Oak Theory was asked to create the digital storefront for local Korean restaurants that uplifts them through promotional and educational content people can discover while ordering food.
Quick answer
Oak Theory is a web design, development, and branding studio that designed the Ktown web application, a food delivery platform for local Korean restaurants. The engagement included branding, solution architecture, discovery and user research, illustration, wireframing, and web app design — creating an experience that mirrors exploring a real Ktown neighborhood while supporting small businesses through a low, flat-rate delivery fee.
About
At first glance, Ktown may seem like another food delivery app — except that it's specifically for Korean cuisine. But Ktown is much more than that.
Jin and his team reached out to Oak Theory to design the Ktown web application to mirror the experience of exploring a Ktown neighborhood in a major city like New York or Los Angeles. As you explore a Ktown, you can find promotions and events at local restaurants and learn more about the people and culture behind your favorite Korean dishes.
The challenge
Ktown also takes only a small flat-rate fee per delivery, so customers know they're directly supporting a local small business by ordering the food they love — which meant the interface had to make that value obvious without adding friction to the order flow.
The harder challenge was cultural specificity. Ktown needed to feel instantly usable to anyone who has ordered delivery before, while carrying the promotional, educational, and community content that sets it apart from a generic marketplace.
What we did
Ktown is about combining the familiarity of ordering food from your favorite food delivery services with Korean culture and values.
With this in mind, Oak Theory designed an experience that users would find welcoming and easy to use, but with an added twist — patterns people already know, carrying content they've never been offered by a delivery app before.
We used colors, icons, and illustrations that pay homage to Korean culture — including a shade of red found in Korea's national flag.
Hand-drawn illustration gave the platform warmth that stock photography couldn't, and let restaurant categories, events, and editorial content share one visual language.
We also sourced icons with a wide range of representation for Korean-specific foods and items — tteokbokki, jjigae, soju, bingsu, and more — instead of settling for generic substitutes.
That specificity is what makes the browse experience feel like walking a real Ktown block rather than scrolling a category list.
Solution architecture and wireframing tied it together: search and location up front, ordering never more than a few taps away, and room throughout for promotions, events, and stories about the people behind the food.
The result is a digital storefront where discovering a neighborhood restaurant and supporting it are the same action.
Selected work
It was difficult to find authentic Korean food icons. Most 'Asian food' icons were inspired by Japanese food and Chinese-American takeout.Creator Corner — Tiffany Goh, Jr. UX Designer, Oak Theory
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