Mira
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
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!!!
Mr. Encyclopedia@scott I don't think people realize how inaccessible a Facebook or Instagram profile is without an account.
xinit ☕@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.
Theresa
Clinton Anderson SwordForHire
Snippety Snap (she/her)@scott
I recently went to a local restaurant's website where the business failed to renew their URL.
I let them know. The employee's response? Oh, I haven't been to the website in ages. Probably no one uses it.
Alrighty then....
Stoneface Vimes@shansterable @scott well clearly 'somebody' does or you wouldn't have mentioned it to them. Did they follow up with "people are always telling us about it" in the manner of a shopkeeper announcing that "there's no call for it. I'm fed up with telling people"
Sorry. I just reread this and realise it could come across as if I'm taking a shot at you when I wasn't. I was trying to comment on the site owner and what seemed a negative attitude to a potential customer.
Sorry. I just reread this and realise it could come across as if I'm taking a shot at you when I wasn't. I was trying to comment on the site owner and what seemed a negative attitude to a potential customer.
@capnthommo
The employee acted like I was the first person to mention it. Clearly, they didn't think through what a big deal it is to lose a URL.
Think of all the restaurant reviews, business documents, emails, ads/marketing, or other places around the internet that contain a link to that URL. All broken.
Oh well. I tried.
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
Pete's Mom 🍉 🇺🇦 ☮️@scott Or a facebook page for goddess sake!
ChasMusic (he/him)@scott and your menu
Jasmine Vidalia@scott also, please make your website user friendly, device conforming, and static. Stop this SEO garbage and "just use grubhub" stuff. I don't get why restaurants are just the worst at websites
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?
Cassander
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
Peter Brett@scott The only way to see the takeaway menu for our local (very good) pizza restaurant is to log into Facebook. 😑
Todd needs beer, badly. 🍻
Martijn 
@toddalstrom @scott And send out an old-fashioned newsletter to keep us informed about events! Or a calendar on your website followable with RSS…
But I’ll accept a @mobilizon account as well! 😀
But I’ll accept a @mobilizon account as well! 😀
Rupert V/
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)
Stewart
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.
Tom 🇵🇸 🇺🇦@scott I don't and won't use any social media except the Fediverse, so if a restaurant doesn't have a real website with hours and their menu, there's very little chance I'll eat there. Amazing that quite a few restaurants don't understand this. EDIT: Okay, that's an overstatement, as I will eat at restaurants I discover on foot. But still, many restaurants have lost my potential business for lack of a website with a menu.
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
contranym