Online menus

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Websites featuring online restaurant menus have been on the Internet for nearly a decade. In recent years, however, more and more restaurants outside of large metropolitan areas have been able to feature their menus online as a result of this trend.

Contents

[edit] Connection With Online Food Ordering

Several restaurant-owned and startup online food ordering websites already featured included menus on their websites, yet due to the limitations of which restaurants could handle online orders, many restaurants were left invisible to the Internet aside from an address listing. Multiple companies came up with the idea of posting menus online simultaneously, so it is difficult to ascertain who started the first online menu site. However, two companies, SeamlessWeb.com and Menutopia.com both began posting menus online in 1997. The former is an online food ordering site[1] while the latter handles online menus only[2]. Since 1997, hundreds of online restaurant menu websites have appeared on the Internet.

[edit] Regional Online Menu Sites

Websites such as Massmenus.com in Massachusetts, ctmenusonline.com in Connecticut, and menuking.com in Florida provide state-specific restaurant menu coverage. WhereYouEat.com Provides for the Borough of Staten Island in NY. Some websites are city-specific. Westchestermenu.com, for example, only covers West Chester, PA, New York Magazine's menus list covers New York City, and milwaukeefood.com covers Milwaukee, WI. In Canada, icatering.ca [4] is an online food ordering company serving Toronto, ON

[edit] National Online Menu Sites

There are now many websites attempting to achieve national restaurant coverage. Menutopia.com, MeroSys.com, UsMenuGuide.com, oneclickdining.com, and several other sites are reaching toward national coverage. There are over 560,000 restaurants in the United States [3].

[edit] References

  1. ^ "About Us." SeamlessWeb.com, 2 July 2007. [1]
  2. ^ "About Us." Menutopia.com, 2 July 2007. [2]
  3. ^ "2002 Industry Statistics Sampler NAICS 722410: Drinking places (alcoholic beverages)." 15 Jan 2006. US Census Bureau, 2 July 2007. [3]