Burger restaurant ranking · Web and app
2026
Spain's burger league
Promotty needed to bring businesses onto its app. I designed the brand, the website and the experience of a national burger restaurant ranking, and integrated it into a product that was already in use.
Overview
Promotty is an app that brings together discounts and loyalty cards from local businesses in one place. To grow its user base, it first needed to bring in businesses, and it had chosen to start with burger restaurants.
To reach them we created UBC (Ultimate Burger Championship), a ranking of burger restaurants in Spain, organized by province and active all year round. Each restaurant climbs the ranking with its customers' votes and by taking part in events.
In this case study I share how the idea was born, how I designed the website and each restaurant's profile page, and how I integrated it all into Promotty's app and dashboard, which were already in use.
Impact
70 burger restaurants signed up in five months
All paying members, across 12 cities.
A new product inside two that already existed
Voting in the app and membership in the merchant dashboard, without changing what people already knew.
A profile each restaurant could use as its own page
What started as a profile inside the ranking was redesigned so restaurants would want to share it.
Starting point
Too many competitions, little room for one more
Promotty had spent two years running a burger competition with in-person events. It worked for bringing in businesses and users, but Spain already has many established competitions, and it would have taken ours longer than we wanted to reach their level.
When I joined, the team wanted to keep working with burger restaurants but try something different. To understand that world better, we reached out to Joe Burger, a widely followed content creator in Spain. Besides having a large community of burger restaurants, he advises them on their business, so he knows firsthand what they need.
The proposal came out of those conversations. Something like the UFC, but for burgers.
The idea
From competing to being the league
The four of us defined the rules together. We didn't want to add another competition to a calendar that was already full. We wanted to be the league that brings them all together, where what a restaurant achieves at any event counts toward its position.
That's why the ranking never resets. In a contest you win for a day. In UBC, each restaurant's position keeps moving all year long.
A restaurant earns points in three ways:
Through public votes
From a QR code in the restaurant or by sharing its link on social media. Customers vote through Promotty.
Through participation
In competitions partnered with UBC and in our own events, like Burger Day or Burger Contender.
Through their own initiatives
We also rewarded the ideas each restaurant launched on its own.
Appearing in the ranking was free. Becoming a member was paid and unlocked the full system, with a dedicated profile page, exclusive events and the chance to challenge another restaurant.
Brand
Hablar el idioma de un campeonato
I started with the identity. I borrowed the visual codes of combat sports, with black, red, a brutalist style, wide typography and a hexagonal badge for each restaurant, as if it were a fighter's crest. The badge repeats across the website, the app, social media and the printed material each restaurant displays on site.
Inside Promotty
Adding a new product to an existing one
UBC wasn't a separate app. Voting went through the Promotty app and sign-up through the merchant dashboard, and both were already in use. My job was to add UBC without breaking what people already knew.
Vote in one tap
There are two ways in. With a general link, the person chooses a province and a restaurant. With a restaurant's QR code, both are already selected and all that's left is to confirm. I also designed what happens when a province doesn't have any restaurants yet.
Respecting what already worked
Promotty asked for an account at the end and let people continue as guests, so signing up wouldn't be a barrier. I kept that pattern and designed the UBC steps around it.
A sign-up you can see at a glance
To become a member, a restaurant needs its brand set up, a point of sale, an active plan and its provinces. I turned that into a four-step checklist, each step with its own status and a link to the screen that already existed in the dashboard.
New components, only where needed
I reused Promotty's components and added only the ones UBC needed, like the card for each restaurant and the vote confirmation.
The profile page
From a profile in the ranking to a page of its own
In the first version, the profile page showed the restaurant's name, its badge, its position in the ranking and its awards. It did the job, but said little about the restaurant itself.
Then we noticed something. For a restaurant, that page was the only place where its awards and its position lived together. It was something they'd want to share on its own, like a page of their own.
The second version builds on that idea:
Everything that makes the restaurant unique
On top of the position and the awards, it adds up to three featured burgers, the restaurant's locations with links to order or book, and its story.
A video game feel
We wanted to gamify the experience. The badge at the center, the position as if it were a level and the awards as achievements.
Recommending another restaurant
Each restaurant can recommend another one, and if it isn't in UBC yet, it receives an invitation. We added this to encourage collaboration. It was a competition, yes, but you can't compete without worthy rivals.
Never empty
Restaurants fill in their profile page from the dashboard. If they leave the slogan or the description empty, the page shows fallback text, so it always looks finished.
Always a way to vote
The page repeats the call to vote, because it's where customers land after scanning the QR code.
Scope
Beyond the product, I designed everything UBC needed to launch and stay active.
Website. Home, ranking, directory, profile page, rules, membership and partner events.
To bring in restaurants. An introductory one-pager and email templates.
For the restaurant. Material to print and display, with the QR code for voting.
Social media. Monthly content, rankings by province and restaurant success stories.
Events. The identity for Burger Day and Burger Contender.
Events: Burger Contender & Burger Day
Result
The website launched in January 2026, and membership opened with it. Between January and June, UBC reached 70 member restaurants across 12 cities, all paying for their plan. We also ran two events of our own, Burger Day and Burger Contender.
The founders later decided to move out of the burger niche and bring their loyalty experience to Shopify. UBC is no longer active.
Lessons
01
Lo que el usuario comparte dice qué le importa
La ficha empezó como una pantalla más. Entender que el comercio la veía como su vitrina cambió su lugar en el producto.
02
Diseñar sobre algo que ya existe es elegir qué no tocar
Sumar la UBC a Promotty me enseñó a mirar primero qué ya funcionaba y a agregar solo lo necesario.
