Zondar! Nerds in Food Land

Just a few things we’ve been reading on planet Zondar recently. Yes we are still alive thanks for asking.

The topic of restaurant websites being awful has come up a bit, with some lively discussions in the comments:

Matthew Stibbe at Bad Language offers a take on this: Why are restaurant websites so awful?

Portland Food and Drink asks What Is It About Restaurant Websites? The short answer? They suck not least because they all use flash and publish pdf menus that are out of date.

Yes yes. This is typical of a sector that is techno-uneducated. That’s what everyone was doing in the 90s when they took their first steps online. It’s a standard mistake.

But what this really says is that the food and beverage sector is behind the times, that’s all.

While this is certainly true for restaurant operators, there are a huge number of foodies on twitter these days. These people don’t really seem to be the restaurant owners but more the social media butterflies who go to the markets for the best produce and blog their recipes, tweet what restaurants and cafes they visit and use location toys like Four Square and the slightly snazzier Gowalla which is probably what people poking their iPhones are playing with while waiting for their takeaway coffee.

So the food and beverage industry is highly polarized when it comes to internet technology. Maybe social media is the key in this inherently social world of food?

Its really hard to find a cafe site that doesn’t suck. I think the best one around here is the Single Origin site, but even that wont give me a feed from their news posts.

Command Shift 3 show a few cool cafe sites that have won more that 70% of fights:

For even worse try a command shift 3 search for caterers.

All cafe and catering sites must suck.

This incredible chef Heston Blumenthal has an awesome cooking series called Kitchen Chemistry. Well worth checking out…

Heston’s incredible creations shows there is still hope our food mash up dreams. That kid at school who had ice-cream and ketchup..? Genius.

Heston uses science to create magnificent food. His Michelin Three Star restaurant Fat Duck, has been voted best restaurant in the world.

An interview on runningrestaurants.com with Scott Wise from Scotty’s Brewhouse gives insight into why and how he took his business online:

• More orders are received online than on the phone.
• Online ordering is easier to up-sell and its not forgotten by wait staff
• Integrated with the POS system
• “couple of thousand” US dollars to set up
• %5 of each order goes to his online ordering platform provider
• More accurate orders - reduces chance of human error
• Perfect for the college kids (mobile internet ready)
• Remembers orders so the second time is quicker
• Pre-ordering (order on Sunday for Thursday when you pick the kids up after school)
• Office administrator uses an invite to send a link around the office - each person does the order themselves. Because the job of the administrative assistant becomes easier, more likely to keep their business because of a competitive advantage.
• Integrated with call centre so people miles away process the order online  (Eliminates labour costs). Scott mentions this didn’t work very well the people who took the orders were rude and didn’t know the menu well.
• People are not left on hold so don’t go elsewhere.
• How to spread the word of online… Within the four walls because the captive audience are your customers. Put up a signs. Email to all people on the DB. Some radio, no print or TV. Use the website.
• Press releases
• Capturing customers information in much more depth than in the past; name, email, order history, great for marketing. Scotty uses birthday and anniversary, birthday person brings friends who pay and may become repeat customers.
• Find out geographic location of patrons. How long since they haven’t ordered, get in touch to ask why…
• Makes reporting on customers a lot easier.
• Helps you know who your top 50 - 100 customers are

Why should you not get into online ordering? Small operators who are not interested in growth. Those interested should understand that setup can take a long time. If you want to stay how you are then fine - if you want to try and be more successful then explore new technologies.

www.scottysbrewhouse.com or MyFace & Spacebook

The interview also mentions the great Australian restaurant chain (No, wait its American!) Outback for its super easy to use online ordering system. Though when I checked the Outback system was down.

The ABS published a report in 2003/2004, titled: 8655.0 - Cafes and Restaurants, Australia, 2003-04

Oldish news but the latest I’ve found so far. From the report:

At the end of June 2004 there were a total of 15,083 businesses operating in cafe and restaurant services in Australia.

“At the end of June 2004, 51.8% (7,820) of businesses in cafe and restaurant services had access to the Internet, while 20.7% (3,126) had a web presence.”

• During 2003-04, income generated by businesses in cafe and restaurant services was $10,129.6m, which represented an average of $671,600 per business. Total expenses for this period: $9,733.2m.
  
• During 2003-04, the operating profit before tax for these businesses was $404.4m, resulting in an operating profit margin of 4%.

Yah right! How many of these businesses declare all income?!?! [sic]

• Three quarters of cafe’s and restaurants were based in metropolitan areas.
• More than a third of all cafe and restaurant services businesses were licensed.
• Unlicensed cafe and restaurant services businesses accounted for 21% of the total.
  
• Most of the rest were BYO
• Catering businesses accounted for the other 11.9% of all businesses.
• During 2003-04 businesses predominantly involved in the provision of cafe and restaurant services generated a total of $10,129.6m in income. Cafe and restaurant businesses accounted for 69.9% ($7,085.1m) of this income and catering businesses 30.1% ($3,044.6m).

That is interesting that Catering businesses are pulling 30 % of the income but accounting for only 11% of the businesses, does this make Catering more lucrative?

The break down of turnover for cafes and restaurants is shown below:

At the end of June 2004, there were 188,102 persons working in cafe and restaurant services. Cafe and restaurant businesses accounted for 76.1% (143,171 persons) of total employment and catering businesses 23.9% (44,932 persons).

Caterers pull a third of the income from a quarter of the employees

I thought Melbourne had more cafes/ restaurants per capita than Sydney?? At least according to the graph below, Victoria seems to have less than NSW. Sydney NSW have 10% more people with 15% more cafe/restaurants…

This guy arrived with a printed coffee order at the cafe this morning. Could have been from a spreadsheet, it had around 10 coffees on it. He flashed it, “Can i just leave this with you?” The order was transferred to lids and queued up…

Someone spent some time at a computer to get that order together, they could have just emailed it. The Cafe then printed it on to cup lids, 10 mins later the guy rocks up to collect his tray of coffees for colleagues. Cafe invoices him or even better his company through online payment. Relationship sorted!

Today “Atlassian” is having a team building event “Cutlassian” the team tipped to win is “ragged arsed rovers”.

The best motivation for work has to be doing something you love. My brother works at Atlassian where they take a Google approach to the work environment. The lucky web workers have a team building event every quarter and spend the day running around the city collecting photos with strange landmarks, searching for trinkets and lining up friends for favours like getting posted on blogs, all in the name of team building. Don’t think they have an espresso machine in the office yet although they do have a music room with guitars and amps all set up for a lunchtime jam.

Interesting list on Web Worker Daily.

The only one we have out here is Starbucks, and the coffee there…? Though I heard on FBI last night Starbucks have a new compilation with a Sonic Youth track. Interesting angle from a chain like that…