scott flocal restaurants I love you but please have a website that isn't your instagram profile and has your hours of business on it. kthx
Sumana Harihareswara@scott YES
Ashe Dryden 🙆🏼♀️🐈🐈⬛@scott or a Facebook page that requires you to be logged in!
steve mookie kong
Sharpe!@scott I feel like an enterprising young HTML coder could eat like royalty if they pitch themselves just right.
bjb 
Jules she/her
babble encat
T.FishIn a past life a friend and I ran a little web hosting/design biz and I had this exact idea. We pitched to local restaurants in the area. This was before they were all just offloading to social media platforms. They had websites but the number of sites that lacked basic info (address, hours, phone number, sample menu) was astounding.
We figured we could get a bunch of restaurants to pay us a relatively small amount for very little ongoing work which would be good amount of money overall.
In reality we only ever got a handful of customers and they were awful to deal with.
You know how restaurants have a reputation for running on a cash basis with razor thin margins, often unable or maybe even unwilling to pay suppliers?
Now, imagine being a supplier that provides something nobody in the business pays attention to (until it disappears…maybe) and is such a tiny bill relative to the big important ones. We spent sooooo much time chasing these people down for payment.
One customer hadn’t paid for several months despite repeatedly contacting them. We sent them a final notice that we would shut their website down at the end of the month which was, of course, ignored. So we shut their website down. Then they called us, accusing us of trying to sabotage their business because there was some kind of major sporting event in town that weekend and suddenly their website was sooooo important.
We gave up after a couple years of barely making beer money on the operation.
Steve Gisselbrecht@scott
Saw a restaurant website once that had a link to their instagram BUT NOT THEIR PHYSICAL ADDRESS.
Cool, cool, I can look at your food, but not, you know, pay you to eat it.
Sensible Crone@scott for real!!!
Calcedony Prime@scott I don't think people realize how inaccessible a Facebook or Instagram profile is without an account.
I AM BANKSY ☕ / 🗑🔥@mrencyclopedia Restaurants. The same group that brought you completely FLASH web sites.
They don't care about accessibility even when it's a legal requirement, which is why the toilets are in the basement behind the boiler.
Clinton Anderson SwordForHire
Johannes Hentschel@scott
On my continent you can call them to see if they're open.
On my continent you can call them to see if they're open.
Olga Lovick (she/her)@johentsch @scott iff they provide a phone number
@johentsch Call? Like some kind of Neanderthal? @scott
Jmbmkn@johentsch @scott Where do you get their phone number to call them if not from their website?
@johentsch @scott I feel a little guilty making staff answer the phone just to say "yeah we're open til six"
@babble_endanger
It's reverse advertisement and a small business caring about its customers will be happy to help!
@scott
It's reverse advertisement and a small business caring about its customers will be happy to help!
@scott
Michael Gemar
Robot Diver 🌊🌬️🍃🌿🌸🌱🌱🌱@scott
Ugh. Or Facebook.
Ugh. Or Facebook.
Sydney Newmark@scott yes! the amount of restaurants I’ve been interested in only to click the “website” button and be brought to a Facebook page… unfortunately they’re usually an instant no because I have no way to see if I’d enjoy it
Lars Lehtonen@scott Fuck you local restaurants if you only take credit cards and not cash.
MJ Ray
Flaming Cheeto@scott But how will you appreciate this smash burger with monster rad sauce if you don't know the story of how we came to love food?
groxx@scott Instagram is super hostile to anyone logged out, and pretty frequently doesn't let you see posts at all (except thumbnails).
I cannot fathom why people think it's an option for *a business*. Much less as the *only* option.
Roadskater, Ph.D.
Ben Ford 
@roadskater @groxx @scott that’s “pretty hostile” by my book. If someone doesn’t care enough to make their information accessible, I’m not going to go out of my way to do it for them.
@binford2k @groxx @scott Less than surprising. I got screwed years ago when I was ditched at a red light during a group skate and was told afterward that I would have known the destination if I used FB Messenger, which WTF that exists?
Cassandra@scott P L E A S E
Peter Brett@scott The only way to see the takeaway menu for our local (very good) pizza restaurant is to log into Facebook. 😑
Michal Bryxí@scott
Restaurant / café website has to have easily accessible:
1) Opening hours
2) Menu that one can search through, including alergens and diet preferences
3) Address with link to a map
4) Contact that is anything but contact form
Everything else is optional. Sadly most websites fail on this today. And it's never the business owner's fault.
Colin Watson@MichalBryxi @scott I might suggest 5) a small map image too, to help people orientate themselves, with a link to OpenStreetMap.
Jayne 
🇪🇺🏳️🌈Plus, if you’re in the UK, hygiene “Scores on the Doors”…
@scott Absolute nopes:
- Cookie banners (no, your business card website does not need to track users)
- Popup newsletter signups (no, just no)
- Notifications (why?!)
- History, philosophy, vision, and other (likely) SEO garbage
- Pictures of the establishment that barely show anything from the place
- Customer reviews (please stop)
- Contact forms as web forms (these should die in general)
- Chatbots
- Anything sticky on the page
- Cookie banners (no, your business card website does not need to track users)
- Popup newsletter signups (no, just no)
- Notifications (why?!)
- History, philosophy, vision, and other (likely) SEO garbage
- Pictures of the establishment that barely show anything from the place
- Customer reviews (please stop)
- Contact forms as web forms (these should die in general)
- Chatbots
- Anything sticky on the page
matt wilkie@scott it's fallout because we failed to build the read-write web and made walled gardens the only blessed paths. (It's not too late to fix)
Klongeiger@scott @codinghorror can’t count the number of hours I wasted wading through “mission statements”, “our philosphy” or “who we are” junk when all I wanted to know was if they are open.
Assimilateborg@scott so many times I need to go to google maps to find the opening times. It's so sad. That's the main thing I visit a website for.
Johannes ☀️🌈@scott I started entering the opening hours of the places into #OpenStreetMap using #OrganicMaps. Sometimes I even have to add the place, because it's either still missing, or still has the name of a previous business that doesn't exist anymore. I'm primarily doing it for myself, to make sure that I don't end up standing in front of closed doors. But it's also a good reason to have a conversation with the owners and to get to know them.
Simon Hobeck@johannesm @scott you may already know this, the app StreetComplete also allows this and makes it even easier than editing OrganicMaps.
#StreetComplete
#StreetComplete
@johannesm @scott please add Key:check_date when you do that. I met a few with stale info this month (now updated) which is disappointing when hungry.
#OpenStreetMap Wiki – https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:check_date:opening_hours
@johannesm @scott I think I once entered the hours for a place that didn't even have them posted on the door
He got decent foot traffic so I guess the ends justify the means but whatever
Irina@scott Or Facebook.
contranym@scott PLEASE!!!!
The Manchurian IdiotYour AI Skeptic Friend (@[email protected])
WHY IS YOUR FUCKING MENU A PDF JESUS SHITTING CHRIST
Instagram and/or Facebook profile = off my list 🤬
Stoneface Vimes@scott and your menu without having to go through the pretend to order for collection game or download a pdf that I'll never use again just to find out what you offer.
RejZoR@scott Domain and single page basic HTML page with company info, contacts, what you do and maybe a photo or two and that's it. No need for anything fancy, would probably cost like 15€ a year...
Mad Argon 
@scott in Poland many restaurants don't have own sites, only presence on big middleman list. And I really try to find their websites, with middleman's site as kind of search angine, without ordering from there to pay owners, not fee leech in between. But unfortunately not everyone has website so I sometimes don't have a choice and have to order via middleman.
Easter Wax.@scott Or a facebook page behind an impenetrable login for those of us who shun Zuckerberg's empire.
Nick Silkey 📻 N5ILK 🪓🪵 🪣💧@scott you're spot on, however they don't know what to do. Where to go. Or what's wrong with only being on that site. Our community members need help to do things differently than they're used to. ✨
Talk to the manager about this. The owner. Help make active change working with others you care about. Together we can accomplish anything.✌️💙
Coralie RenéeTHIS! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Kim Possible 
@scott this right here.
DFYX@scott And while we're at it: an up-to-date menu. I can't count how often I just wanted to check if a local restaurant has options for friends who can't/don't eat specific things and had to resort to a menu they had posted years ago on their facebook profile.
Don Whiteside@scott @codinghorror OMG this makes me nuts. You have a place you want me to come and give you money. Where you are and what your hours are need to be on every single page and blazing obvious. Because if it’s hard, I probably already know the location and hours of someplace else.