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Show HN: Our fight against terrible restaurant websites

19 points by noeltock ↗ HN
Today we've launched happytables ( http://www.happytables.com ), a squarespace / wordpress.com for restaurants. I had posted on HN before about a previous iteration we performed ( http://bit.ly/sn0FWc ), and am really satisfied how far we've gotten with it all.

The entire solution is built on top of WordPress, it's allowed us to quickly prototype and build various components. It'll be interesting to see if other solutions pop-up for unrelated niche markets using WordPress too (i.e. real estate, sports clubs, etc.).

Would love to hear your feedback on our concept and would gladly answer any questions too...

11 comments

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kls
This is a great solution, we get a few restaurant clients that just need a simple site, but when you add in all of the integration the simple becomes a bit of an effort for what many restaurants can budget. I sent your white-label page to my partners as this would be perfect for those clients.
noeltock
Great! Look forward to hearing from you guys!
rrbrambley
Looks great. Everyone is sick of crappy restaurant websites.

One nit-picky non-technical thing – the first thing I see is the h2 with "Manage your own Restaurants Website." You need an apostrophe in there... and maybe you should think about changing the capitalization scheme. Dunno, I'm probably the exception, but when I visit a website and see bad spelling or grammar, I immediately am turned off.

noeltock
That's what I get for being a silly Swiss :) Thanks for the feedback, fixed it up!
[dead] Pro777
It'd be helpful if you would host a demo, so potential clients could actually see your software in action.
mapster
I've wondered about the price point for this, but am skeptical a monthly cost >$10 will work for low margin businesses such as small cafes and restaurants. My brother in law recently opened a taco truck on the island of Kauai. His website is very vanilla, no map, and a very generic menu. Happytable's design is worlds better, but I know the price point will be regarded as too high of a monthly expense. Are you targeting 10+ table size restaurants and high end small eateries?
noeltock
I'd say so, but interestingly enough, we were talking about (and very specifically) food trucks as a potential client for a well optimized one pager. This would work nicely I think for pizzeria's, cheap takeaways, etc.
allbombs
I totally agree, the smb market needs to standardize all of their websites, but I don't think wordpress is the solution.

If you want some ideas, you should really check out some IYP sites like yellowpages, AT&T, etc..

Yes, IYP's have horrible names, but some of them are trying to innovate on top of their huge customer base. If anything, you'll get an idea on pricing.

You might want to try to build something, and source someone locally that has a salesforce to push your product? Another idea, would be posting this locally on craislist that could be 100% commission based... something a starving uni student would love to push for you.

good luck!

poppysan
Or a white-label pricing level
poppysan
I think that everyone but restaurant owners hate the sites. A few years ago I was exploring this area, and offered my view to a few dozen local restaurants. Those that had no site were receptive, but those with a flashy, music playing slideshow were the least receptive.

Hopefully your sales team can educate the restaurant industry on proper web dev etiquette, but it didn't seem to matter to them much earlier. Good Luck!