My name is Auston Bunsen (http://twitter.com/bunsen), I’m the founder of Munchables. We’re a new service that aims to empower local restaurants with online ordering. I’m reaching out for your advice on this new venture.
We’re only available in Coral Springs, Florida, for the time being and I’ve created a page to help explain the service to restaurants. I was hoping I could get your perspective as a restaurant owner, here is the page:
In my opinion:
[list]the lettering on the graphic at the top of the page is difficult to read
the grey text in your descriptions is also hard to read
7% of the total bill is more than I would be willing to pay for this type of service when it is not totally integrated with my POS system.
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What makes you different than the multitude of venders who were at Pizza Expo who offer the same type of service?
Agree, the initial script on top of the photo is slightly uncomfortable to read. One feels as if they have to concentrate on it, and that’s not really what you want your customer to be doing here. I would suggest you want the customer to almost unconsciously be soaking up your information so that the whole site, and your product do in fact appear to be effortless.
Also…on the “about us” page. Your choice of photos for Mr. Radelat is poor and unprofessional. I would think you are trying to make a huge first impression. Whether you like it or not, your apparent youth does play against you slightly, to reenforce that prejudice with what may be taken as a Frat party photo sends the wrong message, at least to me. If you are launching a new, vibrant, professional service especially in a market that is becoming saturated with like products, you need to stick out. You need to SHOUT out what make me want to contact you. Clowning around isn’t doing it.
I’d also make your contact info much much more prevalent. Every page, same location, bold font. Don’t make the customer search you out
Finally. In this business, non-integration with ALL POS is a non-starter. What an owner is looking for is that service that eliminates having to input the order from a fax, email, or text. Make it happen out of sight, make it reasonable in price, and make it fail-safe. Then come knock on my door.
What makes you different than the multitude of venders who were at Pizza Expo who offer the same type of service?
It’s something we really need to think on in order to find the way to differentiate ourselves, because the market IS saturated. I’d say our biggest differentiator is that we push marketing for our restaurants, meaning Facebook ads, Google ads, Door Hangers & Flyers. I don’t know if any competitors are offering this?
Both of you guys touched on what I think is our biggest problem, we don’t have POS integration. My issue with this is that literally EVERY restaurant I go into has a DIFFERENT POS system.
Can you guys point me in the right direction to find the biggest / major POS providers in the industry? I’m anxious to start building out integrations so we can the most convenient over the long term!
This is the same story I heard over and over at Pizza Expo. In short everyone is doing it.
Check out the names listed in the POS forum. They are all talked about. Most of the big players are doing something similar to what you are attempting.
Thanks so much for all of the feedback & info. I pre-emptively took that initiative & have emailed about 7 different POS providers.
I’m definitely going to spend a lot of time thinking on how we can differentiate long term. In the short term, we have it easy because there are no centralized online ordering directories in my area.
I think you are in a very tough spot. I think that by now most of the major POS suppliers have fully integrated online ordering. Ours (Prism) links up with the POS system to recognize menu changes, special offers, coupons, tracks the delivery area and processes credit cards. There is no per-transaction fee or percentage at all… just a flat fee for the year that amounted to about 20 cents per order in the last 12 months.
With our average order of a little over $30 I do not see why I would look at a proposal to pay 10X as much for a much less comprehensive solution.