In this article I’m going to specifically focus on the subject of printed v online restaurant & pub menus.  I’m sure I’m not alone in receiving copious amounts of menu flyers in the post on a daily basis.  You know what it’s like – you seem to get more flyers than actual valid post!

If you’re anything like me you’ll throw those flyers away, as funnily enough you’re not ready to order a takeaway at 8.00am on a Tuesday morning whilst picking up the post in your dressing gown.  Then later (usually a lot later when you have a few friends around), you are pulling all the stuff out of the kitchen cupboards & draws trying to find that illusive up-to-date takeaway menu – it’s usually a fruitless exercise as the only menus to be found have offers ending a year ago – even the ones found in the printed directories can be up to a year old.

So how do we get over this modern-day problem, i.e. how can restaurants market their menus responsibly, and how can we lay our hands on relevant menus that are up-to-date at a minutes notice?  Well, it’s no problem if you like, and only eat Dominos as it seems they have the best menu and order process online.  However, if you’re looking to compare other restaurant menus then you either have to go looking on search engines to find their telephone numbers, and if you’re very lucky then they may even publish a link to their website, and subsequent online menu.  However, in most cases you’ll have to pick up the phone and ask them what they have, then try to work it all out and hope to receive the correct order.

Restaurants are now beginning to realise the power of the Internet and are starting to publish their menus on their own websites, however, in my experience this tends to be a one-off exercise and the menu is soon out-of-date.  This is usually because the website has been built by another company / person that charges for amendments, or the update process is too complicated, or it simply just gets forgotten.

So what’s the solution, i.e. how can restaurants publish a current menu, be able to amend it any time they want for free, and for Internet users to be able to compare restaurants in a uniform format with a link to detailed menus.  Well here at Wampit we think we’ve come up with an easy and cost effective process.  Basically, any food establishment can purchase our ‘document upload – menu’ product for a nominal £25pa, and in seconds upload their very own menu that is stored against their free Wampit listing.

Restaurants can either upload any existing menu in a PDF format, or create one from scratch in Microsoft Word document, save it as a PDF and then upload it.  This really simplifies the process and puts the restaurant in control of the publication of their own menu.  The restaurant can log back into their Wampit account management screen as many times as they like during the year, and upload a new up-to-date menu.  To make the most of this product they can also publish a link to the menu on Wampit in their other on-line or traditional print advertising.

As for us (the takeaway lover), no more out-of-date and old directory menus.  Let’s hope one day all our post will be menu flyer free – as of course we don’t want anything to distract us from those all important bills!

Please see our information page for more information or our help page to learn more about the process.

The following link is restaurant that has purchased and uploaded its Menu - Little India at Lovers Leap