5 ms·

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 Googl

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.
- alanh 16y ago
  Totally. Earlier in my web development career I re-sold hosting to a friend who, as a waitress, did the website for the place she worked. It was pretty terrible, stale, hard to update, and had (I think) BMP format scanned menus. Eventually she was fired and I was dragged into a horrible mess over who actually owned the site, when my friend asked me to take it down (she was the only one I ever dealt with).
- bdclimber14 16y ago
  I agree, that's why it's Flash too. Beginning designers statistically think the flashier (no pun intended) the design, the better.
spitfire 16y ago
Someone needs to make tumblr for front page/business card websites.
- jordanlev 16y ago
  A few people have. This one looks particularly good: http://letseat.at http://letseat.at
- erreon 16y ago
  Something like about.me for businesses would be great. Maybe a second editable page with REALLY easy to lists. That way businesses can easily list services or menu items.
jarin 16y ago
Squarespace is a pretty good bet for a modestly computer literate restaurant owner.
trop 16y ago
> Because restaurant owners are barely figuring out what email is. That seems a bit condescending to restaurant owners? Rather, perhaps, they are so much in the real world, dealing with suppliers, cooks, kitchen equipment, waiters, decor, etc., that navigating the virtual (websites) is antithetical?
- japherwocky 16y ago
  My experience has been kind of like this. The owners are pretty smart people but don't have the time/energy to figure out website tech.
- bdclimber14 16y ago
  I don't think it's condescending, I think its accurate. I didn't say they are too dumb to figure it out... I just said they are barely figuring it out, probably because of all the things you listed.
  - trop 16y ago
    OK, point taken! I like what you say about an anti-CMS. I feel like the old Google Pages (and maybe new Google Sites?) were aimed this way, along with the what other posters mention (Let's Eat, Squarespace). The step of getting one's own domain name is a whole other thing, of course. But I do really love the idea that there's a dialectic between the virtual world of websites/internet and restaurant work -- which is so deeply grounded in the physical. And that there's some meaning here, that these things do not reconcile well, and the lameness of the web presence of restaurants is a living manifestation of this disjunction.

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.
alanh 16y ago
Totally. Earlier in my web development career I re-sold hosting to a friend who, as a waitress, did the website for the place she worked. It was pretty terrible, stale, hard to update, and had (I think) BMP format scanned menus. Eventually she was fired and I was dragged into a horrible mess over who actually owned the site, when my friend asked me to take it down (she was the only one I ever dealt with).
bdclimber14 16y ago
I agree, that's why it's Flash too. Beginning designers statistically think the flashier (no pun intended) the design, the better.

spitfire 16y ago

Someone needs to make tumblr for front page/business card websites.

jordanlev 16y ago
A few people have. This one looks particularly good: http://letseat.at http://letseat.at
erreon 16y ago
Something like about.me for businesses would be great. Maybe a second editable page with REALLY easy to lists. That way businesses can easily list services or menu items.

jarin 16y ago

Squarespace is a pretty good bet for a modestly computer literate restaurant owner.

trop 16y ago

> Because restaurant owners are barely figuring out what email is. That seems a bit condescending to restaurant owners? Rather, perhaps, they are so much in the real world, dealing with suppliers, cooks, kitchen equipment, waiters, decor, etc., that navigating the virtual (websites) is antithetical?

japherwocky 16y ago
My experience has been kind of like this. The owners are pretty smart people but don't have the time/energy to figure out website tech.
bdclimber14 16y ago
I don't think it's condescending, I think its accurate. I didn't say they are too dumb to figure it out... I just said they are barely figuring it out, probably because of all the things you listed.
- trop 16y ago
  OK, point taken! I like what you say about an anti-CMS. I feel like the old Google Pages (and maybe new Google Sites?) were aimed this way, along with the what other posters mention (Let's Eat, Squarespace). The step of getting one's own domain name is a whole other thing, of course. But I do really love the idea that there's a dialectic between the virtual world of websites/internet and restaurant work -- which is so deeply grounded in the physical. And that there's some meaning here, that these things do not reconcile well, and the lameness of the web presence of restaurants is a living manifestation of this disjunction.