
Why are restaurant websites so awful? Because of restaurant culture. - jillsy
http://www.slate.com/id/2301228/
======
tibbon
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.

~~~
jordanlev
Might want to have a look at <http://www.letseat.at/>

~~~
tibbon
Cool site! Is it yours?

~~~
jordanlev
Nope. I just do a lot of CMS work (as a freelancer) and am always on the
lookout for inexpensive solutions that I can direct people to when they can't
afford me :)

------
InclinedPlane
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.

~~~
mashmac2
So, the question is, how do we show the restaurant owners that having a better
website will increase their revenue?

~~~
irrumator
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?

~~~
floppydisk
Couple off the top of my head:

1) If you have live acts performing at your establishment Friday-Sunday, the
website can raise awareness.

2) Specialty products / menu items.

3) Paraphernalia / SWAG from the restaurant.

4) Take out -- order online, pick up in store.

5) If you sell things like coffee beans, web presence increases the number of
eyeballs on your product.

At the end of the day, restaurants are about putting bodies in chairs and
serving them food. Thus, the focus of a good website should be increasing
traffic into the restaurant.

One way I could see functionality between restaurant and website would be
linking time-to-wait dynamically with the website. So if I go to a
restaurant's website, I could see # of people waiting and average time to wait
for the evening. This does go back to putting bodies in seats, but it would
better link web presence with what actually happens in the restaurant.

~~~
zoudini
Building something you might be interested in as far as wait times...

~~~
floppydisk
Really? I'd be curious to see how someone implements this. From my admittedly
limited knowledge of the space, I see three different ways to tackling this.
First, build out your own reservation system that uses your custom software to
link the reservation system to the website and provide a vertical stack.
Second, build plugins/hooks for existing electronic reservation/seating
systems currently in use. Or third, work with the OpenTable's API.

~~~
zoudini
OpenTable doesn't really have an official API. Urbanspoon has been touting Rez
as an alternative but same story there. Will definitely let you know when
we're ready for primetime.

------
jrockway
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?

~~~
tibbon
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.

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

------
6ren
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_ ).

~~~
brudgers
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_
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.

------
callmeed
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.

~~~
kenjackson
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"?

~~~
jamesteow
"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."

------
badmonkey0001
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".)

------
ZoFreX
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.

~~~
jcnnghm
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.

~~~
mgkimsal
_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.

~~~
jcnnghm
They do that stuff because it doesn't really cost money, and because if they
don't, they will always have empty tables. It's as simple as telling the
existing staff to go do it.

The good website you are describing probably costs at least $5k, which is more
than they have to spend. It also means they have to find someone that can do
the work, tell them what they want, pay them, manage them, and evaluate the
output. It's time consuming and expensive.

------
kirillzubovsky
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.

------
starwed
> _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
professional (especially wedding) photographers are also common culprits.

~~~
MaxGabriel
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

~~~
artursapek
Liquor companies' ads and websites are like those of car companies. I think
it's because there's so little to say about such obvious products. Vodka is
pretty much legally required to all be the same.

------
mashmac2
Another example not in the article: <http://thecheesecakefactory.com>

~~~
ericras
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.

------
wallflower
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>

~~~
aw3c2
> 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.

~~~
wallflower
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.

------
chunkyslink
>> 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.

~~~
mannepanne
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.

------
tomkarlo
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.)

~~~
jamesteow
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.

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

------
nowarninglabel
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.

------
noeltock
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

------
Luyt
_"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>

------
vigilanteweb
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>).

------
hxf148
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.

------
minikomi
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>

------
mikebracco
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/>

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

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

------
robbie7
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
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...

------
robryan
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.

------
artursapek
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.

------
pbreit
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
> 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-...](http://venomousporridge.com/post/389785000/a-conversation-
i-have-every-month-or-so\[1\])

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

------
latch
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.

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joev
Oblig: <http://theoatmeal.com/comics/restaurant_website>

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

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

