Successful Restaurant Websites

In the increasingly sophisticated arena of online ordering, Pizza Hut, the most searched-for restaurant website on the Web, offers a Virtual Waiter feature to compliment their existing one-click and mobile ordering features.  This feature adds value to the customer experience by providing “smart” menu recommendations for dishes they may enjoy, while also providing Pizza Hut with the opportunity to promote new items or “bundling” complimentary dishes together.

“The “virtual waiter” technology gathers data from millions of online orders and suggests menu items that best match customers’ orders. Whether it’s pairing an order of WingStreet chicken wings with a pepperoni-topped Pizza Mia pizza, or adding breadsticks to accompany a Stuffed Crust Veggie Lover’s® Pizza, pizzahut.com will now instantly analyze customer food selections with similar orders to suggest the most popular mealtime combinations.”

“We have a very savvy customer base when it comes to the Internet, so we want to make sure we’re constantly innovating online,” said Bernard Acoca, director of digital marketing for Pizza Hut. “At the same time, we want to make sure we’re not just creating a bunch of virtual bells and whistles for the sake of innovation; all the upgrades we make to pizzahut.com enhance the customer’s ordering experience in a meaningful way.”

Pizza Hut Announces Virtual Waiter Technology Designed to Enhance Customer Experience (Franchising.com)
 

It’s rare enough to find a simple, effective restaurant website.   Rarer still do we find this in a chain restaurant.  However, the New England chain Bickford’s Grille packs a lot of good information into a consistent package.  It can be a bit text-heavy, but they have made revenue generating features such as Gift Card purchase and catering easy to find.   They have nicely incorporated imagery into the site.  Integrating customer quotes into the Comments page was also a nice touch.

Bickford’s Grille

“Driven by curiosity and customer demand, Marc Geman, CEO of the Spicy Pickle restaurant chain, sent 30 of his top-selling dishes to a testing lab for nutritional analysis. It cost him about $2,500, but he learned everything about each dish, from calories to sodium content, which he then posted on the Spicy Pickle website.”

In addition, research shows that diners favor transparency when it comes to nutritional information. 

“A survey by food services giant Aramark found that 83% of diners want restaurants to make nutritional information available.”

Would You Eat 2,900-Calorie Cheese Fries? (CNNMoney/Fortune)