Sometimes the same old restaurants get old and you want to find something new. It’s easy to do some research in big cities with the help of CitySearch and Yelp, and even easier to find websites for larger restaurants like The Cheesecake Factory to help you figure out if the food selection is what you’re looking for. But what about those smaller, family-owned restaurants that get lost in the shuffle because they don’t have a website?Now there is a solution for them: Letseat.at.
Letseat.at is a free online website builder for the restaurant industry that doesn’t require any knowledge of HTML or code. After registering with the site, restaurant owners can create and maintain their restaurant’s website with the help of a simple admin console. And although all this is possible with other free services like Wordpress or Blogger, what makes letseat.at special is what it does specifically for the restaurant owner.
Aside from the ability to customize the page to their liking, restaurant owners can use Letseat.at to generate printable coupons, upload menus that can be tied to an RSS feed giving daily specials, and choose from a few dozen website themes to get the site up and running as quickly as possible.
Each restaurant website is parked on Letseat.at’s servers and can be accessed by surfing to Letseat.at/Restaurantname.
The main issue facing Letseat.at is the stiff competition. The space is rife with review services like CitySearch, Yelp, and Kudzu, which let users tell others about their experiences at various restaurants in the area, and sites like menupages.com and crazymenu.com make it easy for patrons to find restaurant menus regardless of website availability. As if that’s not enough competition, restaurants can still make their own websites for free with help from Wordpress and Blogger (to name just a few) and it’ll be difficult for Letseat.at to gain traction unless it can gain access to those restaurant owners who want an online presence in the cheapest and quickest way possible.
Rather than simply allow restaurants to build one-off sites, Letseat.at eventually should also offer hungry consumers a single place to search across all of the restaurant sites on its platform.
Letseat.at is currently in public beta and is its doors are open for restaurant owners to try out the site.
I would’ve never thought reataurants would have websites. it’s not like they can deliver food…lol
That’s a great idea! However they should allow users to use their own domain names (probably for a small fee).
they could simple forward /mask the sub domain
“Letseat.at is a free online website builder for the restaurant industry that doesn’t require any knowledge of HTML or code.”
So this means no more dodgy Front page type sites?
If so, awesome!
Sounds tasty…lolz
On a serious note,doesn’t look sustainable and great idea…
There are ‘n’ number of free site builder websites like wix,snappages etc..One can build the website from there and list the site on popular restaurant directories/sites…
Their success heavily depends upon their extra efforts and luck.
You are forgetting all the other free online website creators like jimdo.com, weebly.com, synthasite.com. They offer more functunality and work way better – also for restaurants.
people are lazy (especially me). I have only tried weebly but having done so, it requires a fair amount of user input. By the look of letseatat, you just type in the menu, a few pics and select a theme and you’re done. That is much more appealing than dragging a title in, then a paragraph, then choosing two columns over 3 etc. By targeting restaurants, they can pre-define all the common content – there is no need for weebly type functionality in this case imo.
Im sure you own this site too Ed. It must suck to have to write to all the naysayers. This idea won’t work though, seriously. Unless you really like to eat and want to go on a road trip to talk to all of the lazy, late adopter who don’t have a web site, then this business is a sure set failure without solid revenue potential. The thought was nice, but when it comes down to it, there is a reason why there are so many restaurants without a web site and why no one is going after them. This is an easy attackable area, if it had any money in it, a legitimatge entrepreneur would have taken it on. Better luck next idea.
sorry jason – I have nothing to do with this site. I also have no opinion either way on how successful it will be in terms of revenue. My only point was aimed at Matt and that I believe there is a strong demand for small business owners to use products such as “letseatat” as a way to publish their product online without the hassle of having to (almost) learn a new app like the ones Matt mentioned. The “letseatat” people could easily re-package that concept for another industry much like the guy who sold “nursing link” and that police site and “art bistro” to Monster for $60m.
It remind of a service that started that allow people to order gourmet food from restaurants… sound interesting but with so many websites in the same line, it will be hard to distinguish
Freewebs.com too! Probably one of the only online website creators that actually makes money.
Menupages.com ??
LetsEat is interesting, only because of the opportunity to feed coupons and deals. Yet they’re well late to the game.
If you’re looking for something that can easily manage menus, which is the hardest task for a restaurant, and still provide the deals, http://www.SandwichBoard.com has provided that solution.
Launched in February, SandwichBoard was designed as a way for restaurant owners to not only create an online presence, but establish an extension of their brand identity. With several customizable template options, SandwichBoard delivers a simple to use CMS, that will dynamically change the menu, adjust daily specials, and promote deals as needed. The best part, is that it was designed to allow restaurateurs to focus on running great restaurants, and not worry about managing their Web site.
Sounds good for smalls restaurants
The thing is – you would need critical mass to really succeed .. The easiest thing to do .. is build the restaurants websites for them … All of them ..
This way it becomes a worth while destination for a diner because they can see thousands of restaurants ..
restaurants have the worst web pages {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/KpKhJFsHbc_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”restaurants have the worst web pages ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/NMTcGl4Sbt”}}}
Brilliant! WordPress is a wonderfully easy platform for DIY folks and this creates an opportunity for food photographers and WordPress theme experts to help individual restaurants make their sites look different and special. I’m all for it.
Very good idea! Good luck.
I think it’s brilliant! Yes, yes, there are plenty of free site builders out there, some of which are very good and much bigger. However, Letseat.at’s competitive edge isn’t the product itself. It’s the marketing.
They are catering to (pun intended) a specific market that may or may not be aware of what can be done with Wordpress or others. Remember, people like when products are specifically made for them. If word gets out in the restauranteur community about Letseat.at, then that might be all they need to gain market share within their target market.
HungryZone.com is a recent Indian startup in a related area to LetsEat. It has info on restaurants in various cities (of India only) and lets you search for a particular food item you’d like to eat (in a selected city), then lists the restaurants from its list that match. Shows the address and other relevant information about each restaurant. Users can read and write reviews about the restaurants. I read in a newspaper that it is profitable. Site is a bit light on features as of now, nor does it cover too many Indian cities. But an interesting concept – I’d been wishing for something like this myself, as a user.
- Vasudev
jugad2.blogspot.com
This is smart. I know there was a company out to Philadelphia that did something similar a few years ago called thekalon.com, I believe they launched the app across a few local restaurants, not sure what happened though.
I think websites are things of past. They are so many of them now. The space is very crowded. As someone pointed out, it would boil down to marketing and partnerships in this space.
This is a cool concept! I’ve been using all kinds of CMS solutions for my clients these past few years, and this is a good alternative for those cafes and restaurants who are overwhelmed by the big $ websites they may not need.
In 15 mins I had created a new site for a local cafe:
http://www.letseat.at/cafenext
I spotted a few things I’d like to have control of, but I understand that’s not possible with a free solution like this.
I really want to be able to turn off LetsEatAt’s google ads down the right of every page, so hopefully they’ll work out how to do that soon, possibly for a small upgrade fee.
The solution is very simple and straightfoward, and I’m sure this will be find lots of customers.
Well done to the LetsEatAt team! and to Michael and TechCrunch for giving me exciting technology to read about over breakfast every morning here in Sydney, Australia
Cheers
Teena
http://A-Night-in-Paris.com
This has been tried before and it went nowhere. If this can hang around for another decade or so for younger more Web-savvy users to take over restaurants, it might work — but by then Google et al will have the same thing.
@Rationality… Who tried this before?