10 ms·

Why are restaurant web sites so bad?

142 points by chrismealy 16y ago

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
3pt14159 16y ago
The reason these websites are bad is because the owners have never heard of conversions, marketing iteration, "the funnel", so what they end up with is a shitty site that they forget about.
pshirishreddy 16y ago
One Liner : Restaurants are all about "Taste" and not about "Look", so they are presented with a challenge on how to express taste in terms of look :)
zacstewart 16y ago
After delivering pizza for a restaurant for two years, I finally convinced the owner that his free, Frontpage-generated site wasn't good enough, and got him to pay me to do a redesign. I learned a few things along the way. 1. Restaurants have tiny margins. 7% profit is doing well, and dishing out $1k or more for what they perceive to be a Yellow Pages ad is unthinkable for a brick and mortar store. 2. Restaurant people are techno-iliterates (in general). I set up a Google Apps account so the managers could communicate with branded email, share documents, schedules, etc, and had to give more than a couple training sessions on these basic tools. 3. They don't consider it something to be 'involved' with. I've tried to press the point of building a presence through social networks, etc, but they can't wrap their heads around it. To them, you should pay someone (as little as possible) for it and it does it's job. 4. They explicitly ask for the faux pas. Owner asked me to take down the "outdated announcement" that we'll be having an event, since it was from last month. This is on the blog portion of the site. Owner asked me to upload the rest of the photos from an event (at least a hundred), even though the entire album is on Facebook, even though I explained no one in the world is going to care enough to flip through hundreds of jell-o wrestling photos on the news page of some restaurant's website. Owner asked for a photo background versus the subtle textured one I had designed the site with. In the end, trying to teach them what emails is, arguing over design elements and explaining how people will use the site isn't worth it because they are going to be more work and less money than just about any other business owner. Slap something together and collect your $500.
chunkyslink 16y ago
We've been quite successful at cracking the UK market and we run the sites for a few of the UK's biggest chains down to some smaller brasserie style companies. I'd like to present some work which I think is good for a change (there are a lot of bad examples on here) So here we go http://giraffe.net http://giraffe.net http://www.chezgerard.co.uk http://www.chezgerard.co.uk http://www.brasseriegerard.co.uk http://www.brasseriegerard.co.uk Some of our older ones http://www.strada.co.uk http://www.strada.co.uk http://www.caferouge.co.uk http://www.caferouge.co.uk http://www.bellaitalia.co.uk http://www.bellaitalia.co.uk The most visited pages on our busiest sites are 1. Offers and vouchers 2. Locations 3. Menus so it is really important to do those well. Also we've recently launched a product that allows anyone with a website the ability to have a content managed mobile site set up and working in no time. The product is called http://www.pocketdiner.co.uk http://www.pocketdiner.co.uk Any feedback or comments are welcome
- iheartmemcache 16y ago
  Well, I think we're all thinking it- how'd you go about acquiring your customers (as that's a notoriously hard market to crack)? Also, your pricing for "Chain" @PocketDiner seems wayyy too low. Even £49/mo for "Multi" is probably priced too low. The overhead per store per hour is probably more than that.
- lowglow 16y ago
  thanks. This gives me something to focus on.
- Erwin 16y ago
  At the gourmet high end, my favourite is http://www.squarerestaurant.com/ http://www.squarerestaurant.com/ -- I love the big, big pictures of food, and of course all the other information being available. They use the same format at Pied a Terre. The annoying ones are e.g. http://www.wildhoneyrestaurant.co.uk/ http://www.wildhoneyrestaurant.co.uk/ -- useless use of Flash, this could be done in pure HTML and not force me to scroll a tiny frame with a menu. It could be much worse though, el bulli's website has a "virtual city" you have to wander through in order to select a wine from their menu -- "easy and fun" they say: http://vins.elbulli.com/elbullivi.php?lang=en http://vins.elbulli.com/elbullivi.php?lang=en
angdis 16y ago
Obviously, because the sites are based on decisions made by one person who is not a web design expert. But that's okay, there are ways around that problem for the restaurant-goer: yelp.com provides a useable interface, socially vetted, and normalized so that places can be compared. I hardly bother with the restaurant's site anymore, they're all on yelp.
- jshen 16y ago
  true, but it makes it hard for those of us working on local search sites to crawl their sites too :/
  - byoung2 16y ago
    Look into the Factual API for restaurants to solve this problem.
    - jshen 16y ago
      it looks like most of your data came from crawling us (yellowpages.com)
      - byoung2 16y ago
        I don't work for Factual, so I can't speak to that. Does Yellowpages.com have an API to access this data? I've worked with the Yellowbook API in the past, and wasn't that impressed.
        jshen 16y ago
        Not yet
  - angdis 16y ago
    Oh, you mean "web-crawl". With restaurants, its much better to "physically crawl", some of the really good hole-in-the-wall places, I think, would be terrible at self-categorization. I think its much better for restaurants to list themselves with a service like "yelp" or "open-table" or even the local city paper than to try to make anything more than a bare-bones website.
albemuth 16y ago
I've been thinking about developing a custom cms/site builder of sorts, pitch it to one restaurant and make both the customer and owner experience really smooth. On one side, I would have a restaurant directory with all the info, recommendations and what not, but the owner would get a site with no 3rd party branding and their own domain, charge a monthly fee and get free dinners on a bunch of places. But then I imagine explaining my idea to other people and having them ask "so, uhhm, like geocities?"
- klbarry 16y ago
  I did local SEO work for a while - I assure you, assuming small business owners have knowledge of even geocities is greatly overestimating their technical knowledge.
bradleyland 16y ago
Perhaps there is no business case for having a good, CSS/HTML based website when your business is turning over tables? That's a serious question. Has anyone here been involved with a restaurant or food-service related start-up that isn't an aggregator or social networking play? Maybe someone can shed some light on the roadblock?
- chunkyslink 16y ago
  See my comments above http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2044753 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2044753 Restaurants need to see results 1. Grow their email database and they have contacts they can market to. 2. Engage the customers with the site. Keep them coming back. 2 for 1 vouchers anyone? 3. Provide the basic information like where, when and how much. Make this accessible across devices. It doesnt matter how good your site is, if your food sucks you loose.
- klbarry 16y ago
  Restaurant owners don't know who to trust, and have no judge of the skill of website builders and/or price. They are often pitched by various company's and the one that eventually gets through will by no means be the best.
trafficlight 16y ago
All I want to see are the menu and the hours of operation.
- chunkyslink 16y ago
  And a voucher that is valid for the day you are visiting.
- Volscio 16y ago
  Word. I want the hours, location, phone number, and menu. All in a format I can copy & paste into my email to convince my friends to go. I rarely get any of that at a restaurant's web site. No wonder that it's easier to google/yelp it and use their listings.
  - cubicle67 16y ago
    See, that's where it gets hard. Menus, and especially prices, change. People get upset if they're charged differently to what they saw on the website, and keeping the two in sync requires a conscious effort on behalf of the restaurant that it's not likely going to receive. There's two way around this problem (keeping the website up to date) that I can see: integrate with existing POS system (expensive and hard) or offer a service to update the site for them. There's an idea for someone - buy yourself a fax machine (yes, really), and offer a service whereby clients fax you a copy of their menu when it changes and you update their website.
    - lowglow 16y ago
      Great suggestions. I'll actually talk about implementing this with some people.
  - trafficlight 16y ago
    That information, if it's there at all, is usually buried in some awful Flash animation.
  - davidmurphy 16y ago
bdclimber14 16y ago
Because restaurant owners are barely figuring out what email is. How often do you go to restaurant websites vs. actual restaurants (not including Yelp or Google maps)? Truth is, they just don't matter. The cost of creating a website, even a $500 design over a CMS doesn't justify the cost. Also, a small business restaurant owner won't know how to operate a CMS. They just figured out email, remember? Worse, is that websites turn from beautiful assets to liabilities. The nephew of some restaurant owner finally convinces him or her that the restaurant needs a website. The kid builds it for $100, everything is great. Until the business owner needs to change store hours. "What's that password that kid gave me again? What do I do with that password? He mentioned logging in somewhere... Now that kid has a job at Google or is doing a startup and doesn't have the time to mess with $10/hr type of work anymore. Crap, now all my patrons are expecting me to be closing later and I am turning them down. What a huge pain, I have to go find a new web designer." The solution needs to be the anti-CMS. Something that's not as simple as email, but as FAMILIAR ... Email is simple, but it was a huge learning curve for that small business owner. And learning something else just as simple will be a huge pain.
- jdminhbg 16y ago
  "The cost of creating a website, even a $500 design over a CMS doesn't justify the cost." The question I guess is why restaurant owners spend money having flash monstrosities built when most users -- especially those on mobile devices, which is a big use-case for restaurant websites -- would rather see plain-jane HTML with an address, phone number, and menu. "The nephew of some restaurant owner finally convinces him or her that the restaurant needs a website." I suspect this is closer to the truth. The restaurant owner demographic probably runs in the same circles as the dilettante designer demographic, so the site is built by a wait(er|ress) with a copy of Flash CS.
  - zacstewart 16y ago
    So true. I designed a site for a restaurant while working there as a delivery driver. The site, sucks, and I'm aware of that, but for the hassle of physically meeting with the owner to get the specific on an update about a Christmas party update or the unwillingness to pay something worth 10 hours of work per month I'm not really going to try to improve it. I have a job at a web agency now and doing anything better than what's there simply wouldn't make since.
dasht 16y ago
Because a lot of web site design services sold to restaurants are sold by hucksters. p.s.: not all hucksters know that that's what they are. Heck, you or I might be one, without meaning to be so. Of course, plenty enough do mean to be so and do awright for themselves that way.
- sudont 16y ago
  Touché. Now, just to figure out how to sell our honest and genuine services to them. Cold calling? Anybody with similar experience? I’m genuinely interested.
  - netcan 16y ago
    I think you underestimate the powers that have given rise to the current state of affairs. Ecosystems of sellers usually develop around the characteristics of buyers. Restauranteurs are (as a general rule) terrible buyers and terrible clients. You might look at a site and think "that'll take x hours to do," but you need to factor in the time that it takes to get the client there. In my experience, that's several times x. Just making the sale could be several times x. You need to realize you are starting from scratch and that from where you stand, it's hard to know where scratch is. You will need to convince them why flash is bad (even though everyone they ask thinks it looks great). This is just one example. They will not be able to evaluate the site from the perspective of the user, that kind of thinking takes practice. Then crisis strikes when your offer which includes some little mini-app to do that thing they want with the menus (already done) and a custom design (hired a mid range designer) costs more than the other offer which is largely auto-generated. The reasons are similar for large companies having bad software, they are bad buyers.
    - sudont 16y ago
      I see! This must stem from the culture of cheapness that surrounds a lot of restaurants; supposedly the industry is cut-throat. This just means that the problem needs to be attacked on a different front: marketing. Which is where the hucksters come in...
- 16y ago
sdizdar 16y ago
I spent some time doing customer development for my http://wall.si http://wall.si project, so I have some experience with this. The top four concerns for restaurants are: personnel, personnel, personnel, and personnel. Cool looking web site is really peripheral for many restaurants. Mobile support .. What?
dasil003 16y ago
One reason for menus in PDF is because the menus may change frequently, and a PDF is easy to create from their actual print menus. It doesn't seem like a big deal to update both an InDesign layout and a website, but if different people do those two things, then it's quite likely a mistake will be made, so it's smart just to use the already proofed version.
- ronnier 16y ago
  I also deal with this while keeping my resume updated and tweaked. I have an HTML, PDF, and MS Word format. I use a print CSS sytle sheet on my homepage (http://ronnie.me http://ronnie.me) so that I can print it to PDF for the PDF version and manually create the Word version. Very tedious.
  - BrandonM 16y ago
    Ugh. Just learn LaTeX and write once.
    - cookiecaper 16y ago
      LaTeX isn't the only way you can "write once"; while there are LaTeX exporters for the formats mentioned, you can do the same with LibreOffice, which exports to Word, PDF, and HTML much easier than LaTeX docs do (LaTeX conversion usually requires three different tools, it's a simple Save As... or Export in LibreOffice).
      - wfarr 16y ago
        True, but LaTeX's output is worth the effort of input.
        deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
        cookiecaper 16y ago
        I've actually found LaTeX output more difficult to read; the margin is huge and the text is small. I'm just using the defaults from LyX, maybe they need tweaking to look good (though I thought the point of LaTeX was to avoid that necessity...), but in general the only thing I prefer is the typeface. The small size of the text and the wide margins that leave much of the paper blank do not appeal to me.
callmeed 16y ago
I'm working on something at the moment. Just hours + menu + some optional social integration. Based the research/feedback I've done, decision makers have near-zero time to learn or use a cms (hence why menus are always in PDF) and near-zero budget. So what I'm going for is a super-simple system much like about.me/flavors.me ... something around $5 to $9/month or possibly even free and use it as a gateway to other services (also working on a diy groupon clone and staff scheduler for restaurants).
- lowglow 16y ago
  Hey, I'm working on something like this too :)
davej 16y ago
I know first-hand what kind of budgets most small/medium-sized restaurants have for websites and online marketing. Its much better to put resources and money into a profile/photos/menu on a site like http://www.grabmytable.com/ http://www.grabmytable.com/ than doing a half-arsed 'proper' website.
patio11 16y ago
Restaurants aren't unique offenders. Most physically extant businesses which can't transact online suck. Try your dentist's.
- dholowiski 16y ago
  Try brewery/beer sites!
  - te_chris 16y ago
    The irony about these (at least in NZ) is that they're normally some of the most expensive, flash-bound websites out there.
- verisimilitude 16y ago
  Oh my god, dentist's websites. I've one full year of dental school left, and as I'm looking around for a job, I sometimes wonder if I should just be a dental website designer instead of a dentist.
  - SquidLord 16y ago
    So ... why NOT be a dentist website designer, at least part-time? You know the business needs, you know the lingo of both (you're here, anyway) ... It sounds like a job that fills a needed niche! Better sites == more hits due to easier searching; there's a business case. I say go for it.
    - Ogre 16y ago
      And while you're at, write some better X-ray and tooth-photo database UI for them. I cringe at the program my dentist plods through every time she takes pictures or X-rays of my teeth. Its been at the top of my list of software I have basically no interest in working on yet feel like I could do a hell of a lot better at anyway. Of course, I haven't researched what's out there, there may already be much better options available. Besides being ugly, my main beef is that I have watched her drag photos, one at a time, into their proper slots in my "file" from the incoming area, even though they were already clearly labelled as to what tooth they were pictures of. It's maddening. It's only a minute or two, and she doesn't take pictures every visit, but it's the kind of thing that just screams shoddy workmanship... and opportunity.
jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
I think there are a few things here that cause this: a) You're going against the worst kind of incumbent- the 15 year old nephew or kid next door. He's cheaper, good enough, and "trusted". He is competition that exists a million times over. b) Even if your system is better, they just can't be bothered to even get a good demo. You definitely need to build something so usable and good it's frightening, but good luck getting the full demo. c) The guys that do have the ability to get in with a demo (GoDaddy, yellow pages,etc.) have no clue how to sell something good. What they usually sell is usually crappy, so now you have a fearful restaurant owner. d) To crack this market it's a "heavy startup". It requires lots of capital, it requires sales, and it requires marketing. That's something guys like us don't like to often venture into. It's the same reason GroupOn requires lots of capital and other business like ReachLocal have feet on the street. e) Churn is miserable. If you're on a monthly fee or provide additional services, good luck keeping the customer. ReachLocal has something like 80% churn,not retention, fucking churn. Here's how I'd go about this for months 1-9. Crack the nut of an easy to use system (point b) and find distribution channels that already exist (point c) such as local newspapers, print shops, and others with a foot into the local market. You'd also need to have a system of people to crank out onboarding in a very cost efficient and systematic manner.
- tucker1213 16y ago
  So true. The restaurant market is a tough nut to crack but if you manage to do it you will be very glad you stuck it out. I only disagree with e. Our churn (tripleseat.com) is less then 1%. If you provide value and have a good relationship restaurant people are very loyal and will stick with you in good times and bad. If your churn is bad try annual pricing at a discount. Restaurateurs love to negotiate and annual pricing at a discount is a win/win
- Volscio 16y ago
  I wonder how well food truck businesses stack up in this category. I'd expect them to be more nimble, more accessible, with better web sites.
  - smackfu 16y ago
T_S_ 16y ago
Most web sites are bad. That's why. Eventually things like Google Places, Yelp, etc. will handle 100% of their UX.
jarin 16y ago
Having worked with restaurants before (and having a dad who owns a restaurant), I have come to the conclusion that it's just because most restaurant owners a) just want something that works and is cheap, and b) do not fully understand how web design can help or hurt their businesses. Bad web designers tend to target restaurants (and medical practitioners) because they have a much easier time selling bad design to them.
lowglow 16y ago
http://www.onebigmenu.com http://www.onebigmenu.com I'm working on this site right now, and I understand your concerns because I feel them myself. I'm hoping I can bridge the gap between dining and diner. :) (Please excuse the design, since I'm the only developer :P)
- lowglow 16y ago
  One last thing, If any developers want to join forces, that would be cool too :)
  - earino 16y ago
    This interests me. What's the plaform?
    - lowglow 16y ago
      Simple lamp stack using codeigniter. Nothing fancy. Runs on MediaTemple's VE Server.
      - jdavid 16y ago
        why didn't you choose kohana? http://kohanaframework.org/ http://kohanaframework.org/ it's based off of codeigniter, but it's fully OO. are you using some sort of ORM like active record? if you are, you should look at the tables and see how many joins the ORM layer is doing so you know how much work it's going to be to scale.
        lowglow 16y ago
        Hey Justin, thanks for the tip. I'll check it out. I'm not using Active Record currently, but scaling up is something I worry about and just won't understand until I have the problem first hand. Maybe we can chat about this sometime.
  - tk999 16y ago
    What is your email? I am interested.
blhack 16y ago
Huh. I just realized that I have a strange association between restaurants and their websites. My expectation of quality is inversely correlated to the quality of their website. When I see a restaurant website that is "good", it makes me thing "chain. corporate. bland. boring."
- ronnier 16y ago
  Am I the only person who doesn't mind chain and corporate eateries?
  - mgkimsal 16y ago
    No you're not. I enjoy restaurants, regardless of whether they're chain or indie. If it's good it's good, if not, not. Bonus of chains is that if it's good one place, it's probably good in most places.
  - blhack 16y ago
    No, and neither do I. One of my favorite chain places that I eat at all the time is Jimmy Johns. They have awesome sandwiches. I always joke with my friends that, if they like subway, they should definitely not go to JJ because they're never going to be able to eat it ever again. What I was getting at is that a crappy website can sometimes be a good indicator for places like the little deli that I go to sometimes, or my neighborhood bar. If the little deli (called cheese and stuff, for you Phoenicians: http://www.cheesenstuffdeli.com/ http://www.cheesenstuffdeli.com/) had a "good" website, it would seem out of character to me.
rwhitman 16y ago
Luddite client meets designer who has made their living wowing luddite clients with style over substance. Also note that movie websites have the same problem. For mostly the same reasons, though the organizations involved and cash transactions are much larger...
julian37 16y ago
Here be more lamenting over awful restaurant web sites: http://www.portlandfoodanddrink.com/2010/03/what-is-it-about-restaurant-websites/ http://www.portlandfoodanddrink.com/2010/03/what-is-it-about... http://www.badlanguage.net/why-are-restaurant-websites-so-awful http://www.badlanguage.net/why-are-restaurant-websites-so-aw... http://blogs.houstonpress.com/eating/2010/09/10_reasons_your_restaurant_web.php http://blogs.houstonpress.com/eating/2010/09/10_reasons_your...
known 16y ago
No need for sites. Use twitter.
- angdis 16y ago
  Indeed. I went to a fabulous tiny restaurant in philly recently. While chatting with owner, she mentioned that a reservation had just canceled and then proceeded to tweet that there was an open table. Within literally 2 minutes, she filled the reservation. Who says restaurant owners don't get computers! The saavy ones know their core competency and don't try to get fancy. The restaurant I mentioned has a super simple website done with inuit sitebuilder. It does the job, but with places like this the most important thing is what others say about the place and the clout the owner cultivates with their customers.
prawn 16y ago
Anyone tried offering a deal to a restaurant owner whereby you get a tab (e.g., shout friends a $500 dinner) to build a site and then a lunch/dinner per month in exchange for maintenance of menus, etc?
- japherwocky 16y ago
  I built/host a site for a local brewery, and I bill them $X/mo for hosting and small tweaks. We've definitely bartered some of those invoices away. :)
  - prawn 16y ago
    I just wondered about sending a letter to a swag of restaurants offering it as a service. Say that the first 3-5 to respond can take up the offer but potentially take on more. Quick site build, get interns to do the maintenance, and then eat out at a different restaurant each night of the month. Hmmm.
dfhjtyjty 16y ago
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edanm 16y ago
Interestingly, here in Israel, there's a standard layout for restaurant websites that is almost always used, and it's pretty good. I'm not 100% clear on the history, but afaik, a website called Rest.co.il (a restaurant directory), offers restaurants a service for creating a website for them. I'm guessing that initially, most restaurants that didn't have a website just created one through Rest. Nowadays, 80% of restaurant websites I visit are Rest-operated sites, with a very decent standard layout, including quick-info for getting their number, quick info on average prices of meals, maps, and detailed menus. More and more restaurants are creating "unique" websites nowadays, but I think because the level was so high initially, they're doing a pretty good job of it. Pretty funny considering for other things in Israel, there is much less web-awareness than in the States. If you want examples (sorry, they're in Hebrew, but you can see they look the same). Bottom-left is the quick-info, including information on accessibility for people with disabilities, whether the food is Kosher, hours that they're open, etc.: http://www.rest.co.il/sites/Default.asp?txtRestID=1796 http://www.rest.co.il/sites/Default.asp?txtRestID=1796 http://www.rest.co.il/sites/Default.asp?txtRestID=7775 http://www.rest.co.il/sites/Default.asp?txtRestID=7775
- Semiapies 16y ago
  "sorry, they're in Hebrew" Eh, that's what Google Translate is for. That looks like a perfectly good standard template, both visually and in hitting the points of what customers want to know - menus (with prices!), hours, links to directions, some sense of what the place looks like, etc. "because the level was so high initially, they're doing a pretty good job of it" Very cool. There's something to be said for a genuinely good basic approach.
augustiner 16y ago
I once built an online dish ordering website with interface similar to digg and reddit. It showed dishes in your area sorted by the number of times they have been ordered online. I still host a short video demo of the site: http://video.eatlista.pl/ http://video.eatlista.pl/ (it's in Polish language, but still, could be inspiring for someone). Anyway I ditched the idea after talking to restaurant owners, they were mostly older people, having hard time grasping the concept of the site (and even the Internet itself) and I didn't enjoy the idea of educating them.
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ianlotinsky 16y ago
SandwichBoard does restaurant web sites (http://www.sandwichboard.com/ http://www.sandwichboard.com/). We've found that the owners and managers who "don't get it" are the ones who think that the web site experience should be the same as the restaurant experience: background music, a menu that looks identical to the physical one, and a picture of every dish. The ones who do "get it" entrust their web site to designers and usability experts who make it their goal to turn web site visitors into patrons.
dedward 16y ago
Many - because they don't need a better online presence to get more business. Their tables are full - the only way to squeeze more profits is to charge more, possibly changing clientele, or act more efficiently, or both. A cool website for reservations/tables/photos etc COULD be part of a themed restaurant or restaurant chain to differentiate them in the market... but for the most part, the food speaks for itself.

142 points by chrismealy 16y ago

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

The reason these websites are bad is because the owners have never heard of conversions, marketing iteration, "the funnel", so what they end up with is a shitty site that they forget about.

pshirishreddy 16y ago

One Liner : Restaurants are all about "Taste" and not about "Look", so they are presented with a challenge on how to express taste in terms of look :)

zacstewart 16y ago

After delivering pizza for a restaurant for two years, I finally convinced the owner that his free, Frontpage-generated site wasn't good enough, and got him to pay me to do a redesign. I learned a few things along the way. 1. Restaurants have tiny margins. 7% profit is doing well, and dishing out $1k or more for what they perceive to be a Yellow Pages ad is unthinkable for a brick and mortar store. 2. Restaurant people are techno-iliterates (in general). I set up a Google Apps account so the managers could communicate with branded email, share documents, schedules, etc, and had to give more than a couple training sessions on these basic tools. 3. They don't consider it something to be 'involved' with. I've tried to press the point of building a presence through social networks, etc, but they can't wrap their heads around it. To them, you should pay someone (as little as possible) for it and it does it's job. 4. They explicitly ask for the faux pas. Owner asked me to take down the "outdated announcement" that we'll be having an event, since it was from last month. This is on the blog portion of the site. Owner asked me to upload the rest of the photos from an event (at least a hundred), even though the entire album is on Facebook, even though I explained no one in the world is going to care enough to flip through hundreds of jell-o wrestling photos on the news page of some restaurant's website. Owner asked for a photo background versus the subtle textured one I had designed the site with. In the end, trying to teach them what emails is, arguing over design elements and explaining how people will use the site isn't worth it because they are going to be more work and less money than just about any other business owner. Slap something together and collect your $500.

chunkyslink 16y ago

We've been quite successful at cracking the UK market and we run the sites for a few of the UK's biggest chains down to some smaller brasserie style companies. I'd like to present some work which I think is good for a change (there are a lot of bad examples on here) So here we go http://giraffe.net http://giraffe.net http://www.chezgerard.co.uk http://www.chezgerard.co.uk http://www.brasseriegerard.co.uk http://www.brasseriegerard.co.uk Some of our older ones http://www.strada.co.uk http://www.strada.co.uk http://www.caferouge.co.uk http://www.caferouge.co.uk http://www.bellaitalia.co.uk http://www.bellaitalia.co.uk The most visited pages on our busiest sites are 1. Offers and vouchers 2. Locations 3. Menus so it is really important to do those well. Also we've recently launched a product that allows anyone with a website the ability to have a content managed mobile site set up and working in no time. The product is called http://www.pocketdiner.co.uk http://www.pocketdiner.co.uk Any feedback or comments are welcome

iheartmemcache 16y ago
Well, I think we're all thinking it- how'd you go about acquiring your customers (as that's a notoriously hard market to crack)? Also, your pricing for "Chain" @PocketDiner seems wayyy too low. Even £49/mo for "Multi" is probably priced too low. The overhead per store per hour is probably more than that.
lowglow 16y ago
thanks. This gives me something to focus on.
Erwin 16y ago
At the gourmet high end, my favourite is http://www.squarerestaurant.com/ http://www.squarerestaurant.com/ -- I love the big, big pictures of food, and of course all the other information being available. They use the same format at Pied a Terre. The annoying ones are e.g. http://www.wildhoneyrestaurant.co.uk/ http://www.wildhoneyrestaurant.co.uk/ -- useless use of Flash, this could be done in pure HTML and not force me to scroll a tiny frame with a menu. It could be much worse though, el bulli's website has a "virtual city" you have to wander through in order to select a wine from their menu -- "easy and fun" they say: http://vins.elbulli.com/elbullivi.php?lang=en http://vins.elbulli.com/elbullivi.php?lang=en

angdis 16y ago

Obviously, because the sites are based on decisions made by one person who is not a web design expert. But that's okay, there are ways around that problem for the restaurant-goer: yelp.com provides a useable interface, socially vetted, and normalized so that places can be compared. I hardly bother with the restaurant's site anymore, they're all on yelp.

jshen 16y ago
true, but it makes it hard for those of us working on local search sites to crawl their sites too :/
- byoung2 16y ago
  Look into the Factual API for restaurants to solve this problem.
  - jshen 16y ago
    it looks like most of your data came from crawling us (yellowpages.com)
    - byoung2 16y ago
      I don't work for Factual, so I can't speak to that. Does Yellowpages.com have an API to access this data? I've worked with the Yellowbook API in the past, and wasn't that impressed.
      - jshen 16y ago
        Not yet
- angdis 16y ago
  Oh, you mean "web-crawl". With restaurants, its much better to "physically crawl", some of the really good hole-in-the-wall places, I think, would be terrible at self-categorization. I think its much better for restaurants to list themselves with a service like "yelp" or "open-table" or even the local city paper than to try to make anything more than a bare-bones website.

albemuth 16y ago

I've been thinking about developing a custom cms/site builder of sorts, pitch it to one restaurant and make both the customer and owner experience really smooth. On one side, I would have a restaurant directory with all the info, recommendations and what not, but the owner would get a site with no 3rd party branding and their own domain, charge a monthly fee and get free dinners on a bunch of places. But then I imagine explaining my idea to other people and having them ask "so, uhhm, like geocities?"

klbarry 16y ago
I did local SEO work for a while - I assure you, assuming small business owners have knowledge of even geocities is greatly overestimating their technical knowledge.

bradleyland 16y ago

Perhaps there is no business case for having a good, CSS/HTML based website when your business is turning over tables? That's a serious question. Has anyone here been involved with a restaurant or food-service related start-up that isn't an aggregator or social networking play? Maybe someone can shed some light on the roadblock?

chunkyslink 16y ago
See my comments above http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2044753 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2044753 Restaurants need to see results 1. Grow their email database and they have contacts they can market to. 2. Engage the customers with the site. Keep them coming back. 2 for 1 vouchers anyone? 3. Provide the basic information like where, when and how much. Make this accessible across devices. It doesnt matter how good your site is, if your food sucks you loose.
klbarry 16y ago
Restaurant owners don't know who to trust, and have no judge of the skill of website builders and/or price. They are often pitched by various company's and the one that eventually gets through will by no means be the best.

trafficlight 16y ago

All I want to see are the menu and the hours of operation.

chunkyslink 16y ago
And a voucher that is valid for the day you are visiting.
Volscio 16y ago
Word. I want the hours, location, phone number, and menu. All in a format I can copy & paste into my email to convince my friends to go. I rarely get any of that at a restaurant's web site. No wonder that it's easier to google/yelp it and use their listings.
- cubicle67 16y ago
  See, that's where it gets hard. Menus, and especially prices, change. People get upset if they're charged differently to what they saw on the website, and keeping the two in sync requires a conscious effort on behalf of the restaurant that it's not likely going to receive. There's two way around this problem (keeping the website up to date) that I can see: integrate with existing POS system (expensive and hard) or offer a service to update the site for them. There's an idea for someone - buy yourself a fax machine (yes, really), and offer a service whereby clients fax you a copy of their menu when it changes and you update their website.
  - lowglow 16y ago
    Great suggestions. I'll actually talk about implementing this with some people.
- trafficlight 16y ago
  That information, if it's there at all, is usually buried in some awful Flash animation.
- davidmurphy 16y ago

bdclimber14 16y ago

Because restaurant owners are barely figuring out what email is. How often do you go to restaurant websites vs. actual restaurants (not including Yelp or Google maps)? Truth is, they just don't matter. The cost of creating a website, even a $500 design over a CMS doesn't justify the cost. Also, a small business restaurant owner won't know how to operate a CMS. They just figured out email, remember? Worse, is that websites turn from beautiful assets to liabilities. The nephew of some restaurant owner finally convinces him or her that the restaurant needs a website. The kid builds it for $100, everything is great. Until the business owner needs to change store hours. "What's that password that kid gave me again? What do I do with that password? He mentioned logging in somewhere... Now that kid has a job at Google or is doing a startup and doesn't have the time to mess with $10/hr type of work anymore. Crap, now all my patrons are expecting me to be closing later and I am turning them down. What a huge pain, I have to go find a new web designer." The solution needs to be the anti-CMS. Something that's not as simple as email, but as FAMILIAR ... Email is simple, but it was a huge learning curve for that small business owner. And learning something else just as simple will be a huge pain.

jdminhbg 16y ago
"The cost of creating a website, even a $500 design over a CMS doesn't justify the cost." The question I guess is why restaurant owners spend money having flash monstrosities built when most users -- especially those on mobile devices, which is a big use-case for restaurant websites -- would rather see plain-jane HTML with an address, phone number, and menu. "The nephew of some restaurant owner finally convinces him or her that the restaurant needs a website." I suspect this is closer to the truth. The restaurant owner demographic probably runs in the same circles as the dilettante designer demographic, so the site is built by a wait(er|ress) with a copy of Flash CS.
- zacstewart 16y ago
  So true. I designed a site for a restaurant while working there as a delivery driver. The site, sucks, and I'm aware of that, but for the hassle of physically meeting with the owner to get the specific on an update about a Christmas party update or the unwillingness to pay something worth 10 hours of work per month I'm not really going to try to improve it. I have a job at a web agency now and doing anything better than what's there simply wouldn't make since.

dasht 16y ago

Because a lot of web site design services sold to restaurants are sold by hucksters. p.s.: not all hucksters know that that's what they are. Heck, you or I might be one, without meaning to be so. Of course, plenty enough do mean to be so and do awright for themselves that way.

sudont 16y ago
Touché. Now, just to figure out how to sell our honest and genuine services to them. Cold calling? Anybody with similar experience? I’m genuinely interested.
- netcan 16y ago
  I think you underestimate the powers that have given rise to the current state of affairs. Ecosystems of sellers usually develop around the characteristics of buyers. Restauranteurs are (as a general rule) terrible buyers and terrible clients. You might look at a site and think "that'll take x hours to do," but you need to factor in the time that it takes to get the client there. In my experience, that's several times x. Just making the sale could be several times x. You need to realize you are starting from scratch and that from where you stand, it's hard to know where scratch is. You will need to convince them why flash is bad (even though everyone they ask thinks it looks great). This is just one example. They will not be able to evaluate the site from the perspective of the user, that kind of thinking takes practice. Then crisis strikes when your offer which includes some little mini-app to do that thing they want with the menus (already done) and a custom design (hired a mid range designer) costs more than the other offer which is largely auto-generated. The reasons are similar for large companies having bad software, they are bad buyers.
  - sudont 16y ago
    I see! This must stem from the culture of cheapness that surrounds a lot of restaurants; supposedly the industry is cut-throat. This just means that the problem needs to be attacked on a different front: marketing. Which is where the hucksters come in...
16y ago

sdizdar 16y ago

I spent some time doing customer development for my http://wall.si http://wall.si project, so I have some experience with this. The top four concerns for restaurants are: personnel, personnel, personnel, and personnel. Cool looking web site is really peripheral for many restaurants. Mobile support .. What?

dasil003 16y ago

One reason for menus in PDF is because the menus may change frequently, and a PDF is easy to create from their actual print menus. It doesn't seem like a big deal to update both an InDesign layout and a website, but if different people do those two things, then it's quite likely a mistake will be made, so it's smart just to use the already proofed version.

ronnier 16y ago
I also deal with this while keeping my resume updated and tweaked. I have an HTML, PDF, and MS Word format. I use a print CSS sytle sheet on my homepage (http://ronnie.me http://ronnie.me) so that I can print it to PDF for the PDF version and manually create the Word version. Very tedious.
- BrandonM 16y ago
  Ugh. Just learn LaTeX and write once.
  - cookiecaper 16y ago
    LaTeX isn't the only way you can "write once"; while there are LaTeX exporters for the formats mentioned, you can do the same with LibreOffice, which exports to Word, PDF, and HTML much easier than LaTeX docs do (LaTeX conversion usually requires three different tools, it's a simple Save As... or Export in LibreOffice).
    - wfarr 16y ago
      True, but LaTeX's output is worth the effort of input.
      - deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
      - cookiecaper 16y ago
        I've actually found LaTeX output more difficult to read; the margin is huge and the text is small. I'm just using the defaults from LyX, maybe they need tweaking to look good (though I thought the point of LaTeX was to avoid that necessity...), but in general the only thing I prefer is the typeface. The small size of the text and the wide margins that leave much of the paper blank do not appeal to me.

callmeed 16y ago

I'm working on something at the moment. Just hours + menu + some optional social integration. Based the research/feedback I've done, decision makers have near-zero time to learn or use a cms (hence why menus are always in PDF) and near-zero budget. So what I'm going for is a super-simple system much like about.me/flavors.me ... something around $5 to $9/month or possibly even free and use it as a gateway to other services (also working on a diy groupon clone and staff scheduler for restaurants).

lowglow 16y ago
Hey, I'm working on something like this too :)

davej 16y ago

I know first-hand what kind of budgets most small/medium-sized restaurants have for websites and online marketing. Its much better to put resources and money into a profile/photos/menu on a site like http://www.grabmytable.com/ http://www.grabmytable.com/ than doing a half-arsed 'proper' website.

patio11 16y ago

Restaurants aren't unique offenders. Most physically extant businesses which can't transact online suck. Try your dentist's.

dholowiski 16y ago
Try brewery/beer sites!
- te_chris 16y ago
  The irony about these (at least in NZ) is that they're normally some of the most expensive, flash-bound websites out there.
verisimilitude 16y ago
Oh my god, dentist's websites. I've one full year of dental school left, and as I'm looking around for a job, I sometimes wonder if I should just be a dental website designer instead of a dentist.
- SquidLord 16y ago
  So ... why NOT be a dentist website designer, at least part-time? You know the business needs, you know the lingo of both (you're here, anyway) ... It sounds like a job that fills a needed niche! Better sites == more hits due to easier searching; there's a business case. I say go for it.
  - Ogre 16y ago
    And while you're at, write some better X-ray and tooth-photo database UI for them. I cringe at the program my dentist plods through every time she takes pictures or X-rays of my teeth. Its been at the top of my list of software I have basically no interest in working on yet feel like I could do a hell of a lot better at anyway. Of course, I haven't researched what's out there, there may already be much better options available. Besides being ugly, my main beef is that I have watched her drag photos, one at a time, into their proper slots in my "file" from the incoming area, even though they were already clearly labelled as to what tooth they were pictures of. It's maddening. It's only a minute or two, and she doesn't take pictures every visit, but it's the kind of thing that just screams shoddy workmanship... and opportunity.

jasonlbaptiste 16y ago

I think there are a few things here that cause this: a) You're going against the worst kind of incumbent- the 15 year old nephew or kid next door. He's cheaper, good enough, and "trusted". He is competition that exists a million times over. b) Even if your system is better, they just can't be bothered to even get a good demo. You definitely need to build something so usable and good it's frightening, but good luck getting the full demo. c) The guys that do have the ability to get in with a demo (GoDaddy, yellow pages,etc.) have no clue how to sell something good. What they usually sell is usually crappy, so now you have a fearful restaurant owner. d) To crack this market it's a "heavy startup". It requires lots of capital, it requires sales, and it requires marketing. That's something guys like us don't like to often venture into. It's the same reason GroupOn requires lots of capital and other business like ReachLocal have feet on the street. e) Churn is miserable. If you're on a monthly fee or provide additional services, good luck keeping the customer. ReachLocal has something like 80% churn,not retention, fucking churn. Here's how I'd go about this for months 1-9. Crack the nut of an easy to use system (point b) and find distribution channels that already exist (point c) such as local newspapers, print shops, and others with a foot into the local market. You'd also need to have a system of people to crank out onboarding in a very cost efficient and systematic manner.

tucker1213 16y ago
So true. The restaurant market is a tough nut to crack but if you manage to do it you will be very glad you stuck it out. I only disagree with e. Our churn (tripleseat.com) is less then 1%. If you provide value and have a good relationship restaurant people are very loyal and will stick with you in good times and bad. If your churn is bad try annual pricing at a discount. Restaurateurs love to negotiate and annual pricing at a discount is a win/win
Volscio 16y ago
I wonder how well food truck businesses stack up in this category. I'd expect them to be more nimble, more accessible, with better web sites.
- smackfu 16y ago

T_S_ 16y ago

Most web sites are bad. That's why. Eventually things like Google Places, Yelp, etc. will handle 100% of their UX.

jarin 16y ago

Having worked with restaurants before (and having a dad who owns a restaurant), I have come to the conclusion that it's just because most restaurant owners a) just want something that works and is cheap, and b) do not fully understand how web design can help or hurt their businesses. Bad web designers tend to target restaurants (and medical practitioners) because they have a much easier time selling bad design to them.

lowglow 16y ago

http://www.onebigmenu.com http://www.onebigmenu.com I'm working on this site right now, and I understand your concerns because I feel them myself. I'm hoping I can bridge the gap between dining and diner. :) (Please excuse the design, since I'm the only developer :P)

lowglow 16y ago
One last thing, If any developers want to join forces, that would be cool too :)
- earino 16y ago
  This interests me. What's the plaform?
  - lowglow 16y ago
    Simple lamp stack using codeigniter. Nothing fancy. Runs on MediaTemple's VE Server.
    - jdavid 16y ago
      why didn't you choose kohana? http://kohanaframework.org/ http://kohanaframework.org/ it's based off of codeigniter, but it's fully OO. are you using some sort of ORM like active record? if you are, you should look at the tables and see how many joins the ORM layer is doing so you know how much work it's going to be to scale.
      - lowglow 16y ago
        Hey Justin, thanks for the tip. I'll check it out. I'm not using Active Record currently, but scaling up is something I worry about and just won't understand until I have the problem first hand. Maybe we can chat about this sometime.
- tk999 16y ago
  What is your email? I am interested.

blhack 16y ago

Huh. I just realized that I have a strange association between restaurants and their websites. My expectation of quality is inversely correlated to the quality of their website. When I see a restaurant website that is "good", it makes me thing "chain. corporate. bland. boring."

ronnier 16y ago
Am I the only person who doesn't mind chain and corporate eateries?
- mgkimsal 16y ago
  No you're not. I enjoy restaurants, regardless of whether they're chain or indie. If it's good it's good, if not, not. Bonus of chains is that if it's good one place, it's probably good in most places.
- blhack 16y ago
  No, and neither do I. One of my favorite chain places that I eat at all the time is Jimmy Johns. They have awesome sandwiches. I always joke with my friends that, if they like subway, they should definitely not go to JJ because they're never going to be able to eat it ever again. What I was getting at is that a crappy website can sometimes be a good indicator for places like the little deli that I go to sometimes, or my neighborhood bar. If the little deli (called cheese and stuff, for you Phoenicians: http://www.cheesenstuffdeli.com/ http://www.cheesenstuffdeli.com/) had a "good" website, it would seem out of character to me.

rwhitman 16y ago

Luddite client meets designer who has made their living wowing luddite clients with style over substance. Also note that movie websites have the same problem. For mostly the same reasons, though the organizations involved and cash transactions are much larger...

julian37 16y ago

Here be more lamenting over awful restaurant web sites: http://www.portlandfoodanddrink.com/2010/03/what-is-it-about-restaurant-websites/ http://www.portlandfoodanddrink.com/2010/03/what-is-it-about... http://www.badlanguage.net/why-are-restaurant-websites-so-awful http://www.badlanguage.net/why-are-restaurant-websites-so-aw... http://blogs.houstonpress.com/eating/2010/09/10_reasons_your_restaurant_web.php http://blogs.houstonpress.com/eating/2010/09/10_reasons_your...

known 16y ago

No need for sites. Use twitter.

angdis 16y ago
Indeed. I went to a fabulous tiny restaurant in philly recently. While chatting with owner, she mentioned that a reservation had just canceled and then proceeded to tweet that there was an open table. Within literally 2 minutes, she filled the reservation. Who says restaurant owners don't get computers! The saavy ones know their core competency and don't try to get fancy. The restaurant I mentioned has a super simple website done with inuit sitebuilder. It does the job, but with places like this the most important thing is what others say about the place and the clout the owner cultivates with their customers.

prawn 16y ago

Anyone tried offering a deal to a restaurant owner whereby you get a tab (e.g., shout friends a $500 dinner) to build a site and then a lunch/dinner per month in exchange for maintenance of menus, etc?

japherwocky 16y ago
I built/host a site for a local brewery, and I bill them $X/mo for hosting and small tweaks. We've definitely bartered some of those invoices away. :)
- prawn 16y ago
  I just wondered about sending a letter to a swag of restaurants offering it as a service. Say that the first 3-5 to respond can take up the offer but potentially take on more. Quick site build, get interns to do the maintenance, and then eat out at a different restaurant each night of the month. Hmmm.

dfhjtyjty 16y ago

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edanm 16y ago

Interestingly, here in Israel, there's a standard layout for restaurant websites that is almost always used, and it's pretty good. I'm not 100% clear on the history, but afaik, a website called Rest.co.il (a restaurant directory), offers restaurants a service for creating a website for them. I'm guessing that initially, most restaurants that didn't have a website just created one through Rest. Nowadays, 80% of restaurant websites I visit are Rest-operated sites, with a very decent standard layout, including quick-info for getting their number, quick info on average prices of meals, maps, and detailed menus. More and more restaurants are creating "unique" websites nowadays, but I think because the level was so high initially, they're doing a pretty good job of it. Pretty funny considering for other things in Israel, there is much less web-awareness than in the States. If you want examples (sorry, they're in Hebrew, but you can see they look the same). Bottom-left is the quick-info, including information on accessibility for people with disabilities, whether the food is Kosher, hours that they're open, etc.: http://www.rest.co.il/sites/Default.asp?txtRestID=1796 http://www.rest.co.il/sites/Default.asp?txtRestID=1796 http://www.rest.co.il/sites/Default.asp?txtRestID=7775 http://www.rest.co.il/sites/Default.asp?txtRestID=7775

Semiapies 16y ago
"sorry, they're in Hebrew" Eh, that's what Google Translate is for. That looks like a perfectly good standard template, both visually and in hitting the points of what customers want to know - menus (with prices!), hours, links to directions, some sense of what the place looks like, etc. "because the level was so high initially, they're doing a pretty good job of it" Very cool. There's something to be said for a genuinely good basic approach.

augustiner 16y ago

I once built an online dish ordering website with interface similar to digg and reddit. It showed dishes in your area sorted by the number of times they have been ordered online. I still host a short video demo of the site: http://video.eatlista.pl/ http://video.eatlista.pl/ (it's in Polish language, but still, could be inspiring for someone). Anyway I ditched the idea after talking to restaurant owners, they were mostly older people, having hard time grasping the concept of the site (and even the Internet itself) and I didn't enjoy the idea of educating them.

dfhjrtjty 16y ago

ianlotinsky 16y ago

SandwichBoard does restaurant web sites (http://www.sandwichboard.com/ http://www.sandwichboard.com/). We've found that the owners and managers who "don't get it" are the ones who think that the web site experience should be the same as the restaurant experience: background music, a menu that looks identical to the physical one, and a picture of every dish. The ones who do "get it" entrust their web site to designers and usability experts who make it their goal to turn web site visitors into patrons.

dedward 16y ago

Many - because they don't need a better online presence to get more business. Their tables are full - the only way to squeeze more profits is to charge more, possibly changing clientele, or act more efficiently, or both. A cool website for reservations/tables/photos etc COULD be part of a themed restaurant or restaurant chain to differentiate them in the market... but for the most part, the food speaks for itself.