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

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 dreadfully. There's a particular type of chef that just cannot delegate, cannot let go of the details. Some of the biggest names are barely breaking even - in recent news the "best restaurant in the world" shut down, having never made a profit!

Then there's communication: People running restaurants are often all over the country, hard to get hold of, it's quite difficult to get decisions made.

On splash screens etc: If the client wants it, they want it. You can try to talk them out of it but at the end of the day if they insist, you gotta build it, and sometimes what they ask for just isn't easily possible without flash (sorry!)

It's a bit unfair to pick on restaurants, to be honest. Pick a random, non-chain business off your high street. How good is their website? How many of them use flash? A lot of low-end websites are still in that quagmire, but the meat of it is that you don't need to visit the website for most of these businesses but for restaurants the web has become critical, so you notice it more.

Lastly, to anyone out there that does make restaurant websites: Push back. Try to explain to your clients why it's not such a great idea to use flash, or intro screens. Try to explain the use-cases etc, and above all show them there is a very good business case for having a good website. My current employer actually specialises in restaurant websites and I'm really, genuinely proud of what we're doing - and our clients love it too. It takes effort and it's risky, but helping your client have the best website possible can pay off.

Edit: Between this article and the recent attack from Cracked, I'm feeling a little under siege, especially as both were fairly light on actual facts. An issue that came up in both:

> This is because restaurants often don't have tools to update the text on their sites—saving and replacing a PDF file of a menu is easier than messing with the code on the site

This is a horrible simplification. In many cases the PDF menu is produced by a design agency, which is certainly a lot more effort than updating text on a website. It's also not hard to code either a PDF uploader or a page text editor or both, but you'll find plenty pick the PDF uploader. If you spent that sort of money on a PDF, you'd want to upload it too! And of course the menus are often very designed and they want that control (which the article does cover on other points)

My question on this issue is: Is a PDF download really so bad? It's not something I personally find particularly intrusive and for a restaurant menu it seems suitable enough.

Sure, an established, profitable restaurant should have no trouble funding a modest, tidy, professionally built site. But the truth is, most restaurants youre visiting aren't "established" and "profitable."

Who would even think to look for a restaurant's own page?

Also, I've actually given up on all websites of non-internet companies, including big retailers. It's just too tedious to find information, too slow loading. Their mobile sites often load quicker. but have even less info. You're better off ringing them.

(BTW: the kind of info I'm talking about is like opening hours - and often when they do post that info... it's wrong Yes. It is actually worse than useless).