Gumnam – The Lost Cuisines of India
Gumnam is a premium Indian restaurant in Dundee, Scotland, built around reviving the forgotten regional cuisines of India. They needed a digital presence that matched their culinary ambition: one that told the story, handled real business operations, and delivered a premium experience on every device.
The Challenge
Gumnam was operating on a legacy website that did nothing to communicate the restaurant's identity or convert visitors into bookings:
- 1No brand narrative: the story of regional Indian cuisine was absent online
- 2No online ordering: losing revenue to third-party aggregators with high commission rates
- 3Manual reservation management: bookings handled by phone with no protection against no-shows on busy Friday and Saturday nights
- 4No admin visibility: no centralised dashboard for orders, reservations, or customer inquiries
- 5Not mobile-ready: the old site was unusable on mobile, where the majority of their audience landed
Our Solution
We built a full-stack restaurant platform: bespoke design, custom-built frontend, and a complete backend operations suite, deployed and production-ready.
Immersive Brand Storytelling
A full-viewport hero with a Mughal-court colour palette, Playfair Display headings, and GSAP ScrollTrigger animations. Every menu item is tagged with its region of origin (Punjab, Kerala, Hyderabad, Goa, and more), turning the menu into a cultural experience.
Native Online Ordering
A complete ordering system with no third-party commissions or redirects. Delivery zones validated in real time via Google Maps Distance Matrix API, payments through Stripe, and real-time order status updates from pending through to delivered.
Smart Table Reservations
Atomic Firestore slot management prevents double-bookings. Friday and Saturday slots for parties of four or fewer collect card-on-file for no-show protection. Large group requests route to a pending approval queue.
Admin Operations Dashboard
A unified admin interface covering the reservation calendar, live order queue, menu management, contact inbox, and site settings, all role-gated via Firebase custom claims across three staff tiers.
The Results
"Most restaurant websites are templates. Gumnam's is a product. The distinction matters because the challenge was specific: a concept-driven restaurant where the digital experience needs to do the same work as a knowledgeable floor manager."
Project Timeline
Discovery & Brand Design
2 weeks
Frontend & Ordering System
4 weeks
Reservations & Admin Dashboard
3 weeks
Testing & Launch
3 weeks