Does it matter how restaurants communicate online? Industry observers clearly think so. Of late the trade press has been full of sage web 2.0 wisdom, with Restaurant Magazine even publishing a 32-page online marketing supplement.
But then, clearly restaurants need all the help they can get. Rare is the restaurant that doesn't have a website these days. Even rarer is finding a good one. Elegantly designed and / or witty sites that deliver accurate information swiftly are at a premium. Earlier this month I had to gently point out to a Michelin-starred venue that someone had misspelled 'restaurant' in 28-point font on their homepage. That is how seriously many restaurants treat their websites.
Precisely what errors, on a website, might put you - the potential customer - off, may well be a matter of taste. Personally, I can tolerate the odd spelling mistake and, even, the occasional out-of-date menu. Neither inspires confidence, but restaurants are hectic places. Peripheral details can be overlooked. Plus, I am not sure there is a direct correlation between someone's ability to cook my tea and their punctuation. They're very different skills.
More damaging, to my mind, are websites which whether by omission or clunky design lack basic information. Lee Rosy's Tea is a nice cafe and Aumbry an interesting restaurant, but how would you know, when neither website carries a menu? Similarly, where are the prices, here, here or here? Is it the case - as it also seems to be at Le Gavroche - that if you have to ask, you can't afford it?
A clean, logical overall design and feel - or not - matters, too. Ideally, a website should be a visual representation of the restaurant concerned. Alimentum is described in the Good Food Guide (whose inspectors' top 2010 bugbears include "flash websites that conceal useful information") as a "slick, modern" restaurant. Can you equate that description with this website, the embedded video seemingly inspired by those in-house TV channels that advertise spa treatments and cabaret nights in resort hotels? Elsewhere, unappetising food photography is something of an internet epidemic.
If such sites make you sigh, however, this will make you cry. Click here and here. Now, how annoying is that piano sound? Sketch, meanwhile, has a notoriously ludicrous website which - granted - may well appeal to the sort of 'zany' people who eat there. As for everyone else, it will probably just make you want to smash your fist through your monitor.
Few of these websites, moreover, give you any reason to return. Given that interest in food, drink and the inner workings of the restaurant trade has never been greater and that most restaurants have a pool of knowledgeable individuals on site, it would seem natural for restaurants to blog alongside their main website. They could share insight, techniques, recipes, opinion, tasting notes, background on suppliers etc, and in the process build a sense of brand authenticity, community and shared passion. In many ways, such lifestyle businesses depend on communicating that enthusiasm to an audience who share their values.
Most restaurant blogs, however, are a bit tentative, or - note how quickly L'Anima's came and went - transparent PR. Let's hear it for Vinoteca, L'Ortolan and Lantana, who, not only maintain interesting, authoritative blogs, but who are intelligent enough to keep the hard sell to a minimum.
Facebook and Twitter offer similar opportunities, but only if restaurants recognise the quid pro quo. You want people to follow you? Then you've got to got to give them credible inducements. Galvin at Windows for example live video streamed an oyster and champagne tasting. If not 'events' and content, offer discounts. Manchester's Obsidian feeds its Facebook group with regular vouchers; the Red Pump Inn offers a free meal to one of its Facebook fans each month.
Following high-profile chefs - Mark Hix, Gordon Ramsay and Raymond Blanc among them - on Twitter may give certain foodies a shiver of excitement (personally, beyond the novel intimacy of it, their tweets seem as banal as anyone else's), but surely - in their speed, ease-of-use and directness - both Twitter and Facebook offer a far bigger opportunity to small, local operators who are delivering affordable, daily-changing menus. The most dynamic online chefs, are people like these, who see the Internet as a virtual chalkboard menu: a place to rave in (almost) real-time, to a local audience of regulars, about newly arrived ingredients, dishes they're preparing, that day's specials.
But are you buying any of it? Which restaurant websites do find most frustrating? Do you read any of the professional chefs' blogs? Who do you follow on Twitter, and why? And how long until - fashion being as fickle as it is - we see restaurants logging off altogether, and using word of mouth anonymity as a marketing gimmick?
