

The hell that is a restaurant website - telemachos
http://venomousporridge.com/post/389785000/a-conversation-i-have-every-month-or-so#disqus_thread
Better link: http://venomousporridge.com/post/389785000/a-conversation-i-have-every-month-or-so
======
rubyrescue
Amen. This is why we're building BuenaCarta.com - example page:
[http://www.buenacarta.com/restaurantes/buenos-
aires/palermo-...](http://www.buenacarta.com/restaurantes/buenos-
aires/palermo-soho/la-paila) (very early alpha)... We're starting with South
America but we're planning on releasing a white label version of the product
for other markets (and not just restaurants). Our focus is right now on
getting reviews 'right', before we start building content, because we still
believe there's not a truly good restaurant/bar/store review site whose
reviews aren't ranked using hidden magic, astroturfed, or just really, really
bland.

We've spent a lot of time on the "Open Hours" feature - we want people to view
a page and see "Open NOW", "Open Later Today", "Closed Today", etc. so that
they're sure it's really open, or it will be when they take a cab across town,
or so its really clear they're closed mondays and you don't go all the way
there only to find that out.

However, we also want to be able to search the data ourselves, and we want it
to be localized into two or three languages. So we can't just store the open
hours as a string, we need to render the open hours as text but it needs to be
stored as data. Generating the English/Spanish/Portuguese from the data is a
lot of fun.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
god i wish there was a US site that aggregated hours info.

~~~
prawn
I've always wondered about an iPhone or web-app for a given location that just
showed what was open right then and how soon they closed. Quite often I'm in
an area at 10pm with friends wondering what our dining options are. Would
obviously need the cooperation of the restaurants themselves though.

~~~
pretz
Yelp for iPhone (and Pre, and Android) will do that. You can filter your
search results by "Open Now". Of course, we don't have perfect data, but we're
trying. (I'm a Yelp developer)

~~~
prawn
I'm in Australia so I don't think you have my area covered?

------
waterlesscloud
My theory on this is that it's two things-

One, every restaurant wants their site to look like every other restaurant
site. Which makes a certain kind of sense, even if it's the wrong approach.

Two, web developers push this kind of website because it would be hard to
justify charging a decent wage for the basic sites that restaurants really
need. So they make it all fancy.

~~~
InclinedPlane
I think it's more that many restaurant owners are unsophisticated when it
comes to the web, and it's easier for designers to sell a flash-based site
because it looks fancier in a demo than a plain html site.

It's comparatively more difficult to pitch usability.

~~~
bodhi
The first comment made an excellent point I believe:

> Owners never visit their own websites after the initial presentation by the
> web designers because they don't need to.

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.

~~~
pyre
The point is that the owner _should_ be interested in what please their
customers not what looks pleasing to them, but it unusable by their customers.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Nevertheless, this is the problem of fighting uphill against human nature.

This phenomenon is made worse by the fact that patronage due to the website is
difficult for most restaurants to quantify. The vast majority of restaurants
are completely clueless as to how much business their websites are responsible
for, which, as with most things unmeasured, leads to neglect and disrespect.

If more restaurants integrated aspects such as table reservations or mailing
lists more restaurant owners may come to a greater respect for the importance
of getting their web presence right.

------
kaiserama
I worked on this problem for about 6 months, I had built a simple hosted
solution, for restaurants in this case, that the operator could build a mobile
version of their site that was viewable on iPhone, Android, and Blackberry.
The first few places I told the idea to loved it and so I thought it might
take off. Unfortunately (fortunately?) for me I happened to talk to two
restaurant operators who actually used social media and 'got it'. When I
started doing more market research with other operators and restaurant
marketers the basic reaction was simply this: operators are too busy to be
bothered with frivolous things like websites, and for some even email
addresses. They're just trying to get through the month, the week, the day
without closing the place up (obviously a lot of turn over in the industry).

My personal take is that the next generation of operators will likely be more
receptive and will see the value in using different forms of media and
accepting that people get their information in very different ways than even 5
years ago. I think there are other ways to make money in the restaurant
industry, if I was someone looking to do something in this industry I'd start
making some connections with the US Foods and the Syscos of the world, alone
you'll be lucky to even get face time with an operator, let alone convince
them to use your product.

If anyone is interested one of the restaurants that used the service was here
<http://www.edinagrill.com>, access from your iphone/android/blackberry and
you'll see a mobile version vs normal browser.

~~~
autarch
I'm not sure you "got" it, based on the horrific flash nav menu, and the
ridiculously small window all the info is displayed in (I have more than 300
or so vertical pixels!).

~~~
kaiserama
That's part of their full site. If you're accessing from an iPhone, Android,
or Blackberry and haven't disabled Javascript you should see a mobile friendly
version. Other devices may display it differently.

------
mprime
Common sense would dictate that Flash/PDF's/.doc's/JavaScript is/are only
necessary in a small number of cases, when there is _no other way to provide
that content_. When you use it, you're making an assumption about what the
user is willing and able to process on their end. If you do that enough, it
becomes just as annoying as someone distributing a C file for everyone to use
that relies on windows.h

What's worse still is that it took the iPhone not supporting Flash for
everyone to realize that Flash actually isn't needed for most things.

~~~
_delirium
One explanation I've heard for the PDF menus is that they have to have PDF
versions anyway for printing, so the least-effort solution is to just put the
same PDFs online.

~~~
mprime
If they can't be bothered to run the PDF through a program to translate it to
HTML, and then post a link to the PDF version, I don't want to do business
with them.

If their menu is so fancy that it can't be easily translated into HTML,
they're missing the point entirely.

~~~
kscaldef
Well, good luck with that approach, I guess. Personally I care a lot more
about the quality of the food, the quality of service, the cleanliness of the
restaurant, the ambiance, the price, ...

~~~
mprime
If I'm trying to order food from them, and their entire business model depends
on me buying food from them, yet they're making it hard for me to find what
food I can buy from them, they are either idiots or sloppy people who hire
idiots to design their website. Either way, they're worthless.

------
callmeed
We're actually working on a rest. site solution now precisely because Flash
sites, PDF menus, and impossible-to-use-on-mobile drives us crazy. I will
probably apply to YC with it but we plan to release in May regardless. There's
a big restaurant trade show then and we're planning to exhibit.

------
pg
<http://fukisushi.com>

~~~
eam
<http://elfarolitoinc.com/>

~~~
Semiapies
That's the most useful "under construction" page I've ever seen.

------
icefox
+1 for movie theaters also. I have one right down the street that I have
didn't go to for years because it was just a big flash box that I could never
use to find out what they were playing. _I want to give them money_ , but I
don't think they get that.

------
thetable
I find it sad that many restaurants are so bad at SEO, or maybe they just
can't compete with Yelp and their spammier friends.

Often, it's nearly impossible to find the one authoritative website on a
restaurant, bar, or store - the one owned by that business. Instead, search
engine result pages tend to be dominated by crappy Yellow pages entries that
may or may not include the correct phone number of the place, but never
photos, the menu or the hours.

------
metamemetics
I'm in the midst of designing a restaurant website right now. They initially
asked for Flash, but I showed them a jQuery\html\css design instead. They
really liked it and it wasn't a problem. Also using Django as a CMS for
mailing list and menu items.

------
telemachos
I seem to have accidentally linked to the #disqus-thread version of the link.
If anyone with mod powers (?) happens by and can fix it, thanks in advance.

------
elblanco
Oh if this isn't true. Due to valentine's day I ran into this about a dozen
times before just going to the local "nice restaurant".

~~~
prawn
An idea of mine is for calendar-specific events. e.g., for Valentine's Day, I
often look to see which decent restaurants are running special events like
degustations. For Melbourne Cup, I want to know who's doing booking-only and
who's got a free for all. For NYE, people want to know if there's a specific
cover charge or event when they're trying to pick a place to go.

Right now, if you want to book a special event for Valentine's Day, you have
to go from site to site, hoping restaurants have updated recently (fat
chance), and then contact them to see if they have a booking. Would be so much
simpler to pick the event, the locale and then see a list of options including
whether they were already booked out.

With a database of restaurant phone numbers, the polling of data could be
automated. Robo-dial a restaurant at a less-than-busy time with "This is
Service X. Are you doing anything special for Event Name? If the usual, press
1. If a special menu, press 2. If you never want us to pester you again, press
0." Then receive and transcribe the eventual descriptions.

Could have an automated call handling capacity too. "Are you booked out for
Event Name? Press 1 for no, or press 2 if you are booked out. Hit 0 to stop
these messages."

------
autarch
Here's an exception - <http://evergreen-chinese.com>

All HTML and CSS, hours, phone #, and address all on the front page. Menu is
in HTML and kept up to date.

~~~
sebastianavina
let me guess... one of your projects.

~~~
autarch
Not exactly. I'm friends with the owners, and when they wanted a website, I
handed them off to a designer friend of mine who I know does good work.

I do host the website and keep the menu up to date for them, though.

------
Groxx
Restaurant websites are indeed a special kind of hell. They're nearly
universally Flash'd up and annoying.

My solution for restaurant-website-woes, especially for simple things like
hours: phone. Their automated answerer will probably tell you before you could
navigate their site. Especially with Goog 411, I rarely use my computer for
business phone numbers any more.

------
roedog
I appreciate the practical and intrinsic value of a good website, and how a
restaurant owner may not appreciate the difference in work quality of web
design consultants.

What I wonder is why should they care? I think that the success of a
restaurant depends far more on the food, service, and setting of the
restaurant itself. Setting aside we discerning HN readers, very few people
choose where to eat based on web design.

I have a theory from observations of restaurants in my city. The restaurants
with neon "OPEN" signs in front tend to be more empty than the ones without
the OPEN sign. This is across all price points and styles. My thinking is that
they are not filling tables, so think they need to let people know they are
open and to come eat there. If people are not eating at your restaurant, will
making a good quality website with accurate hours help you?

------
eldenbishop
Sometimes it is just laughable...I went to a website on my phone to look up
the menu. I got a "flash required" message. I was at home so I dug out my
laptop and went to the site. The "Flash" application was a static image with
the hours and phone number printed on it.

------
rodyancy
I've ran into this problem so many times I've developed a workaround using
various applications.

Google maps on the iphone gets me the phone number. If I have to see a menu,
UrbanSpoon or Yelp works sometimes. I don't even bother with mobile browsers.

------
telemachos
Randomly selected favorites (restaurants, not websites) from my hometown:

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

<http://shakeshack.com/> (Nope, I'm completely off-base here. Shake Shack has
a lovely, flash-free, pdf-free mobile version. Apologies to Danny Meyer and
company.)

<http://barstuzzichini.com/index.asp>

I should send them a snapshot of what their websites look like with
ClickToFlash installed.

~~~
lliiffee
In fairness, shakeshack has a wonderfully simple version that loads for me
with noscript on.

~~~
telemachos
Maybe so, but with ClickToFlash, I get one giant Flash button.

(This suggests that on an iPhone, you're toast if you surf there.)

The nearby Standburger does much better, and their toasted marshmallow shake
is the wife's favorite anyhow.

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

@Mikeryan, you are completely right. I was going there as you replied. I
edited my post above to note that.

Weirdly, Tabla (same owner) does not have an alternative website for mobile.

~~~
mikeryan
No shakeshack.com has a very nice iphone based site if you go there on the
iphone.

Kudos to them for handling this well.

------
dpcan
I see what's happening here. He's taking a shot at Flash. Right? No, he's
taking a shot at a terrible web designer. Wait, no again. It must be taking a
shot at a restaurant owner who saw a moving website with flying cheeseburgers
and thought it was really cool and demanded the same thing from the web
development company he/she hired.

So, "Website" that's totally ignoring me, I apologize for accusing you of
being Flash, when in reality it's your advertising and marketing decision
makers who are clueless.

------
timdorr
It's funny to read this because we just did this for a client:
<http://www.bluefinatlanta.com/> Hours on the front page, menu in HTML, zero
Flash. Not even that hard to do, realistically.

Before, they didn't even show up in Google's results for "Atlanta sushi". Now
they've actually got some content to index. I get that it's easy to market
flashy sites, but it's also easy to market search engine optimization too.

------
johnl
Why don't you create an app that solves that particular problem and give it
away free on the condition that you can dish up and split Google ads on the
app. Create a site where they can automatically update their hours. Some
simple loan calculators made good money referring people to mortgage companies
a few years ago.

------
radley
dev: I just made an incredible site for you - it's totally HTML5.

rest: I can't see the video.

dev: you have to use Google Chrome.

rest: I Googled Chrome. It took me to a picture of YouTube. Is my video on
YouTube?

dev: no - that's a picture of a browser with YouTube in it. You have to
download it. The browser I mean.

rest: I already have a browser. It's called Firefox Explorer or something.

dev: No you have to use this one. It's the best.

rest: but it says beta. Doesn't that mean it's not done?

dev: it's fine. It's better than your browser.

rest: How is it better than my browser? My customers don't even have that
browser.

dev: because it's a standard. So everyone has to use it.

rest: I want my Flash site back.

dev: No! Flash is bad! It's not open source.

rest: I'd rather be open for business...

la la la

~~~
ZeroGravitas
dev: I just made an incredible site for you - it's totally HTML5.

rest: I can't see the video.

dev: There is no video. You're a bloody _restaurant_ , not Lady Gaga.

~~~
radley
rest: Can I at least use a nice font?

dev: NO FONT FOR YOU!

------
scarlson
Or, you could have just phoned the place and asked whoever picked up the
receiver.

While I agree that restaurants could do well to have iPhone accessible store
hours, I don't think it's totally unrealistic to phone in and politely ask the
maître d’.

------
antidaily
yelp app.

~~~
whopa
In my experience, Yelp's open hours data is inaccurate often enough to be
entirely untrustworthy.

~~~
ecuzzillo
Thank you for telling me that.

------
tjic
As I wrote yesterday in a different comment:

People who submit stories: please submit the URL of the article, not the
anchor-laden URL of the comments.

This happens all the time, and it's annoying.

Thank you.

------
sonnym
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned allmenus.com - a bit menu-centric, but
still lists the hours of most restaurants.

It's a spin-off of campusfood.com, so it has online ordering capabilities
built-in.

~~~
dpritchett
See also Memphis-area startup <http://www.MarksMenus.com>. This one came out
of Startup Weekend in 2009. It does menus and per-dish reviews with user
comments and reviews.

I'm not affiliated but I did meet the founders at SUWMem.

------
payjo
Am I missing something here or do people not just go to yelp? They have hours
for most businesses. Or is this post more aimed at new ventures and the
importance of having hours on the site?

------
jasonlbaptiste
grr, i cant find the company/post, but a long while back sergey brin invested
in a startup that basically listed information for a business' operating
hours.

------
ThomPete
This seems like a pseudo problem, no?

Don't most people use exactly everything else than the restaurants website and
instead yelp.com, allmenus.com.

