Restaurateurs are smarter than this. Right?

I consider myself a foodie, but not in the traditional sense of the word. I'm not regularly seeking out the latest Thomas Keller creation or José Andrés' unique brand of molecular gastronomy on a regular basis. I enjoy a well prepared burger or some solid french toast just as much. That said, I fully appreciate a good chef's imagination and skill, and I always pay attention to the thought and detail that goes into planning a restaurant's aesthetic and physical experience. Philadelphia icon and restaurateur Stephen Starr likens dining to a theater production. The vibe of the place you eat in is just as important as the food, and I agree wholeheartedly.

Any good restaurateur (who doesn't have to be a chef themselves) scrutinizes every aspect of his or her business - from conceptualizing, to scouting locations, to cost control, to hiring quality people, to sourcing fresh ingredients. But those are only pieces of the puzzle. A successful restaurateur is also a professional marketer. They understand where the opportunities are. They are able to execute their concepts and effectively differentiate themselves from competitors. And they are nimble - capable of adjusting strategies to serve the fickle dining public. Through careful, consistent application of these principles, they start to establish themselves as a brand - a brand they can eventually introduce into other markets.

If they aren't able to do this sort of thing themselves, presumably they are hiring firms that do such things for them, like Bullfrog & Baum.

I have watched the dining revolution unfold in this city right before my eyes. I thank recent Philadelphia-based visionaries like Stephen Starr, Jose Garces, Marc Vetri, Daniel Stern, Michael Solomonov, Leigh Maida and Brendan Hartranft, Audrey Claire Taichman, Chris Scarduzio, William Reed and Paul Kimport, Tom Peters & Fergus Carey for giving my city what it really lacked. Variety.

Being a principal of Happy Cog, a web design agency, perhaps you know where the focus of this post is headed. I'm not the first to write about this, and I won't be the last. It's 2010. I cannot for the life of me understand why so many smart restaurateurs (or the agents that work on their behalf) simply fall flat on their face when it comes to their online strategy. While I believe their intentions are genuine, many simply don't understand the values of accessibility and usability. It frustrates the hell out of me - not so much as the president of a standards-based web design company, but as a human being.

My iPhone Experience

Consider this scenario - one that I've been in many times. You're on the go, and you're considering someplace to eat. Somewhere new. You want to check out the menu in advance, or perhaps you just need basic information like location and their reservations policy. If you're like me, you fire up your iPhone. You Google the restaurant name. If you're lucky, you get the Google listing containing the basic facts:

So now you know where they are, and if you click through to the details on Google, you can see some reviews and basic restaurant details. But if you're like me, you want more. You want to see the restaurant site itself. I assume that the restaurant's site will have the most up-to-date information, menus, beers on tap, etc. And why shouldn't I have that assumption? It makes sense.

Let's see what we get when we pull up the website for Stephen Starr's amazing Barclay Prime steakhouse:

Well there you go. Lego brick and nothing else.

Here's a zoomed-in view of the brick, which signifies that the technology (or plug-in) that the site was built upon is not supported by the iPhone. In this case, that's the Adobe Flash Player. The iPhone never has, and never will, support the Flash Player. Neither will the new iPad. There are well documented reasons for this.

More times than not, if you don't see that little brick when pulling up a restaurant website on your iPhone, you'll see a miniature version of their website (not optimized for mobile display). So you end up zooming in and scrolling around to try and find the menu link. Eventually, you find it. You click on it, and then you discover the menu is embedded in a PDF file that needs to download, and many times it's a poorly optimized PDF that takes forever to download. It's infuriating.

This is the worst case scenario. Both a site built requiring the Flash Player and a PDF menu download (actually, two of them!). The triple threat.

Apple and Flash

For some perspective, my talented multi-disciplinary friend and former co-worker Dan Mall posted on the Apple vs. Flash dilemma. In this post he makes the following point:

Some of you are fighting this battle ignorantly. You’re using Apple’s opinion to justify your personal perspectives as gospel. I’d wager that a large majority of you reading this are happy to see Flash go. Yet, you don’t fully understand it. If you haven’t opened Flash since version 4, you don’t fully understand it. If you haven’t had client work that explored the possibility of using Flash, you don’t fully understand it. If you’re only reacting to executions of Flash...

Dan, you're right. I haven't opened Flash since version 4, maybe even 3. And one failed attempt at 'tweening' would make me quit and jump into the safety of a warm, cozy spreadsheet. But I'm not a hater, and I'd wholeheartedly agree I'm not immersed in ActionScript or the intricacies of the Flash UI. I do know that Flash, when implemented appropriately, is an extremely powerful tool, so no debate there.

But here's where the rubber meets the road. Apple is purposely nixing Flash-generated content from their strategy. That's their choice, and you simply can't ignore a decision made by a company that has passed Microsoft in market valuation, whether or not you agree with the politics behind it. My argument isn't from a practitioner's standpoint, it's from a business perspective. If you are a restaurateur, you can perform enough basic research to know that:

Apple saw a large jump in iPhone shipments - moving 8.8 million units (up 31.6 percent from the 7.3 million phones it shipped in 2009)
Apple's share of the smartphone market rose another 2 points to 28% in the first quarter, according to Nielsen
80% of iPhone users say they want their next device to run the iPhone OS, compared with 70% Android, 47% BlackBerry and 34% Windows Mobile users
40% of iPhone users make over $100,000 a year

That says to me that if your content won't display on an iPhone, you might as well be physically locking your restaurant door on 28 out of 100 people slinging a smartphone. Those 28 people could have ordered the kobe cheesesteak, dontcha know.

Apple chose this path. We don't have to all agree with it, but it's done. One can argue the merits or drawbacks of the decision or scrutinize what it's doing to the developer community. But from an entrepreneur's perspective, you have to accept it and strategize accordingly.

Other smartphones

I don't live in a vacuum, and I know there are a ton of other smartphones out there. I also know that the Flash Player is starting to appear on them. Android 2.2 Froyo (the latest Android OS update) was rolled out for the Nexus One towards the end of May. And yes, Froyo supports the public beta of the Adobe Flash Player 10.1 software. Early reviews have been mixed. It's important to remember that this is brand new stuff, so things will work themselves out one way or another.

And, as Happy Cog's Technology & Development Director Mark Huot pointed out to me, even with Flash Player on Android, users will still suffer from the fact that most restaurant websites were designed for a mouse and keyboard interaction, not a touch-based interaction. So there's that.

What's a restaurateur to do?

Educate yourself. You can start with the aforementioned Dan Mall's Flash and Standards: The Cold War of the Web and Semantic Flash: Slippery When Wet on A List Apart. And this article has some good points if you're new to the game. Then, I suggest working with a web designer or developer that understands the variables in play, and can produce accessible content for you that's every bit as rich as you want it to be, yet doesn't exclude the very market you're trying to reach.

Also, don't ignore emerging technology trends. They can be game changing, and those who adapt will have a leg up. Do your research.

And for the sake of all that's holy, please stop with the music on your site. I'm not going to feel the vibe of your joint by having the poo scared out of me by your Coltrane song because my speakers were cranked up too loud. Same with the Flash intros Mr. *cough* Starr *cough*.

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Update 15 July 2010

Hey restaurateurs, the iPhone ain't going away, either.

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Update 16 September 2010

Looks like a lot of the firms that create digital experiences themselves don't seem to get the mobile thing either.

Jun 09, 2010

Nate Eagle said...

I think there's an important point left to be made: the cost of providing additional, alternative content for mobile/non-Flash browsers is not that significant, once the need for it is perceived.

If a restaurant perceives its all-Flash site to be of value, I say: let it keep it. But use a Content Management System to serve it content so that you can easily build alternative views for this content to serve up to devices and other browsers.

Restaurant sites are particularly fine examples of sites that are not so prohibitively large that it takes an immense investment to provide alternative means of access to content.

I'm not sure there's any need for a Flash vs. other stuff debate here: if restauranteurs understood how much return they could receive from providing content optimized for mobile browsers, they could easily add this content to their existing sites.

Shane said...

Great post, Greg. Completely true, too. I get the feeling that a freelance web designer could walk into most of the high-end restaurants in their city carrying your article and make a pretty good living for the next few years building standards-based sites.

In fact, that gives me an idea....

DIBS.

Beth said...

I had to forward this on to a restaurant I love in my hometown. So often I'm out and want to get a restaurant's hours (or phone number to make a reservation) and I get the "Too Bad Lego Brick" instead. Such a let down.

Naz Hamid said...

Great entry Greg. Oddly enough, the restaurants that have the cheap old-school HTML-only websites seem to be just fine versus their bigger, fancier, Flash-driven brethren. An odd irony.

Personally, my concept of a great restaurant website would be to have the front page be an all HTML menu. Masthead with restaurant details up top — address (map link), phone, hours, reservations (yay/nay and if applicable an OpenTable or other online system link).

At the bottom, notes on the restaurant, like a colophon, with the chef information.

The menu itself? Dishes with lightbox or similar technology that show photos of the food.

Make it printer-friendly (print CSS) so users and the restaurant can print it right off the website.

I understand that this last point is why PDF's are prevalent: this is the actual restaurant menu in most cases and when that gets updated, they fire off a PDF for the site instead of updating an online version. I don't see why it couldn't work the other way.

Karin said...

I agree with your point that these decisions should be business driven. I'm just wondering if the restaurant owners are in a position enter the conversation. Do their site developers inform then that they are excluding their Apple mobile based customers if they agree to the (overly) pretty Flash site?
I am one of the Apple only users who are in a high income bracket potential customers you have described, and I do make many of my dining decisions on-the-fly, using my iPhone. If I can't figure out what the menu, or whatever other piece of information I need at the moment, I will simply move on to another restaurant.

Jay Fanelli said...

Here in Pittsburgh, we were heavily involved in the development of soon-to-be-opening Salt of the Earth, maybe the most anticipated restaurant opening in Pittsburgh history. To accompany the launch of the website + identity, we wrote a post outlining, among other things, what's wrong with restaurant websites, which covers much of the same conceptual ground you've covered here.

To boil it down, many restaurant websites are the combination of two unfortunate factors: misguided goals and low budget. Taken alone, each can easily drag down a website project. Together? A perfect storm.

Jun 10, 2010

Greg Hoy said...

Nate - I agree that Flash shouldn't be taken off the table if it can contribute to a compelling experience. In that instance, I also fully agree alternate content needs to be served for mobile (or at least the iPhone).

Naz - Couldn't agree more with your assessment. The menu is the most important single piece of content a restaurant has. Make it front and center.

Karin - My point is that restaurant owners *need* to be informed. They need to put themselves in the position to enter the conversation. The moment they become disconnected from the marketing of their business is the moment the business starts to run away from them. This applies to any industry, really.

Jay - thanks for posting. You beat me to it. You guys did a bang-up job on that, and I knew there was something I forgot to link to.

tet3 said...

I think it's important to move beyond the mobile/iPhone issue into the many other reasons that all-Flash sites (which the two highlighted above are) are completely stupid. Neither of those sites does anything that couldn't be done easily with HTML. Barclay Prime's "restaurant tour" is a series of 3 static images - there are no menu pictures beyond a couple samples, no embedded audio or video content that adds value or information (Barclay Prime has music which has to be silenced with a poorly contrasted button) . Flash means no bookmarking beyond the front page, no zoomability for access, no copy-paste into email to friends, etc. Flash can be a useful tool for enhancing web sites, but if these restaurants are starting out with vendors who recommend an all-Flash site, then they are dead out of the gate - their consultants are people who don't give a crap about standards or accessibility on desktop browsers - how can you possibly hope for them to get current advice on mobile?

PS: A multi-course menu for a set price is neither the predecessor to another menu nor (I hope) fully prepared ahead of time, as the idiotic "pre-fix menu" or "pre-fixe menu" imply. It is offered at a fixed price, or "prix-fixe" in French. Use English or, if you are a restaurant with Continental influences, the correct French.

Shiva said...

flash is pretty much the de facto standard. The fact that Apple refuses to use flash certainly doesn't play into your favor if the use of images is your primary reason for using an iPhone.personally I have a Motorola droid and I absolutely love it. This is just another situation that is similar to Microsoft and HTML 5. Everyone is beginning to make websites utilizing HTML 5 and Microsoft is absolutely worthless in that respect. That is one of the reasons that they are now losing market share. You have to wonder if Microsoft, like Apple, really gives a hoot. This Cannot be dumped on the end-user or the restaurant owner, it must start at the supplier of the operating systems of the phone to you buy. If they won't play ball, find another phone.