Polo Grounds Cafe
A cafe by Aiken's polo field, properly dressed
The current site is a near-empty builder template, awkwardly spaced, with almost no menu detail and no hours. The redesign gives the cafe a quietly classical equestrian-club look, with a real menu, a clear hours grid, and a polished reservation form.
The brief
Polo Grounds Cafe sits at 225 Barnwell Ave NW, in the heart of downtown Aiken, on the side of town where the polo crowd has wintered since the 1880s. The cafe’s current site is a generic builder template: awkward spacing, almost no menu detail, and no hours anywhere on the page. For a place rooted in this much of Aiken’s character, the website undersells it badly.
What changed
- A proper visual identity. A small monogram crest, hunter-green and antique-gold club striping at the top of every page, and an editorial layout drawn from old polo programmes and equestrian club books.
- A full menu page. Four sections, espresso bar, breakfast, lunch, and patisserie, with prices, descriptions, and house-favourite badges. The current site doesn’t list prices anywhere.
- An About page that earns its keep. Four short columns on the cafe, the field, the team, and the coffee. The kind of context a polo-day visitor wants to read on their phone over an espresso.
- A real reservation note. A short, civilized form for booking a table, no awkward third-party booking widget bolted onto the page.
Visual direction
A quietly classical American-club aesthetic. Hunter green, cream, antique gold, with a touch of burgundy. The headline face is a refined old serif; the cursive accent is the kind a barista writes on a chalkboard; the body face is a clean modern sans. Striped club bands at the top and bottom nod to polo programmes and grosgrain ribbon. None of the default colours or default fonts from the old builder template survive.
Easy to keep up to date
The hours, the menu, and this week’s match-day events are kept in a short, plain-text file. The owner can update them in five minutes, or hand it off to me on a small monthly retainer. Marking a Sunday as a match day, with the cafe staying open later, is a one-line change. The reservation form sends a clean email to the inbox without any third-party widget.
What I’d add next
- A small online shop for selling beans by the bag
- A short journal for seasonal pours and pastry notes
- A real photo of the porch; drawn versions only carry so much weight