Debugging a legacy restaurant site without losing the room
Legacy hospitality sites are not cursed. They are bookings, hours and a PDF with history. Map the diner path, then change one thing.
Old restaurant sites get a mythic reputation. Most are just doing jobs: taking bookings, showing a room, hosting a PDF nobody wants to touch.
Observe first. Reproduce the bug. Read the logs. Ask what matters to covers this week. That keeps you from a three-month rewrite that solves no lunch service.
Add guardrails. Staging that matches production behaviour. A rollback. Logging on the booking path. Unglamorous and effective.
Change one thing. Swap the PDF for Quiteful. Fix hours. Then the next. Occupied restaurants cannot pause for a perfect codebase.
The goal is a site that fails less, that the next GM can understand, and that can grow a second location without anyone losing sleep.
Common questions
- Where do you start on an old restaurant site?
- Reproduce the diner path. Menu, hours, book, enquire. Ask which of those makes money this week.
- Should you rewrite it immediately?
- Not if you can make the menu live and the booking reliable first. Rewrite when the stack still blocks that.