Coals & Co Australia: a multi-brand restaurant website built to scale

Coals & Co Australia runs four quick-service restaurant brands, from Southern fried chicken to hearth-baked pizza, under one corporate roof in Sydney. They needed a digital home that felt as warm as their food and could handle the complexity of an enterprise restaurant group. As a multi-brand restaurant digital agency, we delivered the brand identity, a modular design system and 16 page templates. Together they cover the brand portfolio, newsroom, franchising, careers and impact, all built to scale across every market Coals serves. This edition localises that system for Australia: Sydney headquarters, state-based brand stories, AUD pricing with GST, and a sun-bleached palette that feels at home outdoors.

Project facts

• Client: Coals & Co Pty Ltd (fictional)
• Sector: Quick-service restaurants (QSR)
• Markets: Australia (Sydney HQ) with brand support centres in Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth
• Services: Market localisation · Copywriting · Brand adaptation · Restaurant group website design · Accessibility (WCAG 2.2 AA) · SEO foundations
• Templates: 42 page templates shared with every Coals & Co edition
• Stack: Hand-built HTML, CSS and vanilla JavaScript; one strings file and one theme file per market

The brief

Australian restaurant language, not American with sunshine

Australia shares British spelling, but its restaurant vocabulary is its own: entrée not appetiser, capsicum not bell pepper, rocket not arugula, takeaway not takeout, and prices always include GST. Seasons flip too, so summer menus peak in December and the end of financial year lands in June. This edition rebuilds the copy, places, legal and look around those facts, while keeping the same templates and design system.

Designing for Australia

What actually changed between the US and this edition

• Headquarters - US edition: Austin, Texas · Australia: Sydney, NSW
• Brand origins - US edition: US cities (e.g. Austin, New York, California) · Australia: Sydney, Brisbane and Gold Coast
• Legal entity - US edition: Coals & Co LLC · Australia: Coals & Co Pty Ltd
• Prices - US edition: USD, tax added at checkout · Australia: AUD, inclusive of GST, labelled 'incl. GST'
• Regulator - US edition: FDA / OSHA · Australia: FSANZ / Safe Work Australia
• Privacy - US edition: US state privacy laws · Australia: Privacy Act 1988 (Australian Privacy Principles), OAIC; Spam Act 2003
• Footer - US edition: LLC, no acknowledgement · Australia: Pty Ltd, demo ABN, Acknowledgement of Traditional Custodians
• Look - US edition: Cream, charcoal, paprika red, saffron; Fraunces + Bricolage Grotesque · Australia: Sun-bleached cream, sand, olive and saffron; Gambetta + General Sans, larger corner radii
• Seasonality - US edition: Northern-hemisphere calendar · Australia: Southern-hemisphere calendar: summer Dec–Feb, winter Jun–Aug, EOFY June

stills/ (to record)

Brand adaptation

The same Coals & Co, with a local accent

The Australian edition keeps the Coals name and hearth-arch logomark, but the palette turns sun-bleached: cream and sand backgrounds, olive and saffron accents, and a warm brown for interactive elements. Gambetta and General Sans (both free from Fontshare) give a relaxed, contemporary feel, and larger corner radii soften the system. The descriptor stays Brands, and the brand stories now start in Sydney, Brisbane and the Gold Coast.

Homepage and key journeys

The homepage opens on a full-bleed dining-room hero that eases in from a dim zoom, then a slow-scrolling ribbon of brand names leads into a statement that lights up word by word. Live counters tick up to restaurants, team members and system sales. The page flows into brand cards, strategy, impact and the latest news. The most distinctive flow is the newsroom filter: one archive replaces four, with chips for Press, Story, Snapshot and Video plus a brand selector, and a shareable ?brand= URL so brand teams can link straight to their own coverage. The Australian edition adds a GST-inclusive price note on any menu or product examples, and the footer carries an Acknowledgement of Country.

Compliance, accessibility and trust

• Privacy policy under the Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles, with the OAIC complaint route and Spam Act 2003 consent for marketing.
• Fair treatment statement under Commonwealth and state anti-discrimination law.
• Footer: Coals & Co Pty Ltd, demo ABN, and an Acknowledgement of Traditional Custodians.
• Passes automated WCAG 2.2 AA checks on every page at 360, 390, 768 and 1440 px: no contrast failures, no unreachable controls, no horizontal scrolling.
• A language switcher built from hreflang sits in the header on desktop and in the footer on phones.

One system, twelve markets

Every visible string lives in one file per market, and every colour and typeface in one theme file. This edition needed no new templates or components: a strings file, a theme, regional photography and local legal content made it a different brand experience. For a restaurant group with international plans, a new market becomes a content project rather than a rebuild.

Deliverables

• Market profile: language, formats, legal and seasonality
• Full localised copy across 42 templates, header, footer and forms
• Brand adaptation: palette, type pairing and logo descriptor
• 29 regional photographs (Pexels, credited in credits.json)
• Local legal content
• Accessibility pass (WCAG 2.2 AA, automated) and QA at four screen widths
• Portfolio media: stills, full-page captures, scroll video, OG image, brand board