

Ask HN: Feedback on a couple of startup ideas - unohoo

For the past few weeks, I have been researching into a couple of ideas:<p>1) Online gift certificates for restaurants: 
Currently, very few restaurants sell online gift certificates. Many sell gift cards at the restaurants but if you need to order one online, they need you to fill a payment form, fax the form to them, after which they mail out the gift card. In todays world of instant gratification, this is missing out on potential revenue. The way this idea will work is to have a link on the restaurant's website to the site which will handle the payment and fulfillment of the gift certificates. Being an aggregator is not the goal in this idea.<p>I have talked to several restaurant owners and most seemed very excited and interested in the concept<p>2) Build an iphone app that will become a visual menu for restaurants:
Currently, restaurant menus are boring. They hardly include any  visual images of the menu dishes. Visual aesthetics / plating are a major component of the high end restaurant dishes. They way this idea will work is to have an iphone app and then build a catalog of restaurants and the photos of their menu dishes. When a diner visits a restaurant, they can fire up the app and see the photos of the various dishes.<p>The biggest hurdle that I see with the above ideas is selling to restaurants. Restaurant owners are a busy bunch - and simply getting in touch with them can be a challenge. Selling to them is a totally different beast.<p>I'd like to get the feedback of the HN community on these ideas. What do you think ? If you want to get in touch to discuss any of these ideas further, my contact email is in my profile.
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marknutter
Restaurant websites are abysmal, all of them. I've long wanted there to be a
service that provides the following information in a non-flash, easy to
consume format (in order of importance):

\- Hours of Operation

\- Menu with Prices and Pictures of the main dishes (if not every), in HTML,
not a freaking PDF

\- Phone number and address with easy way to find and print directions from my
location

\- Pictures of the restaurant in an easy to use, standardized slideshow
(lightbox or other similar solution)

optional:

\- Reviews from yelp and other services

\- Ability to make a reservation online

\- Backstory of the restaurant

I think there's huge startup potential in this space, but I imagine the
difficult part is getting the restaurant owners on board. I'm surprised a CMS
hasn't been popularized that allows restaurant owners to create sites that
meet these specifications easily and uniformly. I suppose you wouldn't even
need the restaurant's approval, though, because you could just set it up _for_
them like Yelp and other services do and have users upload the pics, menu
details, etc (like a wiki).

Anybody know if this has been attempted before?

~~~
krisneuharth
I'm working on this right now. I'm starting with Orange County, CA at the
moment and then I plan to roll it out to other places later. I am focusing on
simple, informative restaurant pages with aggregated reviews and comments from
other sites.

I plan to post the site on HN when it is ready. It is called Orange Dish.

------
RaRic
Number 2: I don't think high-end restaurants want to show images of their
dishes. For some reason it does not seem classy. Perhaps that's not an issue
for the low/medium range.

~~~
og1
I also don't think they would want to encourage their patrons to take their
phones out during meals. Think this is still considered poor form, could be
wrong though.

Think idea number one is the better one.

------
Towle_
I wouldn't waste your time on idea #1. Idea #2 could fold out into a bunch of
different paths, at least one of which has to be worthwhile.

Idea #1: You need to ask yourself why people buy gift cards in the first
place. They buy them as gifts for other people, gifts to be given at a later
date. Instant gratification is far less of a factor when it comes to gift-
giving, which is inherently non-instant. The only reason anyone would ever
need to print off a gift card would be if they totally forgot the need for it,
with like 15 minutes to spare. While that may _seem_ like a niche you can
fill, it probably isn't. There are formal-ish standards for gift-giving, and
the appearance of forgetting till the last minute is always, always, always
avoided; the implication being that you didn't care enough about the recipient
to remember to get the gift ahead of time.

Go for #2, and play around with the idea some more.

------
rookie
Number 1. <http://www.cardpool.com> has started doing similar. (but not
competing with your ideas) When you buy one of their cards they will instantly
email you the card's details so that you can use it online while they send you
the physical card in case you want to use it in a brick and mortar.

Number 2. I would take a look at <http://www.foodspotting.com> for a potential
source for an initial image database. Providing a professional photographer
would also help.

They both will require quite a bit of footwork to get enough restaurants to
buy in on the idea. Good luck if you decide to do either of them.

~~~
unohoo
Yes. Cardpool started offering something similar, but their focus is
completely different currently. Also, the thought of using foodspotting to
kickstart things occurred to me as well :)

------
talke
Based on how you described it, I believe that idea 1 will have better traction
with restaurant. You offer them a low cost / low risk new customer acquisition
channel.

Idea number two discribes a problem that customers might have, but you are
trying to sell it to the restaurant owners.

If you go with option 2, you must think how the fact that the menues are
boring and lack visuals affect the business. Maybe customers ask the waiter
too many questions, maybe they spend too much time thinking what to order,
maybe they return the dish or they simply leave unhappy because they didn't
get what they wanted. In short, if you want to sell your solution to the owner
- describe the owner's problem.

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logicb
I like the first idea as specifically targeted towards the restaurant
industry. we use to get snail mail discounts coupons from restaurants for your
birthdays. those restaurants could be your initial target customers as well.

On a side note, I am looking for feedback on some of my ideas. would you mind
recommending me something at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1773435> ?

------
jasonz
I like number 2. Maybe you could entice the restaurant owners by providing a
professional photographer.

There is potential to do cool stuff with the data you would collect like A/B
testing different plating styles of the same dish.

On the other hand, my wife says she is grossed out by restaurants that have
pictures of their dishes (maybe this speaks to the need for better
presentation).

~~~
unohoo
I agree - some of the things I envisioned - to collect metrics data on which
dishes people are clicking on / engaging with the maximum. This can be fed
back to the restaurant as well as the users can be presented with a 'most
popular dishes' option as well.

------
templaedhel
Reading your ideas, I was thinking about number 2, and those demos of the
Microsoft Surface awhile back, and I had this idea. What if insead of an "app"
you had a web app where where resteraunts can upload
photos/prices/descriptions of menu items, and get a QR code they can paste up
in their resteraunt. Might be slighly less of an enterance barrier for
customers.

------
hernan7
Number 2 sounds good, but photographing food is insanely difficult. See:

<http://photocritic.org/food-photo-tricks/>

I think hiring an artist to make a drawing of the food may be cheaper :-)

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mehta
It's funny but some of my friends and I have been looking at the second idea
and have made some progress there. I'll takl to my friends and contact you if
they seem interested.

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aresant
I like (1) quite a bit for the following reasons:

a) Restaurants are responsive to the idea.

b) You can bundle your fees into transactions, rolling the product out at zero
cost to the restaurants.

c) Once you build the core platform, integrating new clients is dirt cheap, eg
add a logo / description, it's live.

d) You can build an overarching brand HUB as a connector to all the different
clients.

e) Build in a viral component - instead of building for specific restaurants
give restaurants a directory on "dinnerdiscounts.com/restaurantname/" and give
restaurant a stack of cards to include in their diner's checks, or charge $10
- 15 to do a custom card.

f) Build a model around breakage where you require $100 in account accrual
before you issue a check to the restaurant. This makes for incredible cash
flow and margins.

~~~
unohoo
thanks for all the valuable points you listed out. The one thing I didnt quite
understand from your comment was the following: 'give restaurant a stack of
cards to include in your diner's checks or charge $10-$15 to do a custom card'
-- could you clarify if you get a chance. thanks.

~~~
aresant
Sure - I'm suggesting that you get the restaurants to do your marketing for
you.

For instance you could print ~5,000 GENERIC, but tastefully designed business
cards for $50 - 100.

EG - "Thank you for dining with us - we'd like to thank you with 10% off a
gift certificate for your next visit. Just visit RestaurantDeals.com and
search for us right away."

Once you run out of the 5,000 cards, reprint with updated messaging based on
what you learn.

Then that messaging works for ALL the clients you sign up, and you give
restaurants a stack of 100 cards that they can include in the receipts or
checks they hand out to patrons.

Direct respons rates on cards targeted properly can drive up to say 3 - 5%
which more than covers the cost of you handing out the cards, and helps you go
viral since customers will also realize they can get discounts on other
restaurants :)

Make sense?

Then offer as a premium service to restaurants cards printed with their own
specific URL / messaging if they don't like the generic model.

To sell this vision work closely with a half-dozen restaurants, get them
extraordinary results, and use their testimonials as your sales pitch.

------
kapauldo
1 is really good, 2 is a solution looking for a problem and i doubt it will
scale. Idea 1 could be huge, because right now, there is no central gift
certificate web site. It's a really good idea, but absolutely requires a good
quality domain name, one you'd probably have to pay for.

