Concept demoConcept demo - British pub, San Diego
Shakespeare Pub & Grille
An unsolicited concept demo for San Diego's oldest British pub: a six-page site where the tap wall, the quiz calendar and tonight's special are data rather than pages, and the home page tells you what is on before you have scrolled.
This is an unsolicited concept demo. Shakespeare Pub & Grille did not commission, review, or endorse it, and the storylines inside it are illustrative. It exists to show the standard of build, nothing else.
Our exact role
Designed and built the entire concept demo. This was self-directed work — the pub did not commission it, has not reviewed it, and is not a client.
The context
The Shakespeare Pub & Grille has been on India Street since August 1990 and was voted the #1 sports bar in America by Yelp in 2026. It runs two quiz nights a week, a different special every night, a cask-conditioned real ale on a beer engine, and every match worth watching. Carlsbad Web & AI built this concept demo unprompted, as an exercise in what happens when a pub's calendar is treated as the product rather than as a PDF.
Where it started
A pub with this much going on has to answer one question fast: what is on tonight? That answer changes daily and usually lives in a social post, so a visitor lands on a website that cannot tell them, and leaves to check Instagram instead.
The constraint
Seventeen taps, sixty-four dishes, two quiz nights a week and a seven-day specials rota is far too much for anyone to hand-edit on a pub shift. The demo had to make every one of those a data entry, and had to compute what is on today without anyone touching it.
Decisions made
- 01Took the palette from the pub's own live site rather than inventing one, so the demo reads as a redesign instead of a different business.
- 02Built a 'Tonight at the Shakespeare' block that computes the day's special, the next quiz and what is on the screens from data, so the home page is accurate every day with nobody updating it.
- 03Drew the tap wall as enamel pump clips carrying each brand's real mark, so the beer list looks like the bar it describes rather than a table.
- 04Split the site into six pages so the events calendar has room to be the main event, instead of a section competing with a menu.
- 05Kept every form to a pre-filled email or a phone link — no booking platform, no account, no recurring fee.
What we built
- A tap wall of forty-four pours, each with a detail view carrying the pub's own description, origin and measures.
- A quiz calendar built from the pub's real upcoming nights, each with its own poster artwork and the next one flagged.
- A seven-day specials rota that highlights today automatically.
- A live sport page covering the Padres, San Diego FC, the Wave, the Premier League, the Champions League and Formula 1.
- Six tabbed food menus totalling sixty-four dishes at their real prices.
- An open-or-closed indicator computed from the pub's actual opening hours.
- Table and private-hire enquiry forms that compose a pre-filled email.
More of the build
Stack
- Static HTML, CSS, and vanilla JavaScript
- GSAP ScrollTrigger for scroll-driven motion
- Self-hosted MP4 hero and Guinness pour video
- Shared data module driving the tap wall and the menus
- Vercel
Technical result
- One data module drives forty-four tap detail views and sixty-four menu items — adding either is one entry, not one page.
- The home page states the correct special, the next quiz and the opening status on any given day with no editing.
- No database, no login, no booking subscription; enquiries land as email or a phone call.
- Six static pages sharing one stylesheet, one script and one data file.
Business result
Live, inspectable build. Measured business outcome pending client approval.