01 / 04, Japanese restaurant and sake bar
Sushi IWA
A bilingual site for a Japanese restaurant in San Pedro: the menu, reservations with deposits, a reservation chat built on Claude, and a back office for the staff.
- Role
- Design and development
- Stage
- Live
- What it is
- Japanese restaurant and sake bar
- Market
- San Pedro Garza García, in Spanish and English
- Started
- 23 March 2026
(01)
What it is
Sushi IWA describes itself as an intimate Japanese dining experience with a small bar counter. The name, いわ, means "the rock". The site had to feel as quiet as the room and still do the work of a host: show the menu, take the reservation, and answer questions in Spanish or English.
Dark and quiet, in the spirit of Japanese minimalism: ink, cream and thin gold lines, desaturated photography and a giant いわ in the background. Behind it sits a portal the staff use every night.
(02)
The problem
A small counter fills up on weekends and every no-show is an empty seat. Guests also want the menu, the locations and a way to reserve in one place, in their language.
(03)
What it does
Reserve by conversation
A reservation chat built on Claude, running through the server, that hands the guest to WhatsApp to confirm.
Deposits against no-shows
A Stripe deposit for weekend tables and the Chef's Table, so a booking means a seat.
A menu you can search
Filters for signature, gluten-free, spicy and chef's picks, plus dish suggestions by time of day, season and party size.
Everything a guest asks for
Locations with maps and WhatsApp, a gallery, the chef's story, private dinners, gift cards, a loyalty club and a waitlist for the next city.
A portal for the staff
Waitlist, floor map, reservations, an 86 board for sold-out dishes, analytics and a review-reply assistant, filtered by branch.
Fast and careful
Self-hosted fonts, WebP images, code split by page, structured data for search, error tracking, and motion that steps aside for reduced-motion settings.
(04)
Timeline
First version live in a day: the menu, Spanish and English, gallery, locations, loyalty, gift cards and the staff portal.
Redesigned toward a quieter look: oversized type, fewer elements, and the いわ intro screen.
The reservation chat on Claude and Stripe deposits against no-shows.
A staff portal for several branches, a live Instagram feed and a coming-soon page for the next city.
Its design became the base for the Ikkyu website.
- Today
Live
- Next
Bring the restaurant onto the Restaurant Operating System, as Ikkyu did.