

What Is It About Restaurant Websites? - josh_blogs
http://www.portlandfoodanddrink.com/2010/03/what-is-it-about-restaurant-websites/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+portlandfoodanddrink%2FSdXY+%28An+Exploration+of+Portland+Food+and+Drink%29

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jakarta
David Chang's Momofuku has a great website for its restaurants:

<http://www.momofuku.com/>

Everything is pretty stripped down and simplified. No gratuitous use of flash.

I also like their use of reservations, for the most part the system is set up
to treat everyone as equals, so its not like a celeb can just come in:

"In March 2008, Chang opened Momofuku Ko, a 12 seat restaurant that takes
reservations six days in advance, online only, on a first-come-first-served
basis, without regard to social status or income. The highly limited seating,
along with Chang's popularity in New York, has caused a furor, generating
frustration for both influential and ordinary people who have failed to secure
a reservation"

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eam
A few weeks ago a post of the same nature as this was posted. It's worth
noting: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1130419>

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chunkyslink
Here is a restaurant website for a UK based chain that we just launched (in
Dec 09).

<http://giraffe.net>

I feel its both attractive and functional. Its primarily supposed to be a
website (i.e used from a normal web browser) but will work fine on your
iphone.

There is no flash but we've used jquery extensively for 'flashiness'.

There is also prominent twitter/flickr and facebook engagement throughout.

There are menu's (web based and pdf choices), offers and locations. Try
googling for 'giraffe menu' - the menu is the top hit.

We spent a while fine tuning the location finder
<http://giraffe.net/restaurants> which uses the google API to provide 'a
nearest list' functionality. Once you chosen a restaurant it will also provide
you with a list of other restaurants close to your choice.

The site www.usabilitypost.com did a feature on the location finder as we've
also done something cool with the location search box.

[http://www.usabilitypost.com/2009/11/30/search-dropdown-
hybr...](http://www.usabilitypost.com/2009/11/30/search-dropdown-hybrid-box/)

The idea behind the site is simple. Get people to the restaurants. We've had a
lot of feedback that suggests that it does just that and we're quite proud of
the result.

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nitrogen
Here's a restaurant web site that I recently used when deciding where to eat
with friends. While it wouldn't win any design awards, it had exactly what I
needed - a menu, an image of the location, and an address.

<http://www.gaborbrothers.com/>

A lot of local businesses don't get my business because they don't have or
want a web site, and I don't use the yellow pages. A decent web site is
becoming increasingly important IMO.

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stcredzero
No design awards, but this website does exactly what I want as a restaurant
customer.

<http://www.pronto-2-go.com/>

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waterlesscloud
I can see how small, local businesses fall into the trap of all-flash, all-
hard-to-actually-use. But what about a high profile, nationally known
restaurant like The French Laundry. Why does their site suck so much?

<http://www.frenchlaundry.com/>

~~~
chacha102
I just attempted to find the hours for that restaurant, but got too annoyed
that it kept opening up new windows...

Reminds me why I generally just type "<restaurant name> menu" into Google, and
generally someone has a direct link to a PDF.

~~~
jonknee
The French Laundry isn't the type of restaurant that you check hours
(reservations are required and if there is an open spot you take it) or menus
(they change daily).

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drinian
My biggest complaint, among many, is that their ubiquitous Flash intros have a
"skip intro" button -- _inside the Flash animation_. Why do I have Flashblock,
again?

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pw
Does a website have any effect on the success of a restaurant or other local,
offline business?

Restaurant websites are frustrating for me (and you ;-), but do they matter to
anyone that doesn't read HN?

~~~
larrykubin
Yes they matter. I worked on a website for a national restaurant chain for a
while, and they get over 100 million dollars in online orders through their
website a year. Same with pizza places. Making it easier to order food on the
web brings in a lot of money. If this process is painful, it will have a
definite impact on revenue.

You can also directly email customers who spend the most money (based on info
in the online ordering database) and send them weekly specials and coupons on
the website. This is very effective.

"Pizza Hut is getting 30 percent of its sales online. Moreover, online boosts
the amount of sales – online orders are ten percent higher than in-person
orders because it is so easy to check off additional or more expensive items."
Source: [http://localonliner.com/2010/01/29/newspapers-partner-
with-a...](http://localonliner.com/2010/01/29/newspapers-partner-with-
allmenus-com-online-orders/)

~~~
conorgil145
I think he was referring to actual restaurants, not "restaurants" like pizza
hut. When I think of restaurant I imagine a sit-down place that is not fast
food.

These site-down restaurants without take-out/delivery should have all of their
information easily available online for potential customers to find before
they make a reservation. So, yes, I think that it is still very important to
have an easy to use website for a restaurant.

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cookiecaper
As with most things, form trumps substance when you're selling websites to a
local business. They want to have a sexier website than their competitors.
Their competitors all have sites with big Flash intros and cool animations and
stuff. This is what your layperson cares about when viewing your portfolio;
they don't care about functionality across platforms, they don't care about
accessibility or immediacy of pertinent information. They just want something
that looks "pretty", and even "pretty" usually just turns into useless gobs of
Comet Cursors, background music, and Flash.

~~~
hartror
I agree wholeheartedly. It is a lack of understanding on the part of the
business owners for about what a website is FOR and a lack of interest in
educating them on the part of the developers on these websites.

I'm sure this isn't an original idea but web development firms should offer a
subscription package to owners. This subscription would assist them in
monitoring the performance of their total web presence (not just the website
which is becoming less relevant these days) and assisting them in improving
it. It could certainly prove a point of difference in a saturated market
especially if you got a great case study or two behind you to present to
customers.

The difficulty is that site developers are just programmers and designers and
not salesmen and marketers so they either don't understand or care about what
I just talked about or don't know how to sell it to the business owners.

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bradgessler
Most of the fx that restaraunts want to do on their website could be done with
jQuery. The <http://www.frenchlaundry.com/>, for example, is simply a bunch of
fade in/out's and a few picture slideshows.

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danw
My hunch is many websites are made 1) with a small budget or 2) by a family
member or friend who has a pirated copy of a WYSIWYG web dev app (usually
flash).

~~~
bugs
For most your hunch is dead wrong the family member or small budget websites
are the ones that look like MSFrontpage and other such website designs.

Flash websites are usually payed for and in good amounts to and they are done
by people who don't really understand usability but do know marketability (for
themselves) and how to make things look pretty.

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conorgil145
Sounds like there is some money to be made here.

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Joboo
I'll never understand the complaint in scenario #2. Use the device in your
hand for what it was originally intended, and CALL them.

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shade
I'm deaf. How would you suggest that I do this?

Seriously, I do understand the point you're making, but keep in mind that not
everyone is interested in the phone portion of their smartphone, or able to
make effective use of it. :)

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jff
Are there no TTS gateway apps for the Sidekick/iPhone? I know there's websites
that let you type phone conversations.

~~~
shade
(Missed this comment earlier)

There are. I'm actually a customer of Sprint IP Relay and have a personal
number set up with them that's linked to my Google Talk account. However,
making a relay call is generally massively frustrating for the parties on both
sides of the line, so I tend to avoid it.

