Restaurant Websites...to have or have not?

[ghostrider]

Did you try limiting for restaurants within a given town or no more than x miles from a given town? Suffice it to say that there are ways of limiting the results.

Anyway, I thought the paper Yellow Pages was also incomplete and included only those who paid to advertise.

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My problem is that I live 8 miles from the Lincoln Tunnel, so any search of no more than 10 miles, or greater, starts bringing in the NYC places.

Yes I could search town by town, but there are a lot of towns out here.

When I searched on Indian restaurants within 15 miles, superpages left out 3 places I know that are within 9 miles of my house. I don't know how to explain that. These are not new places - 2 of them I've dined at for 10 years. Superpages seems to have separate paid/unpaid sections so these places should have shown up in the latter.

Sorry for the somewwat OT commentary.

[lizard]

You do realize that, given the medium, your responses to this will be a bit skewed in favor of anything online. That aside...

In my line of work I have come across thousands of the very best and the very worst of restaurant websites, and I have to say even the very worst sites (unless broken) provide a huge advantage to the restaurant.

Most people make their plans during the day - esp. in the mornings before work gets hectic. What are the chances that someone at a small establishment would be there to answer the phone (if a caller could find the phone number on their own) before 10:00 am? Simply having a web site to provide the most frequently asked questions (hours, directions, parking, menu samples, etc) essentially expands the restaurant's hours to 24/7.

With margins being so tight in this industry, and with the spectacularly huge failure rate of new restaurants, why wouldn't a restaurateur want to do anything that gives his place more exposure? Unless this restaurant fills every single table every night already, he has nothing to lose. Web sites can be less expensive and much more successful than any 1/6 page print ad. Anyone who believes otherwise may be doomed to failure.

I won't even get into the online reservations part of it, but I will say that about 20% of all online reservations are booked between the hours of 10:00 PM and 10:00 AM.

[repoman]

I love it when restaurants have an online presence of some sort. I especially like it when I am dining with friends or family because I can match their likes and dislikes with the menu. My mom and dad are not a very adventurous eaters but my wife and I are so when we want to expose them to someplace new and exciting I have to make sure there are at least a few options for them on the menu.

I also like it when searching for brunch places. In Milwaukee it seems that every other restaurant has brunch. It is very helpful to be able to check out their website and see if they serve brunch, what days they serve it, and what the hours are.

I also have a food bog and I like being able to go back and look at a website to make sure I have prices and menu item descriptions correct.

If you don’t want the responsibility of maintaining a site, most major cities have online menu directories. In Milwaukee we have Foodspot, where I can browse hundreds of menus for restaurants who don’t have their own websites.

[Curlz]

You do realize that, given the medium, your responses to this will be a bit skewed in favor of anything online. 

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I absolutely realized that, Lizard--and should have acknowledged it in my initial post. But I was curious to see if anyone would jump in and tell us that they own/know of restaurants that have bucked the trend and if they were still successful, why. Something akin to restaurants that only accept cash--even in 2005. Of course, if that info is posted on their web site, there are no surprises...hehe

I really appreciate these comments, and I think the chef and the owner of the place will too, once I direct them to this thread (if they haven't already seen it). Thanks!

[Curlz]

Update: Thanks to all of your comments, the owner of the restaurant has put up a web site with a few photos, and basic info + menu. He is VERY appreciative of y/our input, so I thought I'd pass that along.