New Website Matches Restaurants to Patrons
Hungry people have a single source for menus, pictures, descriptions, and prices.
Twenty years ago it was simple. Restaurant owners would buy an ad in the Yellow Pages and open their doors the next day. Today, it takes more than a directory ad to bring people to a booth or table; it takes an expanding presence on the Internet. One entrepreneur couple believes they know how to do that better than anyone else. Their solution is MenuWho.com.
Chris Penhale, co-owner with his wife Janna of MenuWho.com, holds up the pizza box sales kit he and his wife created. Penhale worked with Joliet Junior College's Illinois Small Business Development Center on a number of start-up plans.
"Eating is one of my favorite things to do," said Chris Penhale who is co-owner of MenuWho.com with his wife Janna. That love of eating led to frustration when the young couple could not find a single source of restaurant information online. Their frustration led to MenuWho.com where patrons can find the restaurant that will match their culinary desires. It has become a website that does more than provide online reviews.
We wanted to get away from posting live reviews," said Penhale. "Instead, we give restaurant customers the ability to write surveys that go directly to restaurant owners who can read them and take appropriate action." According to Penhale, the goal is to provide a restaurant with an Internet presence that allows visitors to find them, download a menu, and view a few professionally-shot photographs of their dining area. It is designed to give restaurant patrons a place to find a new dining experience or order a great meatball sandwich.
"I was really impressed with the business concept and how well thought out it was," said Brian A.Thompson, business analyst for Joliet Junior College's Illinois Small Business Development Center. "When I first met them, they brought in their sales promotion kit which was a well-designed package that was surprisingly inexpensive to produce and very effective."
Penhale's promotional package is a pizza box with a label on the top showing the MenuWho.com logo and contact information. Inside the box is a series of bold simply designed cards that explain the overall service. "Almost everyone opens the box and reads the material," said Penhale who does most of the selling. His wife Janna coordinates all the details and oversees the day-to-day operations.
"I got a lot of good advice from Brian," said Penhale. "It is good to know that I can talk to him; it eliminates the feeling of being alone."
Creating the website and the overall business service did not happen right away. As with most ideas, it started out as a foggy dream that got clarified as the Penhale couple worked on it. "I did a lot of thinking while driving, talked to my wife about it, and made more and more changes to it," said Penhale. Part of that process involved adding more than web services to the business. MenuWho.com provides restaurants with menu design and printing, specialty advertising services, and a variety of other promotional tools designed to help restaurants bring in more patrons.
"While not all Internet businesses succeed, I believe this one has tremendous potential," said Thompson. "It fulfills the basic requirement of any business which is to fill a need. MenuWho.com does that by helping restaurants and patrons find each other. It is sort of an 'e-Harmony' for people who like to eat out."
The Illinois Small Business Development Center at Joliet Junior College is one of the small business service providers in the Illinois Entrepreneurship Network and is funded in part through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Small Business Administration and the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.