Johnny’s stressed out and nervous. His friend Clara (and secret crush of four years) is coming to town to visit from Vancouver and she’s agreed to meet Johnny for dinner. He knows this is his big shot to impress her so he wants to take her somewhere nice.
But the problem is Johnny doesn’t eat at fancy restaurants because they’re too expensive for his student budget and he’s pretty sure Clara has an extensive list of allergies. The occasion to meet Clara is too important to mess up by thinking his restaurant of choice is a good one only to find out it’s too expensive, not the menu he’s looking for or worse doesn’t accommodate to Clara’s allergies. So what’s a guy to do?
Johnny’s not the only one who faces this dilemma; I think many of us can agree that there’ve been occasions where we just can’t choose a restaurant. Case in point, my sister and I do a dinner club once a month and being the hungry students we are we toss around dozens of potential spots to go – what helps us decide? Checking out each restaurants’ menu. What’s the quickest way to do that? Online. My point? It’s absolutely critical in today’s web-based society for a restaurant to have its own website with their menu posted on it.
We’re a busy society. People don’t have time to jump restaurants because they don’t like the menu.
Also, allergies are a huge deal and still many restaurants don’t accommodate to such parties. For example, 529 Wellington (not that we’re all going there once a week) cooks all of its dishes in peanut oil – now that is something you need to know before going if one of your guests has a nut allergy. Luckily, however, 529 does have its menu posted online.
Furthermore, a restaurants website will indicate the prices of their dishes. I know I sure want to spare myself the embarrassment of making my reservation, opening up my menu and realizing I can’t even afford the soup du jour. Or perhaps worse, what if I open up my menu and realize I hate the soup du hour along with every other foreign-seeming item on the menu? No thanks, I’ll do my research before I go. Websites solve these issues for me.
Needless to say I think I’m beginning to exhaust my point. But allow me to point out one more. That is, depending on the time of day one is going to eat he or she may be time constrained. Perhaps they only have a one hour lunch break and want to grab something to eat. Well by just by looking at the types of dishes on the menu one can guess how long it may take to prepare the dishes and whether or not a reservation may be required. Both are things that a restaurant’s website can tell a potential guest.
Remember those things with phone numbers running down the pages called a phone book? The outdated use of them is like comparing talk radio to its original days of the Morse code. And the Morse code is exactly what filtering through a phone book feels like – Google is my preferred option.
Therefore I think restaurants should be including room in its budget to have a website set up for itself. Websites bring awareness to a restaurants existence, sell the potential guest on going there and avoid any hassles with the managers over misunderstandings with the menu selection, hours of operation, payment options or reservation requirements.
I know I rarely go to a restaurant without checking out its menu before. And if they think I’m going to walk around this big city checking out the menu on the outside of their business, they’re dead wrong. It’s February…in Winnipeg…it’s minus 7 million degrees. Instead I will type that magical website called Google into my laptop in my cozy warm house and see if the restaurant in question interests me. If there’s no website, I can almost guarantee that that restaurant is off my list.
Ron Brown, executive director for the Manitoba Cycling Association, agrees. When he goes for lunch with work, he says he always checks out the restaurant’s website before.
“If there’s no website,” he says, “we almost always don’t go.”
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