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Why are restaurant web sites so bad?

juliansanchez.com

71–80 of 124 posts

Re: Why are restaurant web sites so bad?

#71
post #46

I think there are a few things here that cause this: a) You're going against the worst kind of incumbent- the 15 year old nephew or kid next door. He's cheaper, good enough, and "trusted". He is competition that exists a million times over. b) Even if your system is better, they just can't be bothered to even get a good demo. You definitely need to build something so usable and good it's frightening, but good luck ge…

The other problem is going beyond, "hours of operation/location" + "menu" + "phone number" takes integration with on site software. So now your competing with all those Point Of Sale systems. IMO, there is a huge opportunity for a unified website + POS + Back end software company. But, to step beyond what's out there would take a huge investment.

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

I help run a family restaurant with tight margins to deal with. With really small capital to budget, my father and uncle decided a POS system was not worth the money and commissioned me to build a usable system since I was the "tech guy" of the family.

I hacked something up using kiosk mode browser running off of locally-hosted PHP scripts saving to a MySQL database that backsup online nightly to Google Docs. It's an old computer and hacky system, but it works because of the ability to review data at night at home in the office via GDocs with pretty stats and keeps the family happy.

I asked previously here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1431181 on HN, but got no response.

I'd devote more time to this and get a better MVP out the door except for extreme time commitments to said restaurant on the floor and in the back, and due to school commitments.

Like Retric said, you could make a killing with a web presence+POS on the floor+cloud saving features if you built a startup that showed how you could save time and money for restaurants and make things easier, while not charging for an arm and a leg. The market is filled with Geocities-era looking sites from spammish vendors all with their unique-as-a-snowflake proprietary file and data formats.

Re: Why are restaurant web sites so bad?

#73

Perhaps there is no business case for having a good, CSS/HTML based website when your business is turning over tables? That's a serious question. Has anyone here been involved with a restaurant or food-service related start-up that isn't an aggregator or social networking play? Maybe someone can shed some light on the roadblock?

See my comments above http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2044753

Restaurants need to see results

1. Grow their email database and they have contacts they can market to. 2. Engage the customers with the site. Keep them coming back. 2 for 1 vouchers anyone? 3. Provide the basic information like where, when and how much. Make this accessible across devices.

It doesnt matter how good your site is, if your food sucks you loose.

Re: Why are restaurant web sites so bad?

#74

Because restaurant owners are barely figuring out what email is. How often do you go to restaurant websites vs. actual restaurants (not including Yelp or Google maps)? Truth is, they just don't matter. The cost of creating a website, even a $500 design over a CMS doesn't justify the cost. Also, a small business restaurant owner won't know how to operate a CMS. They just figured out email, remember? Worse, is that web…

> Because restaurant owners are barely figuring out what email is.

That seems a bit condescending to restaurant owners? Rather, perhaps, they are so much in the real world, dealing with suppliers, cooks, kitchen equipment, waiters, decor, etc., that navigating the virtual (websites) is antithetical?

Re: Why are restaurant web sites so bad?

#76
post #25

Restaurants aren't unique offenders. Most physically extant businesses which can't transact online suck. Try your dentist's.

Oh my god, dentist's websites. I've one full year of dental school left, and as I'm looking around for a job, I sometimes wonder if I should just be a dental website designer instead of a dentist.

Re: Why are restaurant web sites so bad?

#77
post #25

Restaurants aren't unique offenders. Most physically extant businesses which can't transact online suck. Try your dentist's.

Oh my god, dentist's websites. I've one full year of dental school left, and as I'm looking around for a job, I sometimes wonder if I should just be a dental website designer instead of a dentist.

So ... why NOT be a dentist website designer, at least part-time? You know the business needs, you know the lingo of both (you're here, anyway) ... It sounds like a job that fills a needed niche! Better sites == more hits due to easier searching; there's a business case.

I say go for it.

Re: Why are restaurant web sites so bad?

#79

We've been quite successful at cracking the UK market and we run the sites for a few of the UK's biggest chains down to some smaller brasserie style companies. I'd like to present some work which I think is good for a change (there are a lot of bad examples on here) So here we go http://giraffe.net http://www.chezgerard.co.uk http://www.brasseriegerard.co.uk Some of our older ones http://www.strada.co.uk http://www.c…

Well, I think we're all thinking it- how'd you go about acquiring your customers (as that's a notoriously hard market to crack)?

Also, your pricing for "Chain" @PocketDiner seems wayyy too low. Even £49/mo for "Multi" is probably priced too low. The overhead per store per hour is probably more than that.

Re: Why are restaurant web sites so bad?

#80
post #61
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One last thing, If any developers want to join forces, that would be cool too :)

This interests me. What's the plaform?

Simple lamp stack using codeigniter. Nothing fancy. Runs on MediaTemple's VE Server.
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