Clients: Monkey King and Food Shop

When Monkey King partner Matt Gerold came to The X Concept for Monkey King’s website, it was in a state of emergency. Their website was not functioning. When you are an upcoming San Diego Gaslamp restaurant, you cannot afford to have your website to be down. So we looked into what was wrong, and it was an easy troubleshooting. Their former web developer went MIA (Missing in Action). It seems to happen much more often than most people think. We actually like that. We have been here forever and here to stay.

The former designer didn’t utilize the decor that makes Monkey King so unique. Photographer Pol Santos was able to capture the beauty of the decor imagined by Matt, the other owners and the architects they worked with. The late night emergency call came in a way that after looking at what everything looked like on the back end of the website something had to be done, and done fast.

The choice was to keep using wordpress, the system that was used initially. Transferring it to a theme that would not bring compatibility issues to the table (Pun definitely intended). We had access to the photos from Pol Santos on the dropbox, and the copy from the previous website. They emailed the Menus to us I a flash. We then had all the tools in our hand, and a few caffeinated beverages.

The beauty of working on websites at night is that it’s during some technical downtime, so you can develop “live”. This way, you gain time, and therefore gain costs for the clients.

Monkey King

After just a few hours, Monkey King’s wordpress website was back in action with a beautiful new skin, and a lot of new features on the back end. Having analytics and SEO plugins installed is key to make sure that all the visits on the website are accounted for. Between reservation platforms, social networks and other SEM campaigns we had to be able to determine what channel was the most efficient. This was key for investors and partners. Knowing where your marketing dollars go, and what channel provides the best ROI. Search Engine Optimization is also key for geo targeted visitors. The restaurant having a single location in downtown San Diego.

Food Shop

This is another story. One day, while being on my computer I receive an invite to like the Food Shop Facebook page. The investor explains that the new community manager is sending invites to his friends to start liking the page, but did not think that people would click on the website link.

Once again, it was an emergency rescue mission. Food Shop is a sister restaurant to Monkey King, just a few doors down, and serves Grab and Go Style asian inspired food. Even though they operate under different branding and identities. There had to be a link between the two venues. The quickest and most efficient way to operate was to clone the Monkey King website. Its back end, its skin, and add the Food Shop branding to it.

We were able to make everything happen in a few hours. The social community was able to see the Food Shop website when they received they invite from the community manager. When you look at it, the eagerness to please from a community manager could have impacted a business. And that is totally fine, We are here to save the day and bring a solution. This solution has been running perfectly for months without much maintenance needed.