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Rate my startup: ChompStack, a mobile website builder for restaurants

chompstack.com

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Re: Rate my startup: ChompStack, a mobile website builder for restaurants

#21

Post by vibhavs »

cmeranda wrote: post #11
tansey wrote: post #9

I like it, but I hate your logo. Who takes a bite out of just the bun? Also, by showing a hamburger, you made me think of fast food and I could see conventional restaurants balking at that.

I created that logo and I hate it too. Any other ideas? I'm a horrendous graphic designer but I'm down to try again, and I agree with your points entirely. We were sort of pushing to get it done at the time. We could consider 99designs.com at this point I suppose.

Why not remove the icon and leave the text logo as is? FWIW, I think just the text looks good.

Re: Rate my startup: ChompStack, a mobile website builder for restaurants

#24

Post by kaiserama »

Looks really well executed. I would definitely do some legwork on the operator front. I tackled this same problem about 2 years ago and found that operators simply aren't able to understand the need for this type of service (maybe it was the timing). Keep in mind that many don't have a website and some don't even use email, so explaining why they need a "mobile" website makes for a potentially hard sale.

Someone discussed online ordering as a possible revenue model, from my experiences with operators they weren't interested in this approach. Most orders they received over the phone would involve customization and the cost of handling order problems simply outweighed the benefit of not requiring their bartender to take an order over the phone. However, I could see this being big for chinese restaurants. Most customers order by number, and many chinese restaurants are carry out exclusively. Remove potential language barriers during order taking, increase total ordering, win-win.

Anyway, best of luck!

Re: Rate my startup: ChompStack, a mobile website builder for restaurants

#25

Post by stevenwei »

jeffepp wrote: post #3

Steven, Looks fantastic. I really like your UI -- very informative, yet clean. I think that your prices seem pretty low, I am not sure how much feedback you have gotten from restaurants, this seems like a no-brainer for them... Good luck!

Thanks! I'm not sure about the pricing, but we're definitely open to adjusting it based on feedback.

Re: Rate my startup: ChompStack, a mobile website builder for restaurants

#26

Post by natep »

I really like this idea! I don't have a smartphone, but I would like to support you if I could. Do you have a page listing all of your customers, so I could go to them and tell them it was because of your site?

Speaking of which, how are normal people supposed to find these mobile sites? Maybe you could have restaurants pay you to list them in foursquare or equivalent.

Re: Rate my startup: ChompStack, a mobile website builder for restaurants

#27

Post by jeromec »

tansey wrote: post #9

I like it, but I hate your logo. Who takes a bite out of just the bun? Also, by showing a hamburger, you made me think of fast food and I could see conventional restaurants balking at that.

At the risk of getting beat down I totally disagree. I think the logo is awesome. The branding hit me in the face hard. "Chomp"? Yep, that looks like a chomp. :) I wouldn't change a thing. It's colorful and communicates the food message quick and cleanly. Having just the logo text by itself would be too plain IMO. As for higher scale restaurants, I don't think that's a problem either. The site won't be seen by their customers, yet it's fun branding any restaurant owner can remember.

Re: Rate my startup: ChompStack, a mobile website builder for restaurants

#28

Post by paulgb »

jroes wrote: post #5

Great idea. A friend and I were talking about the need for this kind of product a few days ago. Your implementation looks very nice.

I also was discussing this with a friend the other day. I actually feel a bit relieved to know that someone is doing it better than I could have.

Re: Rate my startup: ChompStack, a mobile website builder for restaurants

#29

Post by josefresco »

natep wrote: post #26

I really like this idea! I don't have a smartphone, but I would like to support you if I could. Do you have a page listing all of your customers, so I could go to them and tell them it was because of your site? Speaking of which, how are normal people supposed to find these mobile sites? Maybe you could have restaurants pay you to list them in foursquare or equivalent.

I had a similar question about how the service connects with your site. Does it use a custom DNS record or does this mobile site sit on an island?

Re: Rate my startup: ChompStack, a mobile website builder for restaurants

#30

Post by tnorthcutt »

wanderboy wrote: post #8

This is well-done. I'm working on a similar project, and one thing I'd like to point out is that menus are not always simple databases. There are several menus that have paragraphs of information that relates to several menu items rather than just one. How are you planning on translating that information to a mobile application, if at all? I'm trying to find a good example of this "paragraph of extraneous info" from…

I know what you're talking about, but do you think mobile sites could possibly get away with not displaying that 'extra' information? Especially considering screen real estate on mobile devices is fairly limited.

If it is absolutely necessary, it seems like it would be fairly easy to have that show up when you select a section. That could get complicated if there are multiple paragraphs within a section (i.e. one for burgers and one for chicken sandwiches, but both of those are under "sandwiches"). You could just limit it to one description per category, though.

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