Restaurant Owners: Go Green – Put Your Menus Online.

by Jun Wu - Restaurant Proprietor / Writer

Al Gore has warned us about global warming in the hit movie An Inconvenient Truth. All the scientists acknowledge that we need to cut back on energy consumption and waste. Consumers are going organic and are favoring businesses that do more to promote environmentally friendly policies. Restaurants owners need to see the benefits of this trend – the customers want to patronize businesses that care about the environment.

One of the biggest costs and waste people see is the glut of menus that flood homes and apartments everywhere. Restaurants spend an incredible amount of their budget to print these paper menus, and then pay someone to distribute these to homes, where most of the homeowners see them as a nuisance and distraction. Making matters worst, the restaurants must periodically re-distribute these paper menus when their pricing structure changes. Money is required in every step of the process to create the menu by a printer, print each and every one, and then finally to pay someone to send these out.

Restaurant Technology

Finally, technology is available and restaurants need to be current with the times. The internet has been a medium that will fix this paper menu waste problem. Restaurant can easily subscribe to internet services like OnlineFoodMenus.com to have their menu posted on the internet. This particular service allows the restaurant owner to update and add menu pictures to their own restaurant site. Using this service, the owner can even have the orders taken on the internet and have them sent to him via fax, email, or cell phone text. You no longer need to hire someone to pass out flyers since OnlineFoodMenus has created a zip code portal where all the restaurants’ menus from that zip code are posted up. If your delivery customers in your neighborhood are hungry, they automatically know to visit their specific zip code web site to look for all menus. Or to be more customer-focused, you can just announce on your restaurant door that the menus can be viewed at your restaurant’s website, or at the neighborhood site, i.e. http://11358.onlinefoodmenus.com.

Speaking of websites, a research on restaurants from the suburbs shows that most restaurant owners are interested in this technology but are afraid to look into this technology. Luckily, the advent to programming has made the entire process of posting menus, changing menus, and taking orders very user-friendly. If you can email, you can have a website. Additionally, a lot of companies like OnlineFoodMenus.com have customer service that can perform the entire process for you. They take your menu, your logo, and create a custom site for your restaurant with its own custom www address. I’ve tried their service and the turn-around time is only about a day. It was amazing to see my own restaurant menu up on the internet in so short a time. And what’s more, the orders rolled in through my fax machine – all without me ever picking up the phone. All the orders were accurate because the customers have the menu in front of their computer screen so that they can see the menu pictures and take their time without me hanging on the phone.

Restaurant Success Story

Another of my colleagues, Stanley, got his restaurant online and the local newspaper did a glorious write up about how environmentally friendly they are, and I couldn’t believe the increase in business they saw. And now he has so many repeat customers, even though the paper only rated his food as so-so. What a difference going online made for Stanley and his Chinese restaurant!

So if you are a restaurant owner, or you know a restaurant owner, please ponder the benefits of posting your menu online. Using the internet in place of paper menus, you and your business can help out in saving the earth while increasing your business’s image and your business’s bottom line!