Brand Identity, Local SEO & a Custom Operations Dashboard for a Food & Beverage Brand

For 'Aiwi Waffles I'm the lead UX/UI designer and developer, and the SEO/AEO expert. The engagement started with brand and identity and has grown into an ongoing partnership with the owner to scale the business through digital channels.

The first phase gave the business its brand, a Shopify storefront and a local search presence. The second phase is in build now: a custom marketing site that replaces the Shopify storefront, and Home Base, a private dashboard where the owner runs the shop's sales, team and daily checklists from a phone.

'Aiwi Waffles needed a complete identity that worked everywhere the business shows up: a physical store, a food truck, an online storefront, and a merch line. The brand had to feel cohesive across all of those surfaces while supporting a business actively looking to grow beyond its current footprint.

With the brand in place, the next problem was running the shop. Sales numbers sat inside Square, where they were hard to find and harder to read. Team information was spread across paper, texts and emails. The owner only knew the shop had closed properly by asking, or by checking the next morning, and new staff sent their questions to the owner's phone on days off.

I designed the full brand from the ground up and built the storefront on Shopify.

• Shopify storefront

• 

  Brand identity and merch line

The work included:

• Brand identity. Logo, brand messaging, and a cohesive visual system.
• Signage. Physical signage designed for both the store and the food truck.
• E-commerce. A Shopify storefront for the business.
• Merch. I designed the merchandise line offered on the site.
• SEO/AEO. Search and answer-engine optimization to grow the brand's online visibility.
• Local SEO & Google Business Profile. Optimized the Google Business Profile and local search presence so the storefront ranks #1 on Google for multiple keywords, turning online searches into walk-in customers.

Home Base is a private web app for 'Aiwi Waffles, and I'm building it now. The owner and each team member log in with their own email on a phone, tablet or computer, and see only what their role needs. The owner sees everything. Staff see the day's checklist, their training and the employee handbook. Sales and money figures are locked to the owner.

The build also covers:

• Team records. Contact details, start dates, roles and training progress for every team member, visible only to the owner.
• Website messages. A form on the marketing site sends an automatic reply and saves the message to one list in Home Base, whether it is a question, a job application or a catering request.
• Ownership. Every account the app runs on is in the owner's name, and I keep access to maintain it.

I'm building the marketing site on Astro with React and Tailwind CSS, and it replaces the Shopify storefront. Home Base connects to the Square account the shop already uses.

'Aiwi Waffles has a unified brand that carries across its store, food truck, online shop, and merch line, and a digital foundation built to scale.

The standout win came from local SEO. I optimized the Google Business Profile, and the storefront now ranks #1 on Google for multiple local searches and ranks high for more than 20 high-intent keywords. The listing averages 13,000 views a month across Google Search and Google Maps, and 638 interactions a month. Google Search Console shows an average click-through rate of 4.1%.

People act on those searches. The store gets 30 to 40 phone calls a week on average, and the in-person visits that come from search bring in more than $1,000 a day on average at the Waikiki location.

Home Base is in build now. I'll add what it changes for the shop once the team is using it.

The scaling work is ongoing too. We're currently planning to offer frozen waffles online, and I'm directly involved in the logistics for manufacturing and distribution, helping take the brand from a local presence into a retail product.