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Comment by jolan | Hacker News Reader

> I feel like our biggest challenge with this service is getting in touch with restaurant owners and convincing them of the value of having a mobile website, most of them don't seem to be particularly interested in technology.

I could see that being the case. I don't think they understand how infuriating it is on the consumer side.

Maybe publish some success stories citing the amount of increased revenue.

Another idea would be to build your own index/app of restaurants with mobile friendly sites so there's double incentive for them to sign up.

> Unlimited promotions, events and discounts with scheduling

Maybe you have this already, but a local restaurant here has a promotion where you sign up via email/SMS and they raffle a free pizza every weekend. Since they're also a bar, this helps get people in the door and spend more money.

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+1 for this idea. Maybe you want to consider giving free service to some early adopters in return for the ability to analyze the impact on your business. Ideally, you would spread this out across a few different target demographics, like pizza joints, Chinese/ethnic, late-night, etc., so that your potential customers would identify with the results.

Even the most conservative restaurant owner is going to be swayed by a clear financial benefit.

Also, convincing potential customers to take the plunge is the kind of task that (good) salespeople excel at.

That whole vertical idea is brilliant: if we could convince a handful of pizza joints it would give other like restaurants a high level of motivation to join them. What type of restaurants do you think we should target? Who would most benefit from a mobile site?

Off the top of my head, I would suggest:

-- restaurants that do a lot of take-out or delivery business (pizza places, Chinese/ethnic restaurants, lunch places in financial districts of major cities). When people want delivery food, they need a menu on-hand.

-- restaurants near colleges/universities. High usage of smartphones, lots of eating out.

-- restaurants in areas with particularly high smartphone market penetration (Bay Area, New York City, Boston, Seattle)

A good menu/take-out order system for restaurants is something I've been thinking about on and off since I was in grad school (and that's been cough over a decade now).

Great suggestions, thank you. Would love to target the Chinese takeout market, that's spectacular, although the restaurants we've spoken to so far in that corner are somewhat frugal/take more convincing :)

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