Soho Diner
CLIENT
King & Partners
TECHNOLOGIES
Ruby on Rails, WordPress (Headless), REST API, JavaScript, SASS
YEAR
2022
EXTERNAL URL
Frontend development for a modern American diner on the ground floor of the Soho Grand Hotel — one of three GrandLife properties I built on the same decoupled Rails and headless WordPress stack, alongside the Soho Grand flagship site and The Django jazz club.
Development lead on this project at King & Partners.
Background
A reimagined diner concept needed a digital platform to match its ambition.
Soho Diner — located at 320 West Broadway on the ground floor of the Soho Grand Hotel — set out to answer a simple question: what does a diner look like in modern New York? Owned by Leonard Stern and led by hospitality veteran Ray Pirkle, the restaurant combines the democratic, all-hours spirit of a classic NYC diner with a contemporary menu from Chef Ken Addington. King & Partners, the Soho Grand’s long-standing agency partner for strategy, branding, and digital, brought me on to lead development on the diner’s standalone web presence — a site that needed to establish Soho Diner as a neighborhood destination, not just a hotel amenity.
The site had to serve multiple audiences — local regulars, hotel guests, event planners, and late-night crowds — while integrating reservation systems, delivery platforms, and an editorial layer for ongoing storytelling.
Implementation
Building on a headless architecture with Rails on the frontend and WordPress as the content engine.
The site ran on the same decoupled Rails-and-WordPress stack I was already working with on the Soho Grand flagship build. Rather than standing up new infrastructure, I extended the existing content modeling, API layer, and deployment patterns with Soho Diner-specific frontend templates, components, and integrations.
The Rails frontend delivered custom page templates with responsive layouts, image carousels via Swiper.js, and a retro-modern design system built in SASS using custom web fonts — Windsor and Trixie for display type, Proxima Nova for body copy. WordPress Multisite served as the CMS, giving the client full editorial control over menus, stories, photo galleries, and event details through a familiar admin interface. Third-party integrations included Resy for reservations, Tripleseat for private event inquiries, and WPForms with reCAPTCHA for contact submissions.
The street-level entrance mattered to the brand — and the site architecture reflected that same independence. Soho Diner ran on its own domain and codebase, distinct from the Soho Grand property site, while sharing the underlying multisite content infrastructure with both the hotel and The Django.
Results
A standalone digital identity that positioned the diner as a neighborhood institution.
The site launched as a fully operational platform supporting all-day dining, private events, delivery ordering, and editorial content — giving Soho Diner a digital presence proportional to its physical ambition. The headless architecture delivered fast page loads despite rich imagery and multiple third-party integrations. The WordPress editorial layer performed as designed: the client’s team published stories, updated menus, and managed event details independently, with no developer involvement required for day-to-day content operations.
The platform continues to serve the restaurant years after launch. The same architectural approach proved equally durable on The Django, the third GrandLife property I built within this engagement.
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