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Why are restaurant websites so awful? Because of restaurant culture.

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Re: Why are restaurant websites so awful? Because of restaurant culture.

#11

Post by telemachos »

pbreit wrote: post #3

While I agree that restaurant sites in particular are quite lousy, Fleur de Lys did not strike me as a good example. Hubert Keller is a genuine personality and aspiring DJ. The restaurant is small, has no trouble staying full, the menu changes frequently and wants to surprise diners anyway. But I'll reiterate, even thought the point has already been made a million times: not providing a web site that can be viewed on…

> While I agree that restaurant sites in particular are quite lousy, Fleur de Lys did not strike me as a good example. Hubert Keller is a genuine personality and aspiring DJ. The restaurant is small, has no trouble staying full, the menu changes frequently and wants to surprise diners anyway.

I think Hubert Keller is a genius as a chef, but I have no idea what the connection is between the last two sentences and the first two. He's cool; the restaurant is successful and good. What does that have to do with the website, which is truly god-awful.

Here's what I see when I open it in Safari on OSX Lion (stock - Flash is not installed): http://cl.ly/9AsG.

If anything, an interesting chef at a good restaurant - with a website this awful is the best example. It shows that even (otherwise) smart people and successful restaurants fall into this trap.

While I'm here, a favorite post on this theme: http://venomousporridge.com/post/389785000/a-conversation-i-...

[1] HN discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1130419

Re: Why are restaurant websites so awful? Because of restaurant culture.

#12

Post by wallflower »

Shake Shack (http://shakeshack.com on mobile device or http://shakeshack.com/mobile/) is an example of a beautifully designed, minimal, useful mobile web site.

Mobile websites are more than putting a mobile template on. Contrast Shake Shack with Walmart's http://walmart.com (on a mobile device)

> However, the design firm pitches to the owner, not to the customers. And thus the website is designed to please them, rather than actually being useful for potential customers.

> Is OpenTable too big to fail (e.g. restaurants will continue to pay them annual maintenance because it is a legacy system)?

Yes and no. Once a restaurant has committed to a particular POS, it is very, very, very hard to get them away from it.

First, it cost them -- at a safe ballpark estimate -- $10,000 to install it in the first place, so they're going to milk it for as long as they can before paying for anything else, even if it costs them more money that way in the long run.

Second, change is really scary for these folks, because if they're trying a new POS, and it crashes on its first evening, they're going to have a lot of pissed off customers and that translates directly to empty seats. It doesn't help that every single system that they've tried -- or that their buddies in the industry have tried -- have been buggy, problematic, and prone to crankiness. It doesn't matter if you know that you're selling the best system in the world at the cheapest price; the owners are still going to be really gun-shy about converting.

For a credible, sexy Open Table competitor: check out http://averoinc.com

Note: Some comments taken out of context from the threads linked below. I linked to these threads because they contain some good previous discussions about the restaurant industry and their systems. OpenTable is a reservation system (as refulgentis has pointed out).

These comments taken out of context from previous related discussions on News.YC:

"The hell that is a restaurant website"

http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=1130419

"Is OpenTable worth it?"

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1904689

"Why are restaurant websites so bad?"

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2044259

Re: Why are restaurant websites so awful? Because of restaurant culture.

#13

Post by starwed »

>The rest of the Web long ago did away with auto-playing music, Flash buttons and menus, and elaborate intro pages, but restaurant sites seem stuck in 1999.

I noticed medium sized bands tended to have the same godawful outdated website style, especially European metal bands. No idea if it is still like that -- I just started avoiding any such "official" pages.

Re: Why are restaurant websites so awful? Because of restaurant culture.

#15

Post by refulgentis »

wallflower wrote: post #12

Shake Shack ( http://shakeshack.com on mobile device or http://shakeshack.com/mobile/ ) is an example of a beautifully designed, minimal, useful mobile web site. Mobile websites are more than putting a mobile template on. Contrast Shake Shack with Walmart's http://walmart.com (on a mobile device) > However, the design firm pitches to the owner, not to the customers. And thus the website is designed to please them, ra…

As a restaurant point of sale developer myself (Ambur, an iOS app), one thing: OpenTable isn't a POS, it's a reservation system. I didn't see the conflation between sites and POS systems in the article, but I see it throughout your comment.

Everything else rings true. We have to invest a lot of time into each prospect because they're used to buggy systems that have feature overload and as a result are hard to use and impossible to setup. We're selling at a ridiculously low price ($999 for unlimited device licensing as a single site), and we're doing well, but the time investment into each prospect is very high.

Re: Why are restaurant websites so awful? Because of restaurant culture.

#16

Post by kirillzubovsky »

It's kind of true. I tried selling software to restaurants (http://Tablely.com) with some friends, and another Seattle company (http://OrderSm.com) is still trying, but working with the owners is terrible. They are too busy dealing with their day-to-day crap and technology is really not on their mind. It's sad, but it's true.

Re: Why are restaurant websites so awful? Because of restaurant culture.

#18

Post by callmeed »

My next startup is targeting this problem. I'm pitching it as "About.me for restaurants" ... a single-page, instant setup site that has location/hours/menu/contact info.

I'm planning on posting it to HN for review in a few days.

If anyone wants a peak now, drop me an email.

Re: Why are restaurant websites so awful? Because of restaurant culture.

#19

Post by carols10cents »

ZoFreX wrote: post #2

As someone who has built a fair few restaurant sites, there are lots of reasons. If a web design agency builds a site that doesn't work on the iPhone or iPad, which are both now considered critical to restaurant marketing, they get to charge extra for creating an iOS specific version, or an app, or whatever. If you create one site that works great on everything, you make less money. Restaurants are also sometimes run…

Yes, PDF download is that bad, especially on mobile. It will likely be larger and thus take longer than html, and in many cases requires opening a different app.

Re: Why are restaurant websites so awful? Because of restaurant culture.

#20

Post by jsavimbi »

ZoFreX wrote: post #2

As someone who has built a fair few restaurant sites, there are lots of reasons. If a web design agency builds a site that doesn't work on the iPhone or iPad, which are both now considered critical to restaurant marketing, they get to charge extra for creating an iOS specific version, or an app, or whatever. If you create one site that works great on everything, you make less money. Restaurants are also sometimes run…

> This is because restaurants often don't have tools to update the text on their sites

That part struck me as well, because it's complete and utter bullshit. The tools exist, they've been implemented for years across a variety of industries and they come in all flavors. There should be no need for a restaurant operator to ever have to get on the phone with their technologist, and I use that term loosely, and request an item change and any developer with a couple of years experience should know that.

The reason they're so shitty, imo, is that restauranteurs are ocd-minded workaholics who spend most of their time focusing on their own operation and very little time researching the technology aspects of their industry or comparing themselves outside of their business column. Just pick up any of their trade publications. They simply don't have the time or the inclination and more often than not the money to go out and hire a bonafide design or technology firm to implement a solution for them. They see what other restaurants are doing, calculate the costs of copying them and call it a day. As long as nobody else is innovating, why should they?

Another aspect of the business that leads to poor internet marketing is the people that they have filling those positions. I'm willing to bet that upwards of 90% of the people who make the decisions on the restaurant's website have a) no business experience, b) no technology experience, c) no desire to be anything than someone who works at a restaurant, as long as they don't have to serve food or pour drinks. They are, and having worked in the industry for many years, mostly an underachieving lot who are most happy sucking down a cold beer that a friendly bartender comped them. Seriously, I build web-based, cross-platform financial applications and my restaurant friends still ask me to help them with the Yelp. They have absolute no clue what the internet has become in the past ten or twelve years. And if they can get their favorite cocktail waitress' friend to put together some crap website, then they're just as happy. More often than not, you'll have to print the pages out and send the paper site along with the invoice so they can look it over.

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