Why Kvist built a wine bar site that scrolls sideways

Ottis is a small wine bar and kitchen in Copenhagen with an ochre wall, beech tables and a menu that changes every week. Its website moves sideways.

A room you walk through

Freja Holm, who founded Kvist with Anders Bak, says the idea came from the room itself. “You walk in, the counter is on your right, the tables run along the window, the kitchen is at the back. We wanted the site to feel like that walk, one panel at a time.”

Every page is a row of full screen panels. On a phone it scrolls normally; on a laptop your vertical scroll moves you through the panels from left to right.

Keeping it useful

The risk with a gimmick like this is that people cannot find the menu. Kvist solved it with very plain navigation and big uppercase labels on every panel, so you always know where you are.

“The booking button never moves,” says Freja. “Everything else can be playful, but the button is boring on purpose.”

What other studios can take from it

Pick one idea and commit to it, then make everything around it as simple as possible. Ottis has one trick, ochre and black, and big type. That is the whole system.