Rate my startup: MarksMenus.com | Hacker News Reader

Rate my startup: MarksMenus.com

8 pointsrsbrown13 comments

MarksMenus is "IMDb for restaurant menus".

We got tired of enduring out-of-date info, pdf downloads, blurry scans or long flash intros just to find a restaurant's menu.

Our goal is to create a reliable, comprehensive database of restaurant menus that allows for easy search and discovery of great places to eat.

We do this by allowing anyone (regular users or the restaurants themselves) to create and curate menu content.

We also enable the foodies in an area to recommend restaurants and dishes to make it super easy for others to quickly find something good.

Please check it out and let me know what you think. I'm linking you to our Memphis site (our company location), because that has the most interesting content at the moment.

http://marksmenus.com/cities/memphis

View on HN

Here are my thoughts on the domain (online menus and restaurant stuff). I am by no means an expert, and probably am not even typical.

I personally don't have trouble finding menus online, and I'm OK with opening a PDF to do it, just as long as finding that PDF doesn't take time (eg: if google returns a result for "mizu sushi 11211" that looks like it'll have a menu, I'm happy). In other words, it's much more a priority of finding any menu for the place in question than it is finding the best looking one. Especially if I'm hungry.

There are a couple of factors that determine which result I click on. Normally these things occur on a subconscious "blink-like" level, but I'll try to communicate them. Based on the Google results, I try to "feel out" which result is best. I'll avoid the restaurants own menu if the google snippet makes me think "there's probably flash" or "this website is going to suck". So, you may have an advantage there, if you can provide better looking search results than the restaurants themselves.

Probably the only other thing that would cause me to click on one search result over the other (since I can't easily judge the quality that the menus will be), is if one of them promised me user generated photos of the menu items as well. I'm not aware of any sites that currently do this. But, like I said before, I am by no means on expert on this topic.

Great feedback -- many thanks.

"... user generated photos of the menu items as well. I'm not aware of any sites that currently do this"

We do! User submitted content has been relatively slow, but we have an iPhone app and allow users to upload photos that way, as well as through the website.

I like the look of the actual menu pages, though I was overwhelmed a bit by the front page. And I really like the ratings of individual dishes.

Since user generated content is going to be the limiting factor, have you considered integrating something like the Yelp API onto your ratings/review section?

http://www.yelp.com/developers/documentation/phone_api

Might give you a bit more content at the restaurant level, "5 recommendations: 2 onsite, 3 offsite" though I've heard in the case of Yelp they have severe API restrictions.

Great suggestion -- I haven't seriously looked into integrating the Yelp API yet.

Do you allow custom layouts by restaurant? (Basically, I would like the layout of the menu to be similair to my restaurant menu. My special sauces are listed in a box in the middle. They are an additional $2.)

If I have 6 menu items that can have multiple $2 additions, how can I display that?

Our current implementation allows for multiple price points per dish (e.g., "cup: $1.99", "1/2 bowl: $3.99" "bowl: $4.99").

We will soon be releasing an upgrade to our menu editor that also allows for "add-on" options per dish (e.g., "add shrimp: $1.99") and category-level pricing (e.g., "build-your-own burrito: small: $4.99 / lg: $6.99")

If your dish doesn't need both price points and add-on options, you can achieve that in our current menu editor using the multiple price points structure.

Very cool stuff. I've toyed with the idea of trying to integrate menus into my app (iowacityaccess.com) and found it to be just too much content to handle. You should allow embeddable menus, both so restaurants can easily add a menu to their website and so I can :)

In fact, we do offer embeddable menus. We currently reserve that for paying restaurants but I'd be happy to talk about providing content for you.

scott -at- marksmenus.com

How does it handle a restaurant with mutliple locations (if I own a chain of 5 restaurants, etc)?

Do I have to create a new menu for each physical restaurant location?

What if I have a smaller selection at one of my 5 locations?

This is a potential weakness of our current implementation.

Because we are aiming at independently-owned restaurants, we have kept each entry separate. This means you do have to create a new menu for each location. We have plans to allow for menu-sharing for multiple locations, but I do want to keep the focus away from "chains". Defining exactly what constitutes a chain can be a gray area, though.

Maybe an intermediate solution would be a copy/clone option . . .

Can you mark items as vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, etc.?

This could be a big win for a niche.

Indeed we can. The problem is motivating our audience to crowdsource the data entry for this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com