5 ms·

Ask HN: Community restaurant menu generation idea

7 points by palidanx 13y ago

I am the founder of Menutail (http://www.menutail.com), and what the company offers is website hosting and nutrition analysis services. To help get sales, what I am doing is visiting the restaurants around me and pitching the use of our website hosting services because either a restaurant doesn't have a website or it isn't mobile compatible. Now every restaurant owner I've talked with agreed that they need to address the technology side of their business (the website), but have lacked the time to sit down and work on a new site because they are so busy running their day to day food operations. I'm trying to think out of the box to help these business owners be more receptive to our hosting service, and something I thought of is customers crowd sourcing the website generation. What could happen is any loyal customer could create the website for the owner, and then later on the owner could claim ownership of the site. An example of a client that is working on their site is: https://www.menutail.com/public/site/5 I know I'm rambling perhaps a little bit, but any thoughts on this from the community?

ecubed 13y ago
As someone who goes to restaurants somewhat often, I've never thought to myself that it would be a good idea to sit down and make a website for that restaurant for free. I don't think you're going to find many restaurant customers at all that would be willing to try that. One idea I had off the top of my head to try and make the service more appealing to restaurant owners would be to have the site generate both online and offline menus. Kind of like squarespace-for-menus, offer a wide variety of really nice templates for offline paper menus each restaurant can choose from and customize. Then when they update their menu on your website, it also automatically generates a new PDF they can print out or send to a printer without having to hire a designer/intern/nephew to make minute changes to the old menu files. I think this would be especially useful for restaurants when they do price changes on items. Could monetize the thing by dropshipping fancy printed menus to customers.
t0 13y ago
Why would an owner need to take "the time to sit down and work on a new site" if he's paying you to do it? I think that's your issue right there. Your software is designed to let owners create their own website. They don't want that. They don't have time for it. But they do have money. Crowdsourcing is one solution. But you need to work in compensation somehow. Maybe host a competition for anyone that frequents that restaurant to design the site then give a prize?
- palidanx 13y ago
  Well, in this case they are subscribing to our $10/month service where they would generate the site themselves. But to your point, even with that, they don't want to do it themselves with their time constrictions. Interesting idea on a competition on creating a site for a restaurant though...
skadamat 13y ago
It seems like originally you thought hosting was the problem but it's really the store manager's time & their lack of understanding of the apparent importance of having a website. Instead maybe you could automatically generate a website for them by combining data from Yelp, Locu, Yext, Twitter, or whatever other info you can get your hands on. Take the data and find / create a few generic themes that you can insert the data into. Then go to them & tell them you'll host it for $X a month. Maybe over time, you can add support for Yext / Yelp / Twitter / Yelp admin management from one centralized dashboard (given those services allow you to in their ToS / API rules). By grabbing the data and generating the websites, your chance of selling to them is much higher since they have something they can touch & interact with (not a hypothetical website they have to make themselves). In addition, over time you could build a nearly automated system which discovers restaurants on Yelp that don't have a website, build them one from the info / data available online, and contact / email them saying you can have it live in minutes + will charge $X a month to host it. 2 important things to keep in mind: 1. Restaurants and store owners are incredibly cheap. They're especially cheap since most restaurants have very low margins (1-8%). Many of them use the restaurant to support their family and pay expenses. The $40 a month you want to charge them seems high (from your current website). 2. Don't focus on menus, thats more v2 or v3 stuff. Also, Locu.com is the leader in both getting menu information for most restaurants as well as offering a centralized place for restaurant owners to update their menu. Best part is, even if store owners don't use Locu to manage / update their menu, Locu intelligently crawls restaurant websites to update menu listings automatically. It may be hard to compete with Locu at least initially. Instead maybe focusing on the facts that A. Many restaurants don't have websites but if for $10 a month you can make hefty profits (9 dollars of the 10 profit with enough automation) and B. Store owners apparently don't have enough time to manage their digital footprint / brand. Build super easy tools that let them do so with minimal time spent + also collect / publish data on the benefits of having a digital brand when you're talking to restaurant owners.
- palidanx 13y ago
  Thanks, those are great comments!

7 points by palidanx 13y ago

ecubed 13y ago

As someone who goes to restaurants somewhat often, I've never thought to myself that it would be a good idea to sit down and make a website for that restaurant for free. I don't think you're going to find many restaurant customers at all that would be willing to try that. One idea I had off the top of my head to try and make the service more appealing to restaurant owners would be to have the site generate both online and offline menus. Kind of like squarespace-for-menus, offer a wide variety of really nice templates for offline paper menus each restaurant can choose from and customize. Then when they update their menu on your website, it also automatically generates a new PDF they can print out or send to a printer without having to hire a designer/intern/nephew to make minute changes to the old menu files. I think this would be especially useful for restaurants when they do price changes on items. Could monetize the thing by dropshipping fancy printed menus to customers.

t0 13y ago

Why would an owner need to take "the time to sit down and work on a new site" if he's paying you to do it? I think that's your issue right there. Your software is designed to let owners create their own website. They don't want that. They don't have time for it. But they do have money. Crowdsourcing is one solution. But you need to work in compensation somehow. Maybe host a competition for anyone that frequents that restaurant to design the site then give a prize?

palidanx 13y ago
Well, in this case they are subscribing to our $10/month service where they would generate the site themselves. But to your point, even with that, they don't want to do it themselves with their time constrictions. Interesting idea on a competition on creating a site for a restaurant though...

skadamat 13y ago

It seems like originally you thought hosting was the problem but it's really the store manager's time & their lack of understanding of the apparent importance of having a website. Instead maybe you could automatically generate a website for them by combining data from Yelp, Locu, Yext, Twitter, or whatever other info you can get your hands on. Take the data and find / create a few generic themes that you can insert the data into. Then go to them & tell them you'll host it for $X a month. Maybe over time, you can add support for Yext / Yelp / Twitter / Yelp admin management from one centralized dashboard (given those services allow you to in their ToS / API rules). By grabbing the data and generating the websites, your chance of selling to them is much higher since they have something they can touch & interact with (not a hypothetical website they have to make themselves). In addition, over time you could build a nearly automated system which discovers restaurants on Yelp that don't have a website, build them one from the info / data available online, and contact / email them saying you can have it live in minutes + will charge $X a month to host it. 2 important things to keep in mind: 1. Restaurants and store owners are incredibly cheap. They're especially cheap since most restaurants have very low margins (1-8%). Many of them use the restaurant to support their family and pay expenses. The $40 a month you want to charge them seems high (from your current website). 2. Don't focus on menus, thats more v2 or v3 stuff. Also, Locu.com is the leader in both getting menu information for most restaurants as well as offering a centralized place for restaurant owners to update their menu. Best part is, even if store owners don't use Locu to manage / update their menu, Locu intelligently crawls restaurant websites to update menu listings automatically. It may be hard to compete with Locu at least initially. Instead maybe focusing on the facts that A. Many restaurants don't have websites but if for $10 a month you can make hefty profits (9 dollars of the 10 profit with enough automation) and B. Store owners apparently don't have enough time to manage their digital footprint / brand. Build super easy tools that let them do so with minimal time spent + also collect / publish data on the benefits of having a digital brand when you're talking to restaurant owners.

palidanx 13y ago
Thanks, those are great comments!