Preset comparison
Smash or Ember?
Choose by brand character and composition. Both presets use the same underlying products, menu page, product forms, cart, search, and Shopify checkout.
| Area | Smash | Ember |
|---|---|---|
| Best fit | Burger, fried chicken, fast food, and high-energy casual restaurants. | Pizza, wood-fired, Italian-casual, and neighborhood restaurants. |
| Visual rhythm | Tighter density, strong contrast, squared cards, direct ordering hierarchy. | Generous spacing, softer 16px cards, framed media, editorial pacing. |
| Typography | Archivo Black headings with Work Sans body text in the preset defaults. | Inter medium headings with Inter body text in the preset defaults. |
| Homepage hero | Focused restaurant hero with merchant-selected image or video options. | Preset-specific three-slide hero with arrows, dots, pause, and autoplay behavior. |
| Homepage composition | Compact food-first merchandising and direct menu discovery. | Hero, categories, featured pizzas, editorial story, gallery, collections, location, hours, and promotion. |
| Header and cart | Bold preset logo treatment and the shared cart experience. | Floating editorial header treatment plus an additional scroll-triggered floating cart control. |
| Product purchase | Optional mobile sticky add to cart when enabled in Product information. | The shared sticky purchase behavior is enabled by the Ember preset condition. |
| Restaurant menu | Dedicated menu page, category navigation, collection-backed groups, and shared product cards. | The same menu architecture with pizza-oriented content, styling, and preset media fallbacks. |
| Customization | Global colors, Shopify fonts, layout width, spacing, radii, motion, menu routing, and section controls. | The same control surface with distinct saved defaults for colors, type, spacing, radii, and composition. |
| Commerce | Variants, selling plans, pickup, recommendations, cart drawer, full cart, search, and Shopify checkout. | The same verified Shopify-native commerce capabilities. |
Simple rule: choose Smash for urgency and compact merchandising. Choose Ember for atmosphere and editorial storytelling. You are not giving up core commerce features either way.