Bigs BBQ

The brief

Bigs BBQ cooks Texas-style barbecue over live fire, on site, at private parties and corporate events around Essex. It started in the Covid lockdown with one smoker and now runs as a roaming pop-up. The crew arrives six or seven hours before service, lights real fires at the customer's venue, cooks whole menus over the flame and carves the big cuts in front of the guests. Bookings happen on WhatsApp and nowhere else. The site carries no email address and no contact form, only the WhatsApp number.

That is a simple business with an awkward pitch. The product is fire and time rather than a fixed venue, the kitchen is wherever the next booking is, and the clips of the food are phone-shot, with zero staging. The site had to explain why the crew turns up before breakfast, show what the cooking looks like, and set out two packages whose prices change depending on whether the booking is a party or a company event. Then it had to hand the customer into a WhatsApp conversation with the details already written. It had to do all of that on a phone, because that is where WhatsApp lives.

What we built

We built a one-page site that puts the cooking first. It opens on a looping clip of a tomahawk searing over live flame, under the line 'Fire, smoke & patience'. Beneath it sit a Book on WhatsApp button and a stat line: six to seven hours on site, the starting price per head, minimum 25 guests. Below that come four phone-shot clips from the pit, the lockdown origin story and a fire clock. The clock walks through six cuts with their hours, their method and the reason for both, from pulled pork at 10 to 12 hours down to burgers in minutes over direct heat.

Two packages, Silver and Gold, are priced per head, and a single Event type toggle flips both cards between private hire and corporate rates, so there is no second pricing page to keep in sync. Each card lists the full menu, the guest minimum and the hours on site. Gold buys an extra hour of fire and trades the pulled pork for tomahawk steaks and slow-cooked beef ribs. A four-step timeline covers the day itself: fires lit first, sides on at two hours, service carved in front of the guests, then the pit broken down and the site left tidy.

Booking is a short composer rather than a contact form. Add your name, pick the event type and package, give a rough date and a guest count, and the site writes the WhatsApp message for you and opens the chat with the details laid out. Nothing sends until the customer presses send. Around it sit three smaller pieces. Pit Chat is a chat-styled FAQ that answers seven common questions in Bigs' voice, with a typing indicator. A strip of ten Instagram photos links to the account. A map pins the current Essex pitch, venue TBC, with a rough 25km service area drawn around it.

The details that mattered

• 01

  Condensed poster capitals carry the headlines, a bookish serif carries the body copy, and a typewriter face carries prices and timestamps. Photos and video frames sit in torn-paper clips, each tilted a degree or two, the cards and buttons carry hard offset shadows, and a faint film grain runs over the whole page, so it reads like a hand-painted menu board.

• 02

  Every clip carries a poster frame. The four gallery clips do not download until they scroll into view. They play muted while on screen, pause when they leave, and each has its own play and pause control. Photographs lazy-load. With reduced motion switched on, the hero video becomes a still, the smoke stops drifting and the transitions go.

• 03

  The booking composer checks guest numbers against the minimums, 25 for private hire and 35 for corporate, and answers with a plain warning rather than a block. The warning says you can still send and Bigs will see what they can do.

• 04

  On a phone the composer rises as a bottom sheet, padded so the send button sits clear of the home indicator, and a floating WhatsApp button appears once the hero has almost scrolled off the screen. On a laptop the composer becomes a centred dialog that holds keyboard focus until it closes, then hands focus back to the button that opened it.

• 05

  Each cut on the fire clock comes with a reason. Beef ribs ride out the stall while the fat renders. Chicken has no collagen to melt and wants fierce, direct heat. The reasons are on the page so the hours on site read as method rather than delay.