[BjoernKW]

I don't get why many restaurant owners don't bother putting a decent website online. If they actually do have a website, most of the time it's outdated, ugly, doesn't offer any useful information (such as opening hours, specials or a menu) or is just completely unusable. I'm not even getting started on any 'fancy' stuff such as usability on mobile devices or online reservation.

I know a few restaurateurs and they simply don't care, even more so than other types of small brick-and-mortar shops. First, they operate on very thin margins and most of the time simply can't or don't want to afford extra services such as a website. Moreover, most of their first-time customers still get there by word-of-mouth. It's as if most of the sector marketing-wise is still pretty much stuck in the early nineties.

[jeffasinger]

I spent a few months of my time selling to Restaurant owners. Most of them are afraid of technology. They are constantly being pushed to pay lots of money for expensive proprietary technology.

There tend to be two classes of them:

Far away owners. They come to the store once a week, handle some of the finances, but mostly, someone else manages the store. The owner puts in minimal effort, the manager has a hard time spending money to effect any changes

Owner/Operators. They're often cooking or other help around the restaurant. They work a ton of hours, and don't have time for much else. Many of them "don't do computers".

Neither of these groups is going to make their own website in most situations, unless they're relatively tech savvy. So they hire someone to do it, but then it never gets updated with menu and hour changes, specials and new technology.

[netcan]

As much as getting a website up and running for a small business seems so easy for the median reader of this site, the reality is different. Restaurant owners don't know how to do it. Regardless of the software you put in front of them, they probably won't come up with a good result and chances are that if they select the software themselves it will be a poor choice.

The internet is full of bad advice and the phone book is full of bad consultants. It's actually quite hard to be a good consultant to this kind of business. They're hard to work with and aren't willing to spend very much.

[jmccree]

I kinda wish it weren't so, but I've found that Facebook is the place to go for Restaurant info. Most all of the places around me regularly update their FB pages with specials, events, etc. The learning curve and processes to "update a website" seems to be too high for the average busy restaurant manager, but FB is a user interface they likely already use and are familiar with.

[rschmitty]

Does FB have a place for menus or do you still need to add an app to your page for that?