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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

#71

Post by stevenwei »

patio11 wrote: post #64
stevenwei wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean lead generation to potential restaurants, like an affiliate setup? Or lead generation for restaurant customers?

In this context it almost certainly means "We filled 68 tables for you this month. That has obvious monetary value to you. Pay us and we will continue delighting you."

Hmm, I'm not sure how we could directly correlate mobile website hits with actual customer visits. Although being able to record those metrics would be a great selling point.

OpenTable/Groupon has an advantage there since they have a very direct method of measurement.

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

#72

Post by tim_church »

Great idea. Like everyone else, I am all for better restaurant websites and no more PDF menus.

I was slightly confused whether this was only mobile or if there was a possibility of building a full website + mobile version. It might help you convince restaurants to use this service if it can handle all of their restaurants website needs in one place.

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

#74

Post by cmeranda »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #69
cmeranda wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We'd like to do one in Python/HTML5, open-source, cloud-based server. Not sure about device interaction though, and can you imagine the sales cycle? Yikes. Are people on HN interested in being part of a project like that? We weren't sure (at ChompStack) that we could get enough developer interest, and it's a big project. We've written touchscreen software for restaurants before, for about 5 yrs.

The sales cycle may not be as bad as you think. The standard model in restaurant (and market) POS systems seems to be a large up-front cost of many thousands of dollars, followed by a yearly "support contract", which entitles the client to a "free" phone call to technical support as necessary. (Without an active "support contract", I've seen some pretty outrageous hourly rates for calls to tech support, and they will…

I've heard the general POS term of existence is 2-5 years, so a lot of restaurants might be inclined to upgrade I would think. However, restaurant owners can be a suspicious lot, and they require more than proof-of-concept by early adopters (not even sure who those would be) to convince them.

We think it's worth the time and the money, and we agree that the current clunky, antiquated hardware and counterintuitive software is a disgrace. It's one of those ideas (upgrading restaurants) whose time is fast approaching.

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

#75

Post by cmeranda »

URSpider94 wrote: post #33
jolan wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel like our biggest challenge with this service is getting in touch with restaurant owners and convincing them of the value of having a mobile website, most of them don't seem to be particularly interested in technology. I could see that being the case. I don't think they understand how infuriating it is on the consumer side. Maybe publish some success stories citing the amount of increased revenue. Another ide…

+1 for this idea. Maybe you want to consider giving free service to some early adopters in return for the ability to analyze the impact on your business. Ideally, you would spread this out across a few different target demographics, like pizza joints, Chinese/ethnic, late-night, etc., so that your potential customers would identify with the results. Even the most conservative restaurant owner is going to be swayed by…

That whole vertical idea is brilliant: if we could convince a handful of pizza joints it would give other like restaurants a high level of motivation to join them. What type of restaurants do you think we should target? Who would most benefit from a mobile site?

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

#76

Post by cmeranda »

tim_church wrote: post #72

Great idea. Like everyone else, I am all for better restaurant websites and no more PDF menus. I was slightly confused whether this was only mobile or if there was a possibility of building a full website + mobile version. It might help you convince restaurants to use this service if it can handle all of their restaurants website needs in one place.

We're very interested in expanding the product to include a desktop website version as well for a nominal monthly upgrade. The reason we didn't start out there is because we felt the mobile lure was a little stronger, due to the fact that many restaurants already have websites. Do you think the product would be more compelling if it offered both from the outset?

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

#78

Post by stevenwei »

DannoHung wrote: post #68
stevenwei wrote: post #2

http://www.chompstack.com We all know how mobile unfriendly restaurant websites tend to be. Many of them are done in Flash, and don't work at all on most phones. Others force you to download PDF menus which take forever to load and have an annoying tendency to lock up my phone. The irony, of course, is that I'm most likely to be looking at restaurant websites on my phone, when I'm around town looking for an interesti…

I am extremely interested in this, but I wonder why you're doing mobile only? Existing sites are crappy because they don't know any better and doing all the good stuff is HARD. I mean, add in basic mail merge capacities and a place to put a few ambiance ahots of the restaurant and you'd have EVERYTHING my Dad wants me to do with his restaurant's website.

A restaurant desktop website builder is in our roadmap. The tricky bit is that most restaurants seem to want their own customized look and feel, which is more time consuming to put together.

With mobile websites you generally want something that loads quickly, displays all the restaurant information in an easy to access manner, and is somewhat customizable (colors, logo, etc) but doesn't go too far cause then you would lose usability.

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