This project began with Antonelli family’s first business, Woody’s Catering and Restaurant, in McKeesport.
Woody’s Restaurant had been existence for many years. Their website was broken, and the owner was at one of his favorite restaurants, Out of the Fire Café, and looked to see who the developer was on their website. He called me and hired me over the phone to start work with us immediately on their website. This was the start of a long relationship, until the family retired in 2023 and got out of their businesses.
The first two sites done were Woody’s Catering and Woody’s Italian Restaurant. We separated them after determining that the catering part of the business offered a huge variety of types of food, not just Italian. There was a need to create two types of environments, so two websites it was. I maintained them both for years, and also did a lot of the graphics for other things. We set up an email service and grew their email list. I created email blast templates so one of the owners could create weekly specials on his own. He also was inclined to post his own specials weekly on the website home page, so we made that easy for him to do also.
Several years later the owner called me straight out of the lawyer’s office, they had just gotten a new building in Irwin, and were going to operate yet ANOTHER business there. They opened up Antonelli Event Center, Woody’s Italian Restaurant there, as well as Emidio’s for lunch inside the event center. They were originally going to call it AEC (for Antonelli Event Center) but I convinced the owners to use their own name. The decision was a good one, AEC sounded like a bank to me, or an investment firm. It didn’t represent the family name, and it wouldn’t do well in the SEO category, as in the domain name for your business is a HUGE factor in being found on the internet organically. HUGE.
I did a lot of photography for the websites, first at Woody’s, and then later at Antonelli Event Center. All of it in fact, for the websites. There were several events that I attended, just hung out and ate, photographed everything in site; several food photoshoots, and one family photoshoot in the kitchen, with all of the Antonelli children, and the owner of the building, the Albensi’s. (they would later turn the business into Core Event Center)
A lot of work over many years was done here. Adding more to this, come back soon…
