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by disease 1616 days ago
I've sometimes wondered why so many restaurants (even some chains) don't have any kind of online presence outside of a crappy HTML 'poster' that tells the world they exist. No delivery. No online orders. Seems like a missed opportunity.

Then I remember that it is an industry with tiny margins and remember my past work with small clients and come up with a similar list of thoughts that you have outlined here.

3 comments

The restaurant industry has a scary number of people who just toss their retirement savings into it and treat it as a retirement hobby. Then they get slowly bled dry.
There are web firms that work solely with restaurants. I've lost a couple clients to them. The come in with a slick sales pitch, and sell restaurant owners on the idea that "their menu will be everywhere!". This particular example actually builds decent websites, but what sold my (former) client on it was their tech surrounding menu distribution. Where do these menus appear? No clue.
Yes, small businesses have been left behind. Almost completely abandoned by tech. The only progress has been those shitty web based payment terminals with scant support for inventory and e-commerce.