Lexington

Lexington is one of Squarespace's own free 7.1 templates, built on Fluid Engine and styled as the online shop of a small barbecue sauce brand. The demo shouts "BBQ IS LIFE" over orange, yellow and black, and the pages in the nav are Home, Shop, Videos, About and Contact, with a cart in the header. The home page runs through the brand story, a Top Flavors section that pulls three sauces from the store with size options and add to cart buttons, a row of recipe videos and a founder section. Shop is a Squarespace store page, Videos is a video collection and Contact carries a form.

Who it suits

Small food and drink producers first: sauces, spice rubs, coffee, anything sold in a handful of sizes with a personality behind it. The video page suits a maker who teaches as well as sells. It is not a restaurant template, whatever the old listing on this page said: there is no menu, no reservations and no opening hours in the demo.

One honest caveat

Lexington is a product shop skeleton, not a finished store. The demo has three products, placeholder copy on every page and no custom code, and the bold look relies on confident product photography; a quieter brand will want to tone the type and colour down in Site Styles. Selling needs a plan that supports commerce, and shipping, tax and payments are yours to configure.

Setting it up

Choose Lexington in Squarespace's template picker when you start a new site, or open the demo and start from it. Add your products first so the home page has something to pull in, then rewrite the story and founder sections, swap the videos and edit the rest in Fluid Engine. It sits in my free Squarespace templates collection, and you can compare it with paid designs in the Squarespace templates for small businesses collection.