A video-first restaurant discovery and booking platform launching in San Francisco.
Background
Restaurant discovery moved to video but booking hasn't caught up. Diners decide where to go on TikTok and Instagram, then book on platforms that show a restaurant as a static, empty listing, charge a fee on every cover, and leave restaurants with no control over their narrative and no ownership of their customer data. The creators driving discovery are paid in views and free meals, rewarded for hot takes over honesty, and often negotiate with restaurants over DMs.
Oro was built around the way diners decide where the night should happen. The video is the review: discovery and booking live in one place, and creators earn a share of the revenue their videos drive, putting diners, restaurants, and creators on the same side of the table.
Role
Brand strategy, visual identity, and product design, taken end to end from positioning through a working prototype in TestFlight.
I built the front end in Claude Code, with the visual identity and brand strategy embedded directly in the code. Every decision lives in a markdown file, so the brand stays consistent across sessions and ensures a clean hand off for an engineer to build the back end.
Approach
Oro's positioning came from a wide field of cultural references: Aesop over Byredo, Carbone over Via Carota, A24 over Michelin, the anticipation of an Aman with the warmth of a Four Seasons. These became an eight-pillar point of view and one transformation shared across all three audiences: passivity into agency. The tagline came from the sharpest audience truth, that diners fear wasting a meaningful evening more than wasting money: For nights that matter.
The brand strategy shaped both the identity and product behavior. The voice lives in the system prompt, so every surface speaks in Oro's voice by default: a notification reads "the weekend starts early," not "Thursday, 7pm." It also worked as a filter, a feature that didn't ladder back to a pillar didn't get built, and as a posture, the app stays welcoming rather than gatekeeping. Most tables stay free. Paying up for a premium seat is an option, not a velvet rope.
Timeline
Phase 1: Brand Strategy & Visual Identity | March – April
Phase 2: Product Design & Build | April – June
Tools
Claude: Creative and Strategic Partner Claude Code: Front-end build Adobe Illustrator: Logo & Visual Identity Flora: Additional brand elements
Output
Brand strategy and voice system: positioning, an eight-pillar POV, and an in-product language system
Visual identity: Logo, Typography, Color Palette Working prototype: A diner app, a creator experience, and a restaurant dashboard. Ready for early user testing and fundraising.
Restaurant discovery moved to video but booking hasn't caught up. Diners decide where to go on TikTok and Instagram, then book on platforms that show a restaurant as a static, empty listing, charge a fee on every cover, and leave restaurants with no control over their narrative and no ownership of their customer data. The creators driving discovery are paid in views and free meals, rewarded for hot takes over honesty, and often negotiate with restaurants over DMs.
Oro was built around the way diners decide where the night should happen. The video is the review: discovery and booking live in one place, and creators earn a share of the revenue their videos drive, putting diners, restaurants, and creators on the same side of the table.
