As a business owner, you understand that you should only make an investment if you expect a return. Below we analyze the reasons for you to invest in a Web Presence for your restaurant in three ways: looking at the high-level benefits, analyzing the bottom line, and understanding the perspective of your guests.

:: At a High-Level ::
The following are high-level benefits that creating a Web Presence can help you achieve:

• Provide a background about your restaurant and build a brand
• Increase your customer base by gaining exposure to the entire city and ultimately the entire world
• Grow your take-out and delivery business which relies on guests having access to your menu and contact information remotely
• Meet your guests expectations that you are modern and capable
• Perform cross-promotions between the physical and the virtual world to offer specials
• Educate your guests on your restaurant, certain types of foods, or other topics
• Establish relationships and potentially an online community with your guests to help build loyalty

:: The Bottom Line ::
Looking purely at the numbers, we feel it is easy to justify an investment in a Web Presence for your restaurant. Lets look at an example using the following assumptions:

• You sign up for the basic package which provides a basic website and marketing at a cost of $150/yr
• Due to your new Web Presence and increased visibility, you receive one additional party of guests each month (a conservative estimate)
• An average party of two guests who each purchase an appetizer, entree, and drinks or dessert spend an average of $60 total
• In the course of a year, this results in $60 * 12 new visits, or $720 for the year, well above the $150/yr you are paying for the package.
• In this example, even if you only receive a new party every 2 months, you would show a return of $360 for the year. You would only need 3 new sets of guests each year to turn a profit from your investment
• Note that this does not consider the extra business you may also receive from these customers coming back to your restaurant, and the business you may receive from their word of mouth advertising if they like your establishment

:: A Personal Perspective ::
As one of the employees of GreatEating.net, I would like to offer my personal perspective on why I feel restaurants should have a website and a Web Presence. As an ex-consultant, me and my collegues traveled every week to different cities. Each day for lunch and dinner we would dine out. Since we were not familiar with the cities and didn’t have friends or family in the area to offer opinions, we turned immediately to the Internet.

Our first step would be to locate ourselves on Google Maps, then search for restaurants near us. From there, we would view the websites for each of the close results. We were just looking to get a brief idea of what type of restaurant the place was (social and noisy, quiet and relaxing, down-home or trendy, etc) and maybe get a peek of the menu to see what types of food they served. If a result did not have a website listing, we simply skipped it. We figured there was no reason to take a risk with some place we knew nothing about rather than somewhere we at least knew was still around, fit the mood we were in, and suited our taste.


If this business case makes sense to you, and you are interested in learning more about our services, please proceed to the Services page. Still unsure? Contact us via the email address on the Support page and ask for a consultation via phone