21–30 of 134 posts
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.
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.
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…
It's getting better, but it's still a hassle to download and open a pdf. Well-designed html is much preferred for me. That said, a well-designed PDF that downloads quickly is better than a poorly-designed menu section that loads slowly or worse, is inaccurate.
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…
Bay Cities: http://www.baycitiesitaliandeli.com/ Swingers: http://www.swingersdiner.com/
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.
What about "Facebook for restaurants"?
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…
It's been over a year since I was looking at POS systems, but that's what I remembered (might be bad memory tho!)
> 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.
> 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.
professional (especially wedding) photographers are also common culprits.
With liquor I always thought that it was that 1) some brands have trouble differentiating themselves 2) the desire to create a 'culture' around their beverage--and that seems to fit the OP's description of the restaurant industry