like "healthy food near Leeds Station" and AI works out what they mean and returns matching restaurants. Example searches and quick chips (date night, healthy, family friendly, lunch deals) sit just below.
Why it worksPeople don't think in filters, they think in sentences. Letting them ask in their own words gets them to the right restaurant faster than a menu of dropdowns, and the examples give anyone facing a blank box a one-tap way in.
Browse by the occasion
A "What's the occasion?" grid offers date night, quick lunch, family dining, special occasion, pre-theatre and group dining.
Why it worksPlenty of visitors don't know what they want to eat, only why they're going out. Starting from the occasion matches how people actually plan a meal.
Explore by neighbourhood
Areas such as the City Centre, Headingley, Chapel Allerton, Leeds Dock and Horsforth each have their own tile, with new openings in "Fresh on the scene" below.
Why it worksWhere you are often decides where you eat. Area tiles help visitors and locals discover places nearby, and new openings keep the guide feeling current.
A clear door for restaurant owners
Every page ends with "Own or manage a restaurant?" and two actions: manage your listing, or submit an offer.
Why it worksThe guide only stays accurate if owners keep it up to date. Giving them an obvious, separate route in means they never have to hunt for it among content written for diners.
The full directory, filtered your way
The restaurants page shows every listing with a results count, switches between restaurants and offers, and lets visitors narrow by area, cuisine, dietary needs and price.
Why it worksSome people prefer to browse properly. Filters that match real decisions, like dietary needs, let them shortlist quickly without reading every card.
Cards that answer the first questions
Each card leads with a large photo, then the name, cuisine, area and tags, with pages of results below.
Why it worksA photo and a few key facts are usually enough to decide whether a place is worth a click. Keeping cards consistent makes a long list easy to scan.
A dashboard that doesn't look like WordPress
The Visit Leeds team signs in to a custom dashboard. It shows restaurants, active offers and pending reviews at a glance, with a Review Centre for new profile submissions and access claims.
Why it worksThe team's job is to approve good listings quickly, not to learn WordPress. A purpose-built view puts the things that need attention first and keeps everything else one click away.

Under the hood

Built to run without the busywork.

The platform is designed so the guide keeps itself accurate, with Visit Leeds in control of what gets published.

Owners keep their own pages fresh
Each restaurant has a unique login to update details like opening hours and to submit offers.
Nothing goes live without approval
Every new listing, change and offer arrives as a draft for the Visit Leeds team to review and publish.
Accounts and roles, kept simple
WordPress handles only who can sign in and what they can do. Everything visitors and owners see is custom built.
Tools for the team
The dashboard also covers inspiration guides, account management, importing restaurants in bulk, analytics and system status.

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