Crusty Pete's
A concept website for a taxidermy shop and smoothie bar, built with AI to test whether it would question a bad business idea. It didn't, and Crusty Pete's became the demo behind Before You Design, a Top 15 finalist in the 2026 Women Build AI Build-a-thon.
- Type
- Before You Design · Concept Demo
- Client
- Concept project
- Services
- Concept & Direction · AI Brand Imagery
We tried to break Claude Design by feeding it the worst business idea we could think of: a combination taxidermy shop and smoothie bar. It built a beautiful website. And that's the problem.
AI can build you a pretty website in ten minutes. It can't tell you your business idea is horrendous, especially if you don't ask it. Crusty Pete's should not exist, and Claude had no idea.
So if AI won't point out that serving a strawberry matcha smoothie next to a taxidermied raccoon isn't the best dining experience, it certainly won't tell you that your offer is too vague, that your USP is too general, or that you're selling the wrong thing to the wrong person. It will just make all of it look great, which will cost you business.
Looking great was never the hard part. The hard part is building a site that takes someone who has never heard of you and gets them to do what you want, over the ten other tabs open in their browser. That takes judgment, experience, and discernment about positioning, strategy, and people. It is the reason you hire a designer instead of a prompt.
Crusty Pete's is AI slop on purpose. It's also the demo behind Before You Design, the project that made Barb Miller and I Top 15 finalists in the 2026 Women Build AI Build-a-thon.
