Why are restaurant websites so awful? Because of restaurant culture.

http://www.slate.com/id/2301228/

by jillsy • 15 years ago

297 128 15 years ago

ZoFreX9• 15 years ago

As someone who has built a fair few restaurant sites, there are lots of reasons.

If a web design agency builds a site that doesn't work on the iPhone or iPad, which are both now considered critical to restaurant marketing, they get to charge extra for creating an iOS specific version, or an app, or whatever. If you create one site that works great on everything, you make less money.

Restaurants are also sometimes run dreadfully. There's a particular type of chef that just cannot delegate, cannot let go of the details. Some of the biggest names are barely breaking even - in recent news the "best restaurant in the world" shut down, having never made a profit!

Then there's communication: People running restaurants are often all over the country, hard to get hold of, it's quite difficult to get decisions made.

On splash screens etc: If the client wants it, they want it. You can try to talk them out of it but at the end of the day if they insist, you gotta build it, and sometimes what they ask for just isn't easily possible without flash (sorry!)

It's a bit unfair to pick on restaurants, to be honest. Pick a random, non-chain business off your high street. How good is their website? How many of them use flash? A lot of low-end websites are still in that quagmire, but the meat of it is that you don't need to visit the website for most of these businesses but for restaurants the web has become critical, so you notice it more.

Lastly, to anyone out there that does make restaurant websites: Push back. Try to explain to your clients why it's not such a great idea to use flash, or intro screens. Try to explain the use-cases etc, and above all show them there is a very good business case for having a good website. My current employer actually specialises in restaurant websites and I'm really, genuinely proud of what we're doing - and our clients love it too. It takes effort and it's risky, but helping your client have the best website possible can pay off.

Edit: Between this article and the recent attack from Cracked, I'm feeling a little under siege, especially as both were fairly light on actual facts. An issue that came up in both:

> This is because restaurants often don't have tools to update the text on their sites—saving and replacing a PDF file of a menu is easier than messing with the code on the site

This is a horrible simplification. In many cases the PDF menu is produced by a design agency, which is certainly a lot more effort than updating text on a website. It's also not hard to code either a PDF uploader or a page text editor or both, but you'll find plenty pick the PDF uploader. If you spent that sort of money on a PDF, you'd want to upload it too! And of course the menus are often very designed and they want that control (which the article does cover on other points)

My question on this issue is: Is a PDF download really so bad? It's not something I personally find particularly intrusive and for a restaurant menu it seems suitable enough.

encoderer2• 15 years ago

Another reason certainly is a lack of resources (cash) to commit to the project.

Sure, an established, profitable restaurant should have no trouble funding a modest, tidy, professionally built site. But the truth is, most restaurants youre visiting aren't "established" and "profitable."

ZoFreX9• 15 years ago

This is absolutely true and in the current climate not many small businesses (which is really what restaurants fall under, whether they are a tiny mom & pop or internationally renowned they are not typically very large organisations) can spare the cash to make a truly awesome website.

romansanchez2• 15 years ago

Wouldn't you agree that building a Flash site is harder, more expensive than a simple HTML/CSS site?

jdminhbg• 15 years ago

The restaurant website topic comes up frequently, and this is a frequent response. But there are two reasons it's clearly wrong:

1) Restaurants could jam their hours and menu onto a free theme for much less money than they spend getting a bespoke Flash monstrosity and be vastly more usable, yet do the latter anyway. 2) There are lots of cash-strapped small businesses around that don't have as uniformly unusable websites as restaurants.

The issue is not money.

carols10cents• 15 years ago

Yes, PDF download is that bad, especially on mobile. It will likely be larger and thus take longer than html, and in many cases requires opening a different app.

romansanchez2• 15 years ago

It certainly is.For example, opening a PDF on the Firefox browser(Android) automatically prompts a download of the pdf.

jsavimbi• 15 years ago

> This is because restaurants often don't have tools to update the text on their sites

That part struck me as well, because it's complete and utter bullshit. The tools exist, they've been implemented for years across a variety of industries and they come in all flavors. There should be no need for a restaurant operator to ever have to get on the phone with their technologist, and I use that term loosely, and request an item change and any developer with a couple of years experience should know that.

The reason they're so shitty, imo, is that restauranteurs are ocd-minded workaholics who spend most of their time focusing on their own operation and very little time researching the technology aspects of their industry or comparing themselves outside of their business column. Just pick up any of their trade publications. They simply don't have the time or the inclination and more often than not the money to go out and hire a bonafide design or technology firm to implement a solution for them. They see what other restaurants are doing, calculate the costs of copying them and call it a day. As long as nobody else is innovating, why should they?

Another aspect of the business that leads to poor internet marketing is the people that they have filling those positions. I'm willing to bet that upwards of 90% of the people who make the decisions on the restaurant's website have a) no business experience, b) no technology experience, c) no desire to be anything than someone who works at a restaurant, as long as they don't have to serve food or pour drinks. They are, and having worked in the industry for many years, mostly an underachieving lot who are most happy sucking down a cold beer that a friendly bartender comped them. Seriously, I build web-based, cross-platform financial applications and my restaurant friends still ask me to help them with the Yelp. They have absolute no clue what the internet has become in the past ten or twelve years. And if they can get their favorite cocktail waitress' friend to put together some crap website, then they're just as happy. More often than not, you'll have to print the pages out and send the paper site along with the invoice so they can look it over.

Goladus• 15 years ago

> My question on this issue is: Is a PDF download really so bad?

It's getting better, but it's still a hassle to download and open a pdf. Well-designed html is much preferred for me. That said, a well-designed PDF that downloads quickly is better than a poorly-designed menu section that loads slowly or worse, is inaccurate.

tomkarlo5• 15 years ago

Yes, it's really bad, because it's generally totally unnecessary. Menus are generally almost entirely text (unless you're at McDonald's or the Chinese take-out), so there's essentially zero gain from making them a PDF. Meanwhile, they're slower to load and if you're on a device that doesn't support PDF, you're just SOL.

radishroar• 15 years ago

Yes PDF menus are terrible, especially if you are making a decision on a mobile device.

smiler• 15 years ago

What was 'the best restaurant in the world' that closed down?

simonsarris• 15 years ago

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14352973

mwexler• 15 years ago

>A lot of low-end websites are still in that quagmire, but the meat of it is that you don't need to visit the website for most of these businesses but for restaurants the web has become critical, so you notice it more.

Ummm... isn't that all the more reason to make sure it's accessible on a mobile, is enticing to the user with relevant content, and assists them in making a sale (reservation) with ease?

ZoFreX9• 15 years ago

Yes, but a business barely ticking over can't afford to drop 10k on a website to draw in what, 10% more people? How long will that take to break-even? (And of course if you're running at a loss instead of a profit, the answer is never)

prawn• 15 years ago

(Web designer here, but also someone who eats out a lot and looks at a fair few restaurant sites - including via iPad when on holiday.)

When I click a dinner menu link and it opens as HTML and not as a PDF document, I get a quick sense of relief and greatly appreciate it. Can't stand PDF menus, sorry.

elithrar• 15 years ago

> Is a PDF download really so bad?

I think a key attraction to the PDF menu download is that it allows them replicate their menu layout and style on their website. A menu change or update would require a website update otherwise (i.e. if the design changes) and that's real dollars.

Bockit2• 15 years ago

Regarding the PDF menu question I recently took on a client, a cafe, who was asking for a drupal-backed website. For menus I laid out the options of having it backed by the CMS, or PDF downloads. I explained the benefit of having the menu be HTML vs PDF and ran through the workflows of updating it via cms vs uploading new pdfs.

The response was overwhelmingly PDF menus, only for the simplicity of the workflow. Despite a demonstration of how easy it was to use the CMS to update the menu they really just didn't want to spend the time doing that.

nfriedly• 15 years ago

Mind if I ask what company you work for?

ZoFreX9• 15 years ago

I don't really want to pimp it out because that's not why I'm on HN, but if you want to talk in more depth my email address is on my profile :)

jcnnghm3• 15 years ago

I have about 120 paying restaurant customers, and I couldn't agree more about the PDF menu. You could give them the slickest, easiest interface in the world, and they'll never use it. They don't have time. The PDF menu already looks good, they already put a ton of time into it to get it exactly right, and they don't want to duplicate that effort. Restaurant menus are meticulously laid out and a lot of effort is put into their creation. It would take a lot more time, and a whole lot more money than 95% of restauranteurs would be willing to put into it to create HTML menus. It would be very difficult to generate a menu creation tool that would please even a small percentage of restaurant owners, since they all want wildly different things, and are almost universally very picky about their menu.

There is exactly one reason why most restaurants have bad websites, and that is money. The average price they're willing to pay for a website is $500-1800. It's rare to hear of one paying over $2,500. It's not necessarily that they're cheap, it's that they have no money, or think they don't need it at all, so only want the bare minimum. The good restaurants don't need a website, they have a two hour wait every time it isn't raining, and the restaurants that do need a good website have no money.

Most people grossly overestimate the profitability and ease of running a restaurant. I estimate that as many as 40% of restaurants are run unprofitably in perpetuity because the economics of the location are impossible. The owner purchases the restaurant, runs it for two or three years, runs out of money, sells it to the new owner who runs it unprofitably for two or three years, runs out of money, and the cycle repeats. You probably sit in restaurants like this regularly and think, "This place must be a goldmine, it's always packed." It isn't, it's a money pit and the next guy that buys it is going to discover that as well. If you are thinking of starting a restaurant to make money, I suggest you purchase the land and build a building that can house a restaurant, then lease the space to someone else, it's the only reliable way.

Running a restaurant is also a lot more difficult than most people think, and many owners amplify the difficulty by having little or no business management experience or training. They got into it thinking it would be easy, and thought they could handle it because they've been eating in restaurants forever. Take order, cook food, serve food, simple stuff, right? Restaurant employees are always stealing from the restaurant, especially the bartenders. Customers can be very, very difficult. The staff will be flaky. There will be problems, constantly and forever. It's not easy.

jodrellblank• 15 years ago

The good restaurants don't need a website, they have a two hour wait every time it isn't raining, and the restaurants that do need a good website have no money.

If a website was essential, it would be worth borrowing to get one made.

Is it not, or are they unable?

mgkimsal6• 15 years ago

The PDF menu already looks good, they already put a ton of time into it to get it exactly right, and they don't want to duplicate that effort.

Well... why bother cleaning the outside of your restaurant - washing the windows, trimming the landscaping, cleaning around the dumpster, etc? They've already put so much effort in to making the inside of the restaurant look perfect, why duplicate that effort?

A good website - fast loading, clean info, nice pics, optimized for the web - gets people to decide to spend money with you by coming in. A nice custom menu gets people to decide how they'll spend money with you (and how much).

This shouldn't be an either/or decision, but it appears the majority of owners don't think this far ahead. Given the little I've known about restaurant owners (worked in a few restaurants growing up), this is not at all surprising.

bosie• 15 years ago

If you don't mind me asking, are you running those 120 paying restaurant customers as a SAAS type of deal or is each an independent individual?

phishphood• 15 years ago

as someone who ran a restaurant a night club -- everything above is correct.

dagw• 15 years ago

in recent news the "best restaurant in the world" shut down, having never made a profit!

I think you're seriously mis-representing that story. First of all the restaurant didn't shut down because it wasn't making money, but because Ferran (the head chef/owner) simply wanted to do something else. Secondly Ferran has stated several times that running the restaurant at a loss is a conscious decision. He could easily turn a profit, but that would mean being open all year (the restaurant was only open 6 month of the year), charging higher prices, and compromising on the food, non of which he had any interest in doing. He sees owning the "best restaurant in the world" as a marketing tool, and a place to park his R&D expenditure for his other food ventures, and more than makes up for those losses with his other food businesses.

user242• 15 years ago

> Is a PDF download really so bad?

I much prefer a PDF menu. In fact I actively look for a menu download link when I eat out, which is often. It reassures me that I'm seeing exactly the same menu that I'll see when I sit down at the table. Too often the website has a little bit of html showing a 'typical menu', and I'm left simply not knowing if the food on the site is the food you're offering tonight.

But when I see a PDF that's clearly exactly what was sent to the menu printing company, that's perfect. Too often I've sat down in a restaurant, looked over the menu and thought "actually, there's nothing here I really fancy".

mgkimsal6• 15 years ago

It'd be nice to have both, but the PDF is often too small to read on most screens, requires a lot of scrolling, etc.

Similarly, just because you have a PDF menu doesn't mean they have the food on the menu.

PDF menus that simply say "daily soup" or "ask for our specials" are pretty much designed for in-store use only, and basically useless on the web for decision making. When you're in a restaurant already seated, you can deal with uncertainty by ordering something different. When you're on the web, you deal with uncertainty by going someplace else altogether.

Egregore• 15 years ago

>Is a PDF download really so bad? It's horrible, it slows the browsing, on most mobile devices it doesn't work properly and sometimes it crashes them. Actually the best solution would be to have one place to fill the menu and it will generate both pdf for printed menu and web page from that data.

pbreit• 15 years ago

While I agree that restaurant sites in particular are quite lousy, Fleur de Lys did not strike me as a good example. Hubert Keller is a genuine personality and aspiring DJ. The restaurant is small, has no trouble staying full, the menu changes frequently and wants to surprise diners anyway.

But I'll reiterate, even thought the point has already been made a million times: not providing a web site that can be viewed on an iOS device is criminally insane, particularly for restaurants which frequently would be accessed by mobile devices.

telemachos• 15 years ago

> While I agree that restaurant sites in particular are quite lousy, Fleur de Lys did not strike me as a good example. Hubert Keller is a genuine personality and aspiring DJ. The restaurant is small, has no trouble staying full, the menu changes frequently and wants to surprise diners anyway.

I think Hubert Keller is a genius as a chef, but I have no idea what the connection is between the last two sentences and the first two. He's cool; the restaurant is successful and good. What does that have to do with the website, which is truly god-awful.

Here's what I see when I open it in Safari on OSX Lion (stock - Flash is not installed): http://cl.ly/9AsG.

If anything, an interesting chef at a good restaurant - with a website this awful is the best example. It shows that even (otherwise) smart people and successful restaurants fall into this trap.

While I'm here, a favorite post on this theme: http://venomousporridge.com/post/389785000/a-conversation-i-...

[1] HN discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1130419

jrockway2• 15 years ago

Restaurants have websites? I just use Google Places or Yelp. Not only do I get the hours of operation, a rough idea of the price, and a phone number without even clicking, I also get reviews.

Who would even think to look for a restaurant's own page?

kalid• 15 years ago

Restaurant websites often have menus and photos (of course, sometimes impossible to get to when using your phone).

tibbon3• 15 years ago

One problem here is that these things often change and no one on Yelp will notice in a smaller community. Maybe they aren't open Monday anymore. Maybe they moved.

jrockway2• 15 years ago

That's what the phone number is for. Nobody remembers to update their own websites either.

ZoFreX9• 15 years ago

Please bear in mind that places is pretty easy to stand out on, currently. The restaurants you are seeing are the ones that have hired (good) SEO people. A little bit of effort currently goes a LONG way on places (in the UK at least), so by looking for restaurants this way you'll still only be seeing a subset of them.

commenter• 15 years ago

what about this one? www.parlapizza.com.br

6ren• 15 years ago

Counterpoint: do restaurant customers (i.e. ordinary people) also think these websites are awful? When I see a website like that, I just think "it's not targeting me".

Also, I've actually given up on all websites of non-internet companies, including big retailers. It's just too tedious to find information, too slow loading. Their mobile sites often load quicker. but have even less info. You're better off ringing them.

(BTW: the kind of info I'm talking about is like opening hours - and often when they do post that info... it's wrong Yes. It is actually worse than useless).

tomkarlo5• 15 years ago

"Counterpoint: do restaurant customers (i.e. ordinary people) also think these websites are awful?"

I notice that regular customers mostly use Yelp, OpenTable or just plain Google to look up a restaurant's phone number or location. That suggests to me that they've learned that going to the actual web site is usually a bad bet.

brudgers• 15 years ago

I think restaurant customers find restaurant websites, largely irrelevant.

Who the hell picks a restaurant by conducting a websearch to compare features as if entrees were laptops? I'm sure someone does, but most people pick a restaurant because they have been there and know what they are in for, or because someone they know has been there and recommended it.

corin_2• 15 years ago

Actually I know quite a few people who do that, myself included. Sure, past experience and advice from friends plays a big part, but even then I'll google for the menu in advance, pretty much just to get a feel for the place.

Also, if you or anyone you know is the slightest bit fussy when it comes to food, it's worth knowing in advance. For example I love pretentious restaurants where what the food looks like on the plate is important. My dad, on the other hand, doesn't - he wants basic food that tastes good, and plenty of it (admitedly I enjoy that too..), not original creations in small portions. He wants chips, not dauphinoise potatoes.

My sister on the other hand doesn't care about the type of cooking, but is very fussy on what she wants to eat in a restaurant. There are literally a few dishes she wants to eat, most of which are likely to be found in grill restaurants, pub restaurants, etc. So, whenever I'm eating with either of them, it's good to be able to look up the type of food available.

edit: Oh, and another case - when you need a restaurant and neither you nor people you know have any experience to base your choice on. What harm is there in taking a look at menus and trying to guess which you will like more. Maybe you'll still pick a bad one, but at least you tried not to.

justincormack• 15 years ago

I dont think they find them most of the time. The flash sites have such bad SEO that normally I find a review or comparison site first.

mashmac23• 15 years ago

Another example not in the article: http://thecheesecakefactory.com

ericras• 15 years ago

I'm shocked by this one. I used to try to make sites like this - websites that mimic real-life interaction a la Microsoft Bob - around 10 years ago.

Although it's an instance of dated web concepts AND it features the dreaded 10 second Flash load wait time, it is an impressive achievement. If only in a "Winchester House" kind of way.

bryne• 15 years ago

Holy crap, The Cheesecake Factory's website is a 1996-era graphic adventure game!

onewland• 15 years ago

It kind of highlights the inefficiency of the site, but it has a resource-ful URL structure:

http://www.thecheesecakefactory.com/menu/Side+Dishes/fresh_b...

wallflower2• 15 years ago

Shake Shack (http://shakeshack.com on mobile device or http://shakeshack.com/mobile/) is an example of a beautifully designed, minimal, useful mobile web site.

Mobile websites are more than putting a mobile template on. Contrast Shake Shack with Walmart's http://walmart.com (on a mobile device)

> However, the design firm pitches to the owner, not to the customers. And thus the website is designed to please them, rather than actually being useful for potential customers.

> Is OpenTable too big to fail (e.g. restaurants will continue to pay them annual maintenance because it is a legacy system)?

Yes and no. Once a restaurant has committed to a particular POS, it is very, very, very hard to get them away from it.

First, it cost them -- at a safe ballpark estimate -- $10,000 to install it in the first place, so they're going to milk it for as long as they can before paying for anything else, even if it costs them more money that way in the long run.

Second, change is really scary for these folks, because if they're trying a new POS, and it crashes on its first evening, they're going to have a lot of pissed off customers and that translates directly to empty seats. It doesn't help that every single system that they've tried -- or that their buddies in the industry have tried -- have been buggy, problematic, and prone to crankiness. It doesn't matter if you know that you're selling the best system in the world at the cheapest price; the owners are still going to be really gun-shy about converting.

For a credible, sexy Open Table competitor: check out http://averoinc.com

Note: Some comments taken out of context from the threads linked below. I linked to these threads because they contain some good previous discussions about the restaurant industry and their systems. OpenTable is a reservation system (as refulgentis has pointed out).

These comments taken out of context from previous related discussions on News.YC:

"The hell that is a restaurant website"

http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=1130419

"Is OpenTable worth it?"

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1904689

"Why are restaurant websites so bad?"

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2044259

refulgentis• 15 years ago

As a restaurant point of sale developer myself (Ambur, an iOS app), one thing: OpenTable isn't a POS, it's a reservation system. I didn't see the conflation between sites and POS systems in the article, but I see it throughout your comment.

Everything else rings true. We have to invest a lot of time into each prospect because they're used to buggy systems that have feature overload and as a result are hard to use and impossible to setup. We're selling at a ridiculously low price ($999 for unlimited device licensing as a single site), and we're doing well, but the time investment into each prospect is very high.

mgkimsal6• 15 years ago

My limited understanding is that some (many, now?) POS systems integrate with reservation systems, but only one at a time, meaning if it's tied with opentable, it's not able to accept reservations from any other service.

It's been over a year since I was looking at POS systems, but that's what I remembered (might be bad memory tho!)

aw3c2• 15 years ago

> Shake Shack (http://shakeshack.com on mobile device or http://shakeshack.com/mobile/) is an example of a beautifully designed, minimal, useful mobile web site.

To enjoy the full website you need Flash 9 or greater. Please visit this website using a web browser with Flash 9 or greater installed. DOWNLOAD IT HERE.

no comment

...

The mobile site is kinda cute but a mess in terms of usability:

On http://shakeshack.com/mobile/menu/ links are not marked.

On http://shakeshack.com/mobile/locations/ everything looks like a link.

On eg http://shakeshack.com/mobile/menu/citifield.php the categories are not divided well, it is not clear where the category "text icons" belong to.

http://shakeshack.com/mobile/shackfans/ is serving huge (multiple hundreds of kilobytes) photos.

I would not call that a good example. The idea and structure is good(!) but execution is not so great.

wallflower2• 15 years ago

I was commenting on ShakeShack's mobile website being nice from the perspective of a consumer, not from the technological implementation (I do not have experience coding in that domain). Do you have an example of a well designed mobile web site that implements best practices? I can only think of Basecamp's mobile project management site.

starwed• 15 years ago

>The rest of the Web long ago did away with auto-playing music, Flash buttons and menus, and elaborate intro pages, but restaurant sites seem stuck in 1999.

I noticed medium sized bands tended to have the same godawful outdated website style, especially European metal bands. No idea if it is still like that -- I just started avoiding any such "official" pages.

lytfyre• 15 years ago

professional (especially wedding) photographers are also common culprits.

MaxGabriel• 15 years ago

Yes there seem to be fields where this problem is just rampant. Liquor websites are the worst of any I've seen (milagro, 1800, avion, grey goose, appleton, smirnoff, etc). Some are pretty good: Bacardi offers an HTML version, St. Germain is largely non-flash, Jose Cuervo (while really slow for whatever the reason) is non-flash.

With liquor I always thought that it was that 1) some brands have trouble differentiating themselves 2) the desire to create a 'culture' around their beverage--and that seems to fit the OP's description of the restaurant industry

jamesteow3• 15 years ago

Some professional photographers say they use Flash because they want to protect their images from being stolen... despite the fact that you can screencap them?

kirillzubovsky• 15 years ago

It's kind of true. I tried selling software to restaurants (http://Tablely.com) with some friends, and another Seattle company (http://OrderSm.com) is still trying, but working with the owners is terrible. They are too busy dealing with their day-to-day crap and technology is really not on their mind. It's sad, but it's true.

clistctrl• 15 years ago

The music on this pubs site convinced me to go. http://www.thirstyscholarpub.com/home.htm

callmeed2• 15 years ago

My next startup is targeting this problem. I'm pitching it as "About.me for restaurants" ... a single-page, instant setup site that has location/hours/menu/contact info.

I'm planning on posting it to HN for review in a few days.

If anyone wants a peak now, drop me an email.

thesethings• 15 years ago

This sounds like such a great idea. I travel in two circles that would love to check this out. Please do post it.

kenjackson• 15 years ago

Don't pitch it as "about.me for restaurants". I had no idea what about.me is and I'm in the startup community, read HN, TechCrunch, etc... The people you're selling to will have no idea what you're talking about.

What about "Facebook for restaurants"?

jamesteow3• 15 years ago

"Facebook for restaurants" is like another social network.

I know what about.me is, and if he pitched it to me, I would think, "a one page website for restaurants."

callmeed2• 15 years ago

I only use that analogy for startup folks and investors. Facebook definitely doesn't fit.

And, for the record, Tech Crunch has mentioned about.me tons of times: http://techcrunch.com/search/about.me

fourspace• 15 years ago

Looking forward to it. Interested to see how you solve the problem of menu editing.

chunkyslink2• 15 years ago

You might want to look at http://www.pocketdiner.co.uk to help you with the mobile version.

rokhayakebe• 15 years ago

You should push this one out as quickly as possible. Superb idea.

kitcar• 15 years ago

Sounds like MenuPalace.com's first business, although they never really cared about design/style

jordanlev3• 15 years ago

Sounds like this: http://www.letseat.at/ (not that it should dissuade you from doing it yourself)

krogsgard• 15 years ago

For restaurants that want more than a one page site, some customization opportunity, easy to generate html menus, etc. a new company called Theme Force is offering a hosted service that uses WordPress as a backend. I've done a demo of it and written about the company, and it's a solid solution: http://theme-force.com

The about.me style sounds like a good idea as well, for those that want a super low budget, no frills site. But a menu would be nice, even on something like that.

nowarninglabel• 15 years ago

While I agree with some of the analysis, I'm not sure I can agree with all of it without some perspective from the customers. The author makes it quite obvious they would not pay for a $72 or $400 meal. However, what do the people who would pay those prices think of the site? Perhaps, they don't want to be reminded of the price on the website, but rather of the good experience.

mikebracco• 15 years ago

I live and work in Santa Monica and two horrific ones are Santa Monica food staples:

Bay Cities: http://www.baycitiesitaliandeli.com/ Swingers: http://www.swingersdiner.com/

minikomi• 15 years ago

Recently recommended cargo collective to a friend who just opened a restaurant... He still insisted on using images in place of text in some cases, but I think it turned out pretty good and its easy for him to update http://higetaka.jp

tomkarlo5• 15 years ago

Fashion web sites, including the sites for the large brands, are just as bad as restaurant web sites. Which is even more embarrassing for an industry that's so inherently visual. Even fairly successful fashion labels will have terrible, flash-based sites with autoplay music and (often) out-of-date content, because it's too expensive or too much trouble to update the site (which probably was built lacking any kind of real back-end CMS.)

jamesteow3• 15 years ago

Actually, they are making changes. createthe has been transforming some high end brands towards HTML5.

Thing about fashion is that it's more about brand than usability. They get a lot of their sales from their boutiques, net-a-porter, or other 3rd parties.

tomkarlo5• 15 years ago

I wasn't thinking of the large multinational brands so much as the smaller labels that are more similar to the food trade.

artursapek2• 15 years ago

Facebook or Google should think about a specialized type of "page" for restaurants that's easy to use and plugs in to everything that's good about the web.

chunkyslink2• 15 years ago

>> Over the last few weeks I've spent countless hours, now lost forever, plumbing the depths of restaurant Web hell

I'm sorry but the author of this article has obviously missed the following sites built by the UK based company Engage Interactive. These guys have nailed the UK market and make awesome restaurant websites for some of the biggest chains / names.

www.strada.co.uk

www.bellaitalia.co.uk

www.caferouge.co.uk

www.giraffe.net

They feature exactly what you want, and they do it well. All of these sites make you want to eat in the Restuarants.

They also do www.pocketdiner.co.uk which redirects mobile traffic to a mobile version of the sites.

The culture at these restaurants is nothing like what is being described in the article. So all together I'm not sure where the author is coming from.

ZoFreX9• 15 years ago

Pocket Diner is the wrong way, IMO, to go about things. It's not really that hard to make a single site that works well on all devices, this is exactly what I meant by spinning more money out of clients by selling them different versions for mobile.

mannepanne• 15 years ago

Thanks for noticing! My name is Magnus Hultberg, I work at Livebookings and collaborate with Engage around reservation services and Pocket Diner.

The sites you list above are in my opinion really great examples of what restaurant websites could and should be. There are also other agencies in the UK delivering really well such as Ignite Hospitality and Evolving.

InclinedPlane3• 15 years ago

The problem is that restaurant websites aren't seen as revenue makers, so they are merely vanity products and thus dominated by the whims of the restaurant owner, who (at the present time) likely has very little familiarity with web technologies, let alone web design.

When websites become more appreciated as a source of revenue then they will be taken seriously enough to actually improve. The big problem today is that whereas it's easy to show someone a competing restaurant and see how popular it is, it's a lot more difficult to see the effectiveness of other restaurants' websites since all of that data is more or less invisible to anyone but the owner.

mashmac23• 15 years ago

So, the question is, how do we show the restaurant owners that having a better website will increase their revenue?

irrumator• 15 years ago

Why are you so sure it will? Can you give me use cases or examples where a restaurant owner stands to make money from his site anywhere other than booking reservations possibly?

InclinedPlane3• 15 years ago

Metrics and feedback. Here's a simple idea: create a separate google voice number for the business and put that on the website, then forward it to the existing biz line. That way you can track which business comes from the web site. Similarly, try implementing web-only specials and promotions (even if only superficially different) so you can track the effectiveness of the web site.

Bockit2• 15 years ago

I'm currently building a website for a cafe who roast their own beans etc. They sell alongside their in-premises coffee bags of the ground beans made to customer specifications. The next stage of development will be adding a store for people to order these (and other) products online.

I wonder if similar opportunities exist in the restaurant space.

latch• 15 years ago

In hong kong, openrice.com is a huge website for restaurants...and it's a disaster...so much opportunity for someone to clean their clock.

tibbon3• 15 years ago

I was talking to a local business owner who runs a new Takoyaki place in town. I mentioned he didn't have a website. We had a good conversation about it, and he was hoping to get one up but wasn't quite sure what he needed. He's a young guy a pretty savvy overall, having acquired around 4,000 Likes on Facebook and frequently updating it.

I told him (and he seemed to agree) that he needed a simple website that was the following

- No Flash, just HTML5/CSS.

- No music/sound at all

- No long story about the owner, style, etc. If I'm here, I'm likely already sold, just let me know how to get there. At most, a short line on what Takoyaki is, since many Americans in Ohio are unfamiliar with it.

- One page only (SEO people will cringe, but its better than Flash likely and easier to maintain.

- Basic information given upfront: Name, address, Google Maps widget, phone number, hours and their standard menu which consists of 5 items. Mention to check Facebook/Twitter for specials (thinking of maintainability). Making sure none of the items are done as photos, which is a favorite of auto repair and sales places for unknown reasons.

- Very basic colors and formatting. Ugly? Yes. But if I'm on my iPhone and looking for dinner, I don't care. I just need the details.

- Links to their Facebook and Twitter accounts (maybe widgets for each if he wants to get fancy).

- Google Analytics for long term tracking

- Maybe a photo of the front of the establishment, didn't need to be fancy, just something a person who looked online would recognize when they were looking for it. No photos of the owner, etc.

I don't claim to be an expert here, but this is what I want to see when I visit a website. Again, some of these are technically bad for SEO, but that isn't the point. Functionality should always trump SEO in my opinion.

I actually even offerred that I do this for him for some free Takoyaki, since literally it sounds like 20 minutes in Textmate and then just throwing a static page up. Might stop by later this week to confirm the details. I'd rather see a local business do it right than wrong.

lancewiggs• 15 years ago

What a great idea to do it for him, but perhaps use Wordpress.com so he can more easily edit the result.

corin_2• 15 years ago

There's a genius business plan - well, perhaps "business" plan is slightly over-selling it.

Spend a little time creating some really nice restaurant websites for a small number of your favourite local places (ones with either no website or a terrible website), offer it for free, with free hosting, and free updates, in return for free meals.

Get a few of those done, and spend a few days a week eating out for free, in the knowledge that you're helping friendly local businesses whose services you've always enjoyed.

jordanlev3• 15 years ago

Might want to have a look at http://www.letseat.at/

tibbon3• 15 years ago

Cool site! Is it yours?

badmonkey0001• 15 years ago

These words make me close tab for the site I'm looking at right away: "Click to launch site". I came to your website... shouldn't it have launched already? Oh it's not a website - it's a multimedia presentation? Great. That's not what I came to your "website" for. No thanks.

(Though I have to admit, there was a time when I actively looked for those sites. I made some good money going to restaurants and other small businesses around town offering to convert their sites from un-editable flash to a simple, skin-able CMS I had whipped up. They were always skeptical until I said "never pay for changing text or prices on your site again". After that, they were my customer and no longer the customer of the wannabe-techno-hipster that sold them the original contract for site and "updates".)

vigilanteweb• 15 years ago

I know there are a couple companies out there that focus just on making restaurant websites. There is Aioli (http://aioliweb.com) here in Seattle and I know that they do the site for James Beard Award winner Lark (http://larkseattle.com).

robryan• 15 years ago

Really they would probably do better with something outputting xml/json and getting their items/ prices/ location/ operation hours on every local business site in existence.

hxf148• 15 years ago

Check out http://infostripe.com Giving flash heavy restaurant sites a mobile option for customers was one of the design objectives. We are making great progress in the local area restaurants, mostly because it's free but also it's easy for the owners to setup and manage themselves.

yarian• 15 years ago

Incidentally, I came upon this restaurant site. Now that is a restaurant site done right: http://www.porte-sainte-claire.com/#home

skrebbel• 15 years ago

I can't relate to this at all. Restaurants in my area have crappy sites, but none of them annoying in ways this article describes. They're just a bit old, or the text is too small, or the pictures are ugly. You know, the usual.

Is this SF local news? If so, why is it on HN?

Apple-Guy• 15 years ago

Have you ever tried to access a site on the go using a smart phone?

Luyt• 15 years ago

"a series of menu buttons that aren't labeled; you've got to mouse over each one to find out what you're about to click on"

This actually has a name: 'Mystery Meat Navigation'[1]. It's one of the most irritating usability ailments. I thought it was extinct by now, but apparently it's still used on restaurant sites. It used to be quite popular on art- and band-related sites, some ten years ago.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_meat_navigation

robbie7• 15 years ago

We're going to make a CMS that focuses on the activities of local businesses. Our first focus is gonna be restaurants, cause indeed most of their website suck. So we're gonna give them the opportunity to be able to update their website via our CMS, their clients are gonna be able to order food online, order a table online (we still have to checkout opentable first tho, anyone know any other services like them?), the restaurant holder can easily edit their meu pages via a editor, upload images of their meals, divide the menu in appetisers etc, and ofcourse other pages like opening hours, contact page, album, ...

What do you guys think about this? Other local companies we're gonna focus on are hotels, sportclubs, hairdresser, beautsaloon, garage, ...

robflynn• 15 years ago

I've been toying around with something similar in my spare time, though mine focuses only specifically on restaurants. I like the idea quite a bit, just haven't found the hours to dedicate to it just yet. Maybe after my product launch...

noeltock• 15 years ago

I agree with a number of the comments, I setup a business selling websites to Restaurants (another user beat me to it in mentioning it ;) ) and have now transformed it into an SaaS ( http://www.theme-force.com ). You can sign up for it and play around with it for free ( open beta ). Feel free to provide any feedback/suggestions.

Regarding the article; people have already touched on the main points, i.e. accessibility (html vs flash vs pdf) and content (essentials vs fluff), so there's not much to add here. However, I do feel Schema (something we've worked on a lot), will become more and more important.

Cheers

joev• 15 years ago

Oblig: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/restaurant_website

Why are restaurant websites so awful? Because of restaurant culture.

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