A Local Restaurant Had Great Food and No Website. So I Built Them One.

How Yummy Rice Bowls, a veteran-owned restaurant in O'Fallon IL, went from zero web presence to a hand-coded website that scores 100 on Google PageSpeed.

I was doing research on local businesses in O'Fallon, IL when I started noticing a pattern. Most of them either had outdated websites that looked like they hadn't been touched in years, or they were using the same cookie-cutter templates from website builders.

And I mean the same templates. I found two direct competitors using the exact same one. One of them still had the other business's name on the page. Someone forgot to change it. This is what happens when businesses pay for generic templates. They end up looking identical to the shop across the street, sometimes literally advertising for their competition.

Finding the Hidden Gem

While I was looking around, I was also searching for hidden gems. Places with great food that just weren't getting the attention they deserved online. I ended up finding Yummy Rice Bowls, a veteran-owned Asian fusion spot run by Nick and Micailah Parraco. Great reviews, loyal local following, solid menu. No website.

I'm Filipino and I speak Japanese, so when I saw a menu with Chicken Yakitori, Pork Adobo, and Steak Kalbi, it felt personal. I had to check this place out.

A Week of Code, Then a Bowl of Pork Adobo

Before I ever walked in, I spent about a week building them a full website from scratch. Not a template, not a page builder. Actual code, line by line. I researched everything I could find about the business first: the full menu with prices, the hours, the location, their DoorDash link, all of it. I wanted the site to be accurate and ready to go before I even introduced myself.

Then I went in with my brother and my grandma. I ordered the Pork Adobo bowl with tomatoes, dried nori, and green onions. I picked the Filipino dish because honestly, I wanted to taste home. Before we sat down to eat, I introduced myself to Nick and showed him the website I'd already built for them.

Nick's Reaction

Nick was visibly surprised. He kept pointing out how everything was already accurate: the menu items, the prices, the hours, the location. All of it matched up. Most people don't see that part. Before I write a single line of code, I spend time actually understanding the business. I dig into the details so the website already feels like it belongs to them from the first draft.

We sat down on the bench, ate our food, and it was exactly what I was hoping for. Fast, good, and it tasted like what I grew up eating. As we were getting ready to leave, Nick came out and offered us ice cream as a thank you. That moment made my day. This was my first real stepping stone toward solving a problem I kept seeing across O'Fallon and the surrounding areas: businesses paying more for less.

A few weeks later, after some back and forth on photos and small tweaks, the site went live at yummyricebowls.com.

Nick told me: "3 years in and I never thought we would have a cool website like this."

That meant more to me than any metric.

The Numbers So Far

The site runs its own analytics dashboard, built on a real database that I set up. Everything is tracked privately, without Google Analytics, third-party scripts, or cookies. The data belongs entirely to the business.

Here's what the dashboard showed after launch:

81% of traffic came during the restaurant's actual business hours. Those are people looking at a real menu during the hours they can actually order food. Chicken Yakitori was the most viewed item.

How It Stacks Up

Here's how the site scored on Google Lighthouse compared to what I've seen from template websites in the area:

Those scores come directly from Google Lighthouse, not from me. On desktop, the site even scores a full 100 across the board.

Why Not Just Use a Template?

I've looked at what the major template builders charge for a website this size. Anywhere from $150 to $300 a month. For that, you get a generic design that looks identical to your competitor down the street. I've personally seen it happen right here in O'Fallon. Two rival businesses, same template, and one of them accidentally had the other's name still on the page.

The performance is usually mediocre too. I've seen these template sites score as low as 30 on Google PageSpeed. Low mobile performance, weak SEO, buttons that don't do anything, and links in the navbar or footer that lead to nowhere when you click them. On top of all that, a design that says absolutely nothing about who the business actually is.

And with most of those services, you don't even own the website. Cancel your subscription and the site disappears. The ones that do give you ownership typically cost thousands upfront. Seriously, look it up.

I'm not saying templates are always bad. For some situations they work fine. But when a local business is paying $300 a month for a site that performs worse than what I build from scratch, and they can't even take it with them if they leave, something is off.

What's Next

This is just the start for Yummy Rice Bowls. Nick's already posting about the site and tagging me in promotions, which I really appreciate.

The food has always been there. The website just needed to match.

If you're a business owner in O'Fallon or anywhere nearby and you're curious what a website built specifically for you (not a template with your name swapped in) actually looks like, check out yummyricebowls.com. Or just go eat the Pork Adobo. You won't regret either one.