The Challenge
A rebrand is already high stakes. A rebrand across three live restaurant locations in Nashville, Charleston, and Charlotte, with a hard deadline and zero tolerance for downtime, is an entirely different problem. The 5th Street Group was transitioning from 5Church to Church and Union and needed three fully distinct websites that each felt genuinely local to their city while remaining unmistakably part of the same brand family. All of it had to ship within four months without disrupting a single dinner service.
The Process
Pears Media Group had earned the trust of 5th Street Group through 5 Church Charlotte and Tempest. Church and Union was the project that tested whether that relationship could scale. Three cities, three personalities, one system, no downtime.
I built three completely separate sites rather than a single templated solution, because a shared template would have produced three sites that felt like the same restaurant in different cities rather than three restaurants that shared a soul. Each location needed its own visual register while the underlying structure and brand language kept them coherent as a family.
The detail I was most precise about was typography. Each Church and Union location features handwritten text on the ceilings and walls, a signature physical element of the brand experience. I worked from interior photo references and matched those typographic textures in the digital design to create continuity between the room and the screen. During the Charleston visit for the Tempest project I had the chance to experience Church and Union in person as well, which grounded every subsequent design decision in something real rather than something assumed.
Custom anchor navigation and frosted glass UI elements gave the sites a polished, high-end restaurant feel without relying on heavy frameworks that would slow them down.
The Outcome
All three sites launched on schedule with zero interruption to the business. Each location’s site felt genuinely local while remaining unmistakably Church and Union, which is exactly the balance a growing restaurant brand needs as it expands into new markets. The project completed a creative body of work with 5th Street Group that spanned four restaurants across three cities and established Pears Media Group as the creative partner of record for one of the fastest-growing hospitality groups in the Southeast.
Disciplines: Web Design and Development · Multi-Location Digital Strategy · Brand Rollout · Creative Direction · Typography · UI/UX · CMS Architecture
