Behind the Brand: What I Built at Beaucoup Café

Newport, Rhode Island — Creative Director & Marketing Manager

September 2023 – Present

Every brand I take on starts with the same question: what does this place feel like before anyone walks through the door? That's the question I've been answering at beaucoup café for the past two years, and it's shaped how I think about branding ever since. Three things anchored that work: the website, the Instagram, and the photography that tied it all together.

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Building the website

When I started, Beaucoup didn't have a real digital front door. So I built one — designed and developed the site from the ground up, not just to look good, but to actually work. Someone scrolling on their phone needed to find the menu, feel the vibe, and decide to stop in, all within a few seconds. A cohesive digital presence isn't a nice-to-have for a small hospitality brand. It's often the first impression, and I wanted ours to be unmistakable.

Growing the Instagram

The website was the front door, but Instagram was the conversation. I built and ran the account's content strategy from scratch, everything from seasonal menu launches (our Summer Picnic lineup, six drinks each with its own personality, from the Affogato Latte to the Raspberry Mojito Refresher) to behind-the-scenes storytelling, like documenting Cheryl's sourcing trips through Spain and introducing the local artisans behind the handcrafted goods we carried. I also used the page to root the café in its community, spotlighting local artists, hosting meet-and-greets with local police officers, and marking the small, human moments that make a neighborhood spot feel like one.

That consistency is what built momentum. Every post was designed to give people a reason to come back, whether that meant a new seasonal drink, an artisan collection fresh off a sourcing trip, or a moment worth sharing themselves. Watching that translate into real foot traffic and a stronger sense of community around the café has been one of the most rewarding parts of this role.

None of it was guesswork, either. My background sits at the intersection of finance and design, so I paired the creative work with real analysis tracking engagement data and customer behavior trends to make sure the content strategy actually aligned with business performance, not just aesthetics. Good branding should be able to defend itself with numbers.

By the Numbers

Good branding should be able to defend itself with data, so here's what the past year actually looked like.

The website didn't just launch and sit there, it compounded. Over the trailing twelve months it pulled in 26,996 sessions and 20,160 unique visitors, up 94% and 91% year over year. Ninety-eight percent of that traffic was brand new visitors finding Beaucoup for the first time, and 84% of it came in on mobile, which is exactly the audience a café needs to reach: someone nearby, on their phone, deciding where to go next.

Search is doing the heavy lifting, Google Organic alone drove over 15,000 sessions, which is the payoff of building a site that's actually structured well, not just styled well. But every channel grew, and grew fast: Instagram-driven traffic was up 107%, and Yelp referrals climbed 732% as the brand's reputation caught up with the work.

The Instagram strategy is working the way it's supposed to: two-thirds of views came from non-followers, meaning the content is actively pulling in new people, not just talking to the same audience on repeat. Posts: the seasonal launches, the sourcing trips, the community moments, drove 92% of all interactions, which confirms the instinct behind the content strategy from day one: consistent storytelling outperforms one-off posts every time.

Photography and visual direction

The thread running through both the website and Instagram was photography. I directed the visual identity for every shoot coffee as art, sun-drenched afternoons on the patio, close-ups of the affogato and matcha lineup, the boutique's curated goods styled like a shop you'd stumble into in southern Spain. The goal was always the same: make every photo feel like an invitation, not an advertisement. That visual consistency is what let the website and Instagram function as one brand story instead of two disconnected channels.

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The payoff

The part I'm proudest of is the press. Over the course of this role, I coordinated with major media outlets, including The New York Times, Town & Country, Late Checkout, and Hey Rhody, to support features that put Beaucoup on a bigger stage. Getting a small, independently spirited café noticed by national outlets doesn't happen by accident. It's the result of a consistent brand story, told well and told often across the website, Instagram, and every photo in between.

Beaucoup has been proof of something I believe deeply: branding isn't just about looking beautiful, it's about building something specific, intentional, and impossible to ignore. That's the standard I bring to every brand I work with now.