Urbanspoon is out to rescue online restaurant reservation. Even in the face of OpenTable virtual monopoly of online restaurant reservation, Urbanspoon’s track record and talent indicate that they should be taken seriously. Already, Urbanspoon’s online roots run deep. 10 million unique users visit the Urbanspoon website each month. 10 million people have downloaded the Urbanspoon application on their smart phones, feeding thousands of restaurant reviews, instantaneous reservations and restaurant information...

A month ago, I emphasized that participating in Groupon is no way to run a restaurant. That’s because if we take a step back from the madness, we will see that Groupon is no more than a short cut—an overnight solution meant to bring in an overwhelming number of customers. But short cuts, especially those as gimmicky as Groupon, rarely live up to their hype. For Groupon, the numbers are...

For some reason, the wrong idea about Yelp is floating around. It puts Yelp above criticism. But for however handy Yelp is, it isn’t what it could be. It isn’t concerned with bringing out the best in people. Yelp is a business, plain and simple. Yelp makes money; in fact the owners would have made hundreds of millions if Google had bought them last year. And who provides the information,...

Compared to reviews on Yelp, Urbanspoon, etc., food bloggers are considerably more reliable. In the blog format, an online visitor who consistently frequents their website is able to align their culinary opinions with the blogger whereas on Yelp a visitor has no way to determine if a review is fair or partial. But food bloggers are not exempt from the pitfalls of amateur reviewing. As we shall see, a food...

TweetDeck for Restaurants: Making Your Social Media Life Easier Your restaurant is doing the social media thing. From Twitter to Facebook to Foursquare and back again, it has become overwhelming and, as the fans and followers start coming in, the posts start to pile up. Your restaurant needs assistance managing all this information, and you need it at a low cost. That being said, actually posting effective information and running...

Okay, Groupon may be wonderful for customers. It lets them try new things at unheard of discounts. But what about the other side of the equation, like restaurants? Does it pay off? Sadly, it doesn’t. By the way, this criticism of Groupon isn’t one man’s opinion.  It’s based on a recent study by Utpal Dholakia of Rice University’s School of Business which exposed warning signs that should make a restaurant...

Shopkick is an offshoot of the Foursquare concept, but with several important improvements that may someday supersede the Foursquare model. So far, shopkick has already won the participation of several nationwide retailers like Best Buy and Target. Let’s first go over what it shares with Foursquare. It is a smart phone application that involves checking in at various participating stores/restaurants. Those who do are rewarded with specials, promotions and gift...

Beginning last year, Google sent out window decals across the country to 100,000 of the most locally searched businesses. These decals, which have on them QR codes, can be read by the camera of smart phones phone like an Iphone, those that run on the Android operating system, etc. Upon scanning the QR Code, which may be placed in the store window, the person is taken to that place’s website....