6 ms·

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 cheap

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
  Even there, it tends to just be a twitter feed.
Retric 16y ago
The other problem is going beyond, "hours of operation/location" + "menu" + "phone number" takes integration with on site software. So now your competing with all those Point Of Sale systems. IMO, there is a huge opportunity for a unified website + POS + Back end software company. But, to step beyond what's out there would take a huge investment.
- genieyclo 16y ago
  Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. I help run a family restaurant with tight margins to deal with. With really small capital to budget, my father and uncle decided a POS system was not worth the money and commissioned me to build a usable system since I was the "tech guy" of the family. I hacked something up using kiosk mode browser running off of locally-hosted PHP scripts saving to a MySQL database that backsup online nightly to Google Docs. It's an old computer and hacky system, but it works because of the ability to review data at night at home in the office via GDocs with pretty stats and keeps the family happy. I asked previously here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1431181 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1431181 on HN, but got no response. I'd devote more time to this and get a better MVP out the door except for extreme time commitments to said restaurant on the floor and in the back, and due to school commitments. Like Retric said, you could make a killing with a web presence+POS on the floor+cloud saving features if you built a startup that showed how you could save time and money for restaurants and make things easier, while not charging for an arm and a leg. The market is filled with Geocities-era looking sites from spammish vendors all with their unique-as-a-snowflake proprietary file and data formats.
  - thangalin 16y ago
    Thought about releasing it? I help run a local dance and have been looking for a simple, small POS setup to help tally people (students, adults, seniors, and association members) through the door. Right now we put tick marks in a log book. I was thinking about developing a jQuery / PHP / PostgreSQL system with nightly updates to Google Docs. Something that would run on a 5-year old laptop.
  - thinkcomp 16y ago
daveambrose 16y ago
From experience, this is a very high touch business with intense sales efforts to scale. One company that's in our backyard here in NYC has had success with a sales and channel model is SinglePlatform. They are a bit under the radar but are solving these problems in realtime within a huge market.

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
Even there, it tends to just be a twitter feed.

Retric 16y ago

The other problem is going beyond, "hours of operation/location" + "menu" + "phone number" takes integration with on site software. So now your competing with all those Point Of Sale systems. IMO, there is a huge opportunity for a unified website + POS + Back end software company. But, to step beyond what's out there would take a huge investment.

genieyclo 16y ago
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. I help run a family restaurant with tight margins to deal with. With really small capital to budget, my father and uncle decided a POS system was not worth the money and commissioned me to build a usable system since I was the "tech guy" of the family. I hacked something up using kiosk mode browser running off of locally-hosted PHP scripts saving to a MySQL database that backsup online nightly to Google Docs. It's an old computer and hacky system, but it works because of the ability to review data at night at home in the office via GDocs with pretty stats and keeps the family happy. I asked previously here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1431181 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1431181 on HN, but got no response. I'd devote more time to this and get a better MVP out the door except for extreme time commitments to said restaurant on the floor and in the back, and due to school commitments. Like Retric said, you could make a killing with a web presence+POS on the floor+cloud saving features if you built a startup that showed how you could save time and money for restaurants and make things easier, while not charging for an arm and a leg. The market is filled with Geocities-era looking sites from spammish vendors all with their unique-as-a-snowflake proprietary file and data formats.
- thangalin 16y ago
  Thought about releasing it? I help run a local dance and have been looking for a simple, small POS setup to help tally people (students, adults, seniors, and association members) through the door. Right now we put tick marks in a log book. I was thinking about developing a jQuery / PHP / PostgreSQL system with nightly updates to Google Docs. Something that would run on a 5-year old laptop.
- thinkcomp 16y ago

daveambrose 16y ago

From experience, this is a very high touch business with intense sales efforts to scale. One company that's in our backyard here in NYC has had success with a sales and channel model is SinglePlatform. They are a bit under the radar but are solving these problems in realtime within a huge market.