We Built a Fundraising Website for a Local SONIC Franchise. Here's What We Learned.
- May 8
- 3 min read
Some projects come along that just make sense from the first conversation. This was one of them.
A locally owned SONIC Drive-In franchise group has reached out to Starting Gate Marketing Wix Monster's Studio partner for the last 7 years. They run 13+ locations and have been quietly running a fundraising program called Spirit Night for schools and community organizations. The program was working really well. But their online presence was not keeping up.
We took the project. Here is how it went.
The Client and What They Actually Needed
CSRASonic is not a corporate thing. These are real people who own and operate their SONIC locations in the same communities where they live. They had built something genuinely useful: a program where schools schedule an evening at a participating SONIC, bring their community out, and earn up to 20% of total sales back for their organization. No products to sell. No upfront cost. Just show up and promote.
The program was growing at 60% and had no proper home online.
What they needed was not a fancy website. They needed something that a school principal or PTA volunteer could land on at 9pm, understand in 30 seconds, and actually use to book a date. That was the brief.
How We Approached the Design
Here is the honest version: we spent more time on what to take out than what to put in.
The Spirit Night program has three steps. Pick your SONIC, book a date on a live calendar, promote your event and earn. That is the whole thing. So the homepage became a vehicle for that story, told in order, with one call to action: Schedule a Spirit Night.
For the look, we went warm and welcoming rather than sleek and corporate. Light blue arch shape on the hero, bold dark headings, a few colored circle accents to keep it lively. Nothing that would feel cold or complicated to a busy parent. The photography does the emotional work. The layout just gets out of the way.
We built it on Wix Studio. The live calendar integration was a key part of the project because the client's previous process involved a lot of back-and-forth email to confirm dates. Removing that friction was as important as anything visual, so we used Wix Booking.
What the Final Site Includes
Beyond the homepage, we built out a full site:
A clean three-step booking section. A transparent breakdown of the earning tiers (20% when sales hit $1,500 or more, 10% below that). A best practices page that gives partners real guidance on how to make their night successful. Testimonials from school leaders who have used the program. A meet-the-team page that puts human faces on the local ownership group. And a contact page that feeds directly into the scheduling flow.
Every page points back to one action. The navigation is intentionally simple.
The Part That Stuck With Us
The team behind this program really does live in these communities. The Director of Operations has been with SONIC for 21 years. That is not something you find in a corporate rollout.
That authenticity was something we wanted the site to carry. Not in a heavy-handed way. Just in the sense that the site should feel like it was made by people who care about where they live. We think it does.
Working With Starting Gate Marketing
This project was a collaboration. Wix Monster Studio handled the design and development. Starting Gate Marketing was our partner on the project and brought important context about the client's goals and audience. Good working relationship, good outcome.
The Bottom Line
CSRASonic.com is live, it is clean, and it converts. Organizations can go from landing on the page to having a Spirit Night booked in under five minutes.
If your business has a real program that is working and just needs a website that can keep up with it, that is exactly the kind of project we take at Wix Monster Studio.
Designed and developed by Wix Monster Studio, in cooperation with Starting Gate Marketing.
