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Yeah, setting up a website is a pain. But in reality there’s only a handful of things people care about for your restaurant: what, when, and where. Put up your

Yeah, setting up a website is a pain. But in reality there’s only a handful of things people care about for your restaurant: what, when, and where. Put up your menu, put up your hours, and put up your location. And a phone number.

miramba 7mo ago
Menus change ie seasonal, and there is a daily changing handwritten chalkboard: Make a photo, put it on IG. Hours change: This week only opened from 8 instead 7: Post it on IG. Who has the time to answer a phonecall? And who uses phone numbers these days anyway? Text me on whatsapp like everyone else does. Disclaimer: Don‘t use IG. But if I want to know if our favourite pizza place is open (cook travels to football games a lot), I ask my wife to check on Insta.
- LtWorf 7mo ago
  IG is only for the regular customers.
  - johannes1234321 7mo ago
    Not really. I don't have an IG account, but when picking a place ein an area I don't know, it is the place to get an impression of the place. The visual part tells a lot about the place, while many websites maybe got a photo from the outside, if at all.
    - kakacik 7mo ago
      Google maps works the same way, thats the default in most of the world. I don't even know anyone who has IG account, myself including. Everybody has google account, not that you need one to browse (more or less) categorized photos on maps.
    - carlosjobim 7mo ago
      How do you even know that a restaurant exists in an area you don't know? Not through Instagram, but through a web search or Google Maps. But you're right, having a ton of good images on your website is one of the most important things for restaurants and most other businesses. And most fail in this aspect.
- bandrami 7mo ago
  It's a trend in Sri Lanka for some reason to put your menu on Instagram... as a reel. Because you don't want your customers to have more than 15 seconds to view what you serve.
Gigachad 7mo ago
People put that stuff up on Google maps, Facebook, and Instagram now. I know it’s not popular with the crowd here, but those platforms are free, easy to use, and where the customers are. The mainstream options for a website like squarespace are absurdly expensive.
- xmprt 7mo ago
  Yes and no. I find the restaurant on Google maps but 9/10 times the menu is either outdated or not properly structured and having a link to the menu website is better. So Google maps is the top of the funnel but I still appreciate a website.
  - Apocryphon 7mo ago
    Really the previous comment should have mentioned Yelp, and perhaps Tripadvisor for non-American customers.
  - avhception 7mo ago
    For many local places here, the only way to get the menu online is if a customer posted a photo of the menu on Google maps or something. And 1/3 of the time, that photo is too blurry and off-angle and whatnot to even read properly.
    - Gigachad 7mo ago
      I can’t help but think what this means is just that the menu isn’t that’s important as a marketing tool. If having an up to date website and menu resulted in a noticeable boost in business, every restaurant would have it. Average person either finds the place through google maps or a TikTok video, checks a few photos of the food or venue, then goes. Doesn’t matter what the exact menu is because there are plenty of options and something will be appealing.
      - ruszki 7mo ago
        Or it’s good for customers and bad for restaurants. There are such things, and menu can be easily one. Especially tourist focused restaurants infested with such tactics, and you can avoid most of them just looking on their menu.
onion2k 7mo ago
But in reality there’s only a handful of things people care about for your restaurant: what, when, and where. Put up your menu, put up your hours, and put up your location. And a phone number. It's those things but more as questions than things they want to read. What people actually care about for a restaurant is: "Can you tell me if the food is good?" "Can you tell me are the staff great?" "Can you tell me what does it cost?" and "Can you tell me where it is?" to an extent, especially if it's not on a major route. People want answers that they can trust for those things. They want a trusted source to tell them the answers. You can't really get any of those things from a Google search or a website (ignoring reviews because they're gamed to hell now). The majority of a restaurant's customers come from word-of-mouth recommendations or reputation through curated services like critics and directories especially at the top end. A good website helps for people who are visiting the area, or for restaurants that are very new and whose owners don't have a great network (or who wrongly believe a website is key to getting business), but for most restaurants the only way to drive business is to build a loyal base of people who tell their friends and colleagues about it. If a restaurant is going to have a website at all it should be a great one, because bad websites shouldn't be a thing, but a restaurant could happily run for decades with just an Instagram page these days and it'd make no difference to their success.
- bandrami 7mo ago
  No really we want to know when it's open, what it serves, and how much it costs. The quality conversation is completely separate.
- throwaway27448 7mo ago
  > a restaurant could happily run for decades with just an Instagram page these days and it'd make no difference to their success. Well they still need a website with a menu and hours or I'm not going to be there. You can't view an instagram page without an account.
- deaux 7mo ago
  > "Can you tell me if the food is good?" > "Can you tell me are the staff great?" > "Can you tell me what does it cost?" > and "Can you tell me where it is?" to an extent, especially if it's not on a major route. A restaurant's Instagram page - which is what this post is about - does not answer these questions in any way better than a restaurant's website does.
bandrami 7mo ago
I directionally agree with this but, what do you do in three months when you change to the summer menu?
- janalsncm 7mo ago
  Take a picture of the menu, send through ChatGPT, read it over for mistakes, paste content into your website.
  - bandrami 7mo ago
    How do you "paste content into your website"? Did somebody build them a CMS?
    - xboxnolifes 7mo ago
      The same way they built the website the first time.
    - deleted 7mo ago
      [deleted]
slifin 7mo ago
Most people should put in a Google maps entry
- TurdF3rguson 7mo ago
  Your menu? Can't. Your open hours? They already know it.
  - komali2 7mo ago
    You can put your menu on Google maps, we did it for our restaurant. https://maps.app.goo.gl/YdbSHd7hewkXQeMz8 https://maps.app.goo.gl/YdbSHd7hewkXQeMz8 see "menu" tab To be fair the Google maps restaurant side of the operation is quite possibly the largest ratio I've ever seen between "amount of capital and engineering skill available" and "quality (lack thereof) of UX." You have to access your restaurant profile through the Google search portal. It's a nightmare.
    - TurdF3rguson 7mo ago
      That's one way to do it. The links are broken though.
      - cxr 7mo ago
        The words you're looking for are, "Oh! My mistake. Sorry." Or, "Thanks! I stand corrected."
    - KineticLensman 7mo ago
      I followed the links and got www.thejispot.com’s server IP address could not be found.
      - komali2 7mo ago
        Yes, we used to have a website: https://github.com/508-dev/thejispot https://github.com/508-dev/thejispot The restaurant is closed now, permanently. You can see we updated it fairly regularly https://github.com/508-dev/thejispot/commits/main/ https://github.com/508-dev/thejispot/commits/main/
baxtr 7mo ago
The issue is priorities. If you have long list of todos for a restaurant, why put building a website in the top 10?
lleu 7mo ago
I specifically tracked this problem and built https://lleu.site https://lleu.site to try and get businesses in my city off of social media. Built a menu editor. Has a built in blog and image galleries. Events calendar and event posts. Has a single page simple mode and multi page editor. Contact form with message intake and forwarding. Easy UI that I don’t change underfoot every quarter so its consistent. Works on mobile and low powered devices as well. Kept the monthly price low and I’ve done cold emails, mailers, newspaper ads, online ads. Still barely any takers. Probably a bit of a branding thing. Maybe its something else.
- shlip 7mo ago
  "lleu.site" might not be the clearest in regards to what the service offers. It reads too nerd. Something like "easyweb.site" or "yourown.site" might better describe it.
  - lleu 7mo ago
    Thanks. I am definitely injecting too much nerd. I just couldn't help myself. I do have alternate urls available but point taken. I should probably redo the branding.
- I-M-S 7mo ago
  IMO the four designs that I saw as examples are not attractive enough. Especially coming from the editor's builder, they should make a stronger showcase.
  - chihuahua 7mo ago
    The examples look fine to me. Potential customers want to see the menu (or product range or similar), location, a couple of pictures. It's supposed to give useful and necessary information. The intended purpose is: Before: your cafe does not have a website. After: your cafe has a simple website where people can see the menu, hours, and location. This tool accomplishes that, and looks fine. It's not supposed to give the viewer an aesthetic experience so novel and surprising, subverting the entire paradigm of cafe menus, to leave the viewer questioning reality and rethinking their entire approach to life.
1718627440 7mo ago
Yeah, you could even just serve a pdf at the root path, that wouldn't even require any HTML.

miramba 7mo ago

Menus change ie seasonal, and there is a daily changing handwritten chalkboard: Make a photo, put it on IG. Hours change: This week only opened from 8 instead 7: Post it on IG. Who has the time to answer a phonecall? And who uses phone numbers these days anyway? Text me on whatsapp like everyone else does. Disclaimer: Don‘t use IG. But if I want to know if our favourite pizza place is open (cook travels to football games a lot), I ask my wife to check on Insta.

LtWorf 7mo ago
IG is only for the regular customers.
- johannes1234321 7mo ago
  Not really. I don't have an IG account, but when picking a place ein an area I don't know, it is the place to get an impression of the place. The visual part tells a lot about the place, while many websites maybe got a photo from the outside, if at all.
  - kakacik 7mo ago
    Google maps works the same way, thats the default in most of the world. I don't even know anyone who has IG account, myself including. Everybody has google account, not that you need one to browse (more or less) categorized photos on maps.
  - carlosjobim 7mo ago
    How do you even know that a restaurant exists in an area you don't know? Not through Instagram, but through a web search or Google Maps. But you're right, having a ton of good images on your website is one of the most important things for restaurants and most other businesses. And most fail in this aspect.
bandrami 7mo ago
It's a trend in Sri Lanka for some reason to put your menu on Instagram... as a reel. Because you don't want your customers to have more than 15 seconds to view what you serve.

Gigachad 7mo ago

People put that stuff up on Google maps, Facebook, and Instagram now. I know it’s not popular with the crowd here, but those platforms are free, easy to use, and where the customers are. The mainstream options for a website like squarespace are absurdly expensive.

xmprt 7mo ago
Yes and no. I find the restaurant on Google maps but 9/10 times the menu is either outdated or not properly structured and having a link to the menu website is better. So Google maps is the top of the funnel but I still appreciate a website.
- Apocryphon 7mo ago
  Really the previous comment should have mentioned Yelp, and perhaps Tripadvisor for non-American customers.
- avhception 7mo ago
  For many local places here, the only way to get the menu online is if a customer posted a photo of the menu on Google maps or something. And 1/3 of the time, that photo is too blurry and off-angle and whatnot to even read properly.
  - Gigachad 7mo ago
    I can’t help but think what this means is just that the menu isn’t that’s important as a marketing tool. If having an up to date website and menu resulted in a noticeable boost in business, every restaurant would have it. Average person either finds the place through google maps or a TikTok video, checks a few photos of the food or venue, then goes. Doesn’t matter what the exact menu is because there are plenty of options and something will be appealing.
    - ruszki 7mo ago
      Or it’s good for customers and bad for restaurants. There are such things, and menu can be easily one. Especially tourist focused restaurants infested with such tactics, and you can avoid most of them just looking on their menu.

onion2k 7mo ago

But in reality there’s only a handful of things people care about for your restaurant: what, when, and where. Put up your menu, put up your hours, and put up your location. And a phone number. It's those things but more as questions than things they want to read. What people actually care about for a restaurant is: "Can you tell me if the food is good?" "Can you tell me are the staff great?" "Can you tell me what does it cost?" and "Can you tell me where it is?" to an extent, especially if it's not on a major route. People want answers that they can trust for those things. They want a trusted source to tell them the answers. You can't really get any of those things from a Google search or a website (ignoring reviews because they're gamed to hell now). The majority of a restaurant's customers come from word-of-mouth recommendations or reputation through curated services like critics and directories especially at the top end. A good website helps for people who are visiting the area, or for restaurants that are very new and whose owners don't have a great network (or who wrongly believe a website is key to getting business), but for most restaurants the only way to drive business is to build a loyal base of people who tell their friends and colleagues about it. If a restaurant is going to have a website at all it should be a great one, because bad websites shouldn't be a thing, but a restaurant could happily run for decades with just an Instagram page these days and it'd make no difference to their success.

bandrami 7mo ago
No really we want to know when it's open, what it serves, and how much it costs. The quality conversation is completely separate.
throwaway27448 7mo ago
> a restaurant could happily run for decades with just an Instagram page these days and it'd make no difference to their success. Well they still need a website with a menu and hours or I'm not going to be there. You can't view an instagram page without an account.
deaux 7mo ago
> "Can you tell me if the food is good?" > "Can you tell me are the staff great?" > "Can you tell me what does it cost?" > and "Can you tell me where it is?" to an extent, especially if it's not on a major route. A restaurant's Instagram page - which is what this post is about - does not answer these questions in any way better than a restaurant's website does.

bandrami 7mo ago

I directionally agree with this but, what do you do in three months when you change to the summer menu?

janalsncm 7mo ago
Take a picture of the menu, send through ChatGPT, read it over for mistakes, paste content into your website.
- bandrami 7mo ago
  How do you "paste content into your website"? Did somebody build them a CMS?
  - xboxnolifes 7mo ago
    The same way they built the website the first time.
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]

slifin 7mo ago

Most people should put in a Google maps entry

TurdF3rguson 7mo ago
Your menu? Can't. Your open hours? They already know it.
- komali2 7mo ago
  You can put your menu on Google maps, we did it for our restaurant. https://maps.app.goo.gl/YdbSHd7hewkXQeMz8 https://maps.app.goo.gl/YdbSHd7hewkXQeMz8 see "menu" tab To be fair the Google maps restaurant side of the operation is quite possibly the largest ratio I've ever seen between "amount of capital and engineering skill available" and "quality (lack thereof) of UX." You have to access your restaurant profile through the Google search portal. It's a nightmare.
  - TurdF3rguson 7mo ago
    That's one way to do it. The links are broken though.
    - cxr 7mo ago
      The words you're looking for are, "Oh! My mistake. Sorry." Or, "Thanks! I stand corrected."
  - KineticLensman 7mo ago
    I followed the links and got www.thejispot.com’s server IP address could not be found.
    - komali2 7mo ago
      Yes, we used to have a website: https://github.com/508-dev/thejispot https://github.com/508-dev/thejispot The restaurant is closed now, permanently. You can see we updated it fairly regularly https://github.com/508-dev/thejispot/commits/main/ https://github.com/508-dev/thejispot/commits/main/

baxtr 7mo ago

The issue is priorities. If you have long list of todos for a restaurant, why put building a website in the top 10?

lleu 7mo ago

I specifically tracked this problem and built https://lleu.site https://lleu.site to try and get businesses in my city off of social media. Built a menu editor. Has a built in blog and image galleries. Events calendar and event posts. Has a single page simple mode and multi page editor. Contact form with message intake and forwarding. Easy UI that I don’t change underfoot every quarter so its consistent. Works on mobile and low powered devices as well. Kept the monthly price low and I’ve done cold emails, mailers, newspaper ads, online ads. Still barely any takers. Probably a bit of a branding thing. Maybe its something else.

shlip 7mo ago
"lleu.site" might not be the clearest in regards to what the service offers. It reads too nerd. Something like "easyweb.site" or "yourown.site" might better describe it.
- lleu 7mo ago
  Thanks. I am definitely injecting too much nerd. I just couldn't help myself. I do have alternate urls available but point taken. I should probably redo the branding.
I-M-S 7mo ago
IMO the four designs that I saw as examples are not attractive enough. Especially coming from the editor's builder, they should make a stronger showcase.
- chihuahua 7mo ago
  The examples look fine to me. Potential customers want to see the menu (or product range or similar), location, a couple of pictures. It's supposed to give useful and necessary information. The intended purpose is: Before: your cafe does not have a website. After: your cafe has a simple website where people can see the menu, hours, and location. This tool accomplishes that, and looks fine. It's not supposed to give the viewer an aesthetic experience so novel and surprising, subverting the entire paradigm of cafe menus, to leave the viewer questioning reality and rethinking their entire approach to life.

1718627440 7mo ago

Yeah, you could even just serve a pdf at the root path, that wouldn't even require any HTML.