It's Time for TROLLEY TOUR!

Hey Foodies!

It's the last Friday of the month, and that means Trolley Tour! Tonight, Mark from MarksMenus will be bouncing around the South Main district and taking care of our most valued users. We've done this before and had a lot of fun with it. If you've never participated in this before, now is your chance!

Ok - for the newbies, this is how it works: it's kinda like "Where's Waldo", only Mark is Waldo. And instead of wearing a silly hat, he buys beer for people that can follow his clues and find him. In order to get the clues, follow @marksmenus on Twitter.

Tonight there will be 3 stops and 3 clues. The team will be hitting the South Main district around 6pm, so start looking for the first clue then.

C'mon - Trolley Tour is the PERFECT excuse for you to get out and show off those winter clothes you've kept in the back of your closet all summer. Hope to see you all there!

Mark

The NEW Eat-Up Post (This Friday)

Greetings Foodies!

This is NOT simply a reminder of the super cool lunch Eat-Up occurring at Felicia Suzanne's on Friday, October 7th, at 11:30 am (free dessert with meal). This is a new and improved message to announce that there will be a photo-op at the Eat-Up also. Some of the nice folks from the Memphis Daily News are stopping by to do an article on us. So tell your friends and acquaintances to come to the Eat-Up, get some great food, and get into the newspaper.

We can't wait to see everyone and enjoy some well deserved lunch.

The MarksMenus Team

The Third Eat-Up: Felicia Suzanne's Lunch

Hey Foodies!

It is time once again for an Eat-Up! This is our third Eat-up and will be at Felicia Suzanne's for lunch. Yes, you heard me correctly, LUNCH! You didn't know they did lunch? Well they do every Friday and it is fabulous (first hand experience).

So if you don't already have lunch plans for Friday, October 8th, you need to be at Felicia Suzanne's. Those of you that work downtown have the *perfect* excuse to check out this great restaurant during your lunch hour. To sweeten the deal, we have a special offer; Everyone loves dessert, MarksMenus.com and Felicia Suzanne's are gonna make it easy for you. On Friday, October 8th, you get a free dessert with your lunch. You can choose from between White Chocolate and Fresh Coconut Bread Pudding with warm Tennessee Whiskey Sauce and Spiced Cream. Both deserts are exceptional and amazing.

Come on down to downtown and join the MarksMenus team for lunch. Not only do you get to eat at a terrific restaurant for lunch, you get FREE dessert! When you get back to the office, make sure to check out MarksMenus.com and post your review.

You gotta eat, why not enjoy it?

The MarksMenus Team

Foodie Recommendations

Greetings Food-o-philes!

We are pleased to announce a new feature: Foodie recommendations! Foodie recommendations will help you quickly discover the best restaurants and dishes in town. Our power users -- the foodies -- are now able to recommend all of their favorite restaurants and dishes. These recommendations drive search results and are shown on each menu page throughout our site.

Are you a foodie? Let us know by simply writing a couple of recommendations of your own. Just pull up a menu on our site and click the "recommendations" link next to the restaurant or dish name and tell us why you like it. We'll review these personal recommendations periodically and promote new Foodies from among our most active users.

Please let us know what you think of the new system. We love feedback! http://marksmenus.com/contact

Happy eating,

The MarksMenus Team

The Cringely 2010 Start-Up Tour

Greetings Foodies!
We have some exciting news to share. Noted journalist Robert X. Cringely profiled MarksMenus yesterday. We will be featured in the near future in a documentary series, The Cringely 2010 (Not in Silicon Valley) Start-up Tour. This series showcases entrepreneurship in areas of the country generally not considered technology hubs. Twenty-four start-ups from around the country were chosen from hundreds of applicants.

In short, this is a major opportunity for us. We are honored and appreciative.

What does this mean for you, our users and fans? Expect some major developments in the coming months and increased announcements as we achieve new heights.

We'd like to thank Bob (Mr. Cringely to you) for believing in us and including MarksMenus in the series. A huge thank you goes out to Evan and Lerone, Bob's talented and professional film crew.

Onward and upwards.

The MarksMenus Team

5 Online Menu Mistakes

Greetings Foodies and Restaurateurs!

Some observations for restaurateurs today.

Having a great restaurant isn't enough. Consumers need information quickly to make decisions concerning their eating habits. They must be able to obtain restaurant knowledge. Restaurant knowledge isn't limited to just a building; what is served is equally as important as where it is served. If people don't know a great restaurant exists, they can't go there. If they don't know what's served, they may choose to not go there.

So what mistakes can a restaurateur make regarding consumer knowledge? Here are our top five.

5) Illegible Menus - If a menu is online and unreadable it is worse than not having a menu at all. Taunting consumers with the prospect of restaurant knowledge and then providing sub-par content can only anger them. A picture of a menu lacks the intractability of even a list of dishes. It cannot scale. It cannot be searched. It can create distaste, however.

If a restaurateur doesn't care enough to provide legible menus, why should diners gamble on their meal?

4) Non-indexable Online Menus - A menu is of little use if no one can find it. Consumers use search engines to locate their potential meals. If your menu is not indexed by the search engine, it can't be found quickly. Non-indexable menus will appear lower on search results than competing options. Lower listings are missed by casual searchers.

If a restaurateur doesn't care about being found, why should diners care to find them?

3) Lack of Description - Dish names are important to have on menus, but they are not enough. The more that can be said about a dish, the more appealing it can become. Describing the special qualities of a dish distinguish it from all competitors. Likewise, images can entice would-be eaters in ways words cannot. The more description added to a menu, the more people may be persuaded to come eat.

If a restaurateur doesn't care about their dishes, why should diners?

2) Out of Date Menus - Trust is an important factor in eatery selection. When menus are provided for searching, the dishes they contain should be accurate. Eaters who have selected a dish expect THAT dish. Similarly, eaters who have chosen a restaurant based on a dish, expect that dish to be served when they arrive.

If a restaurateur doesn't care about their validity, why should diners trust them?

1) No Online Menus - If consumers can't find your restaurant, they can't eat at your restaurant. This point is not as complex as those previously mentioned. People have computers, cell phones, and mobile devices that they use to plan their lives. The internet gives them life choice options. Not being an option is the fastest way to not being in business.

If restaurateurs don't want to be online, diners can't find them.

Luckily, MarksMenus alleviates all these problems. Menu entry is simple, clean, and indexable. There are optional fields for images and descriptions for each dish. Each field in the menu is a searchable field within the MarksMenus system and from the internet as a whole. We want to ensure that consumers looking for food are able to find it locally with minimal effort. And we do it down to the dish level.

Happy eating,

Mike

Greetings Foodies!

Marksmenus is abuzz with reports of a new launch of the site. A new launch, you ask. Yes, we answer! We are hard at work creating new features to make your menu surfing experience easier, faster, and more accurate. We want your first impulse to be heading for our product when you have any questions about food or restaurants. So we are making some changes and adding some new bits.

I can't give away all our secrets in this single blog post, but I can give you some tidbits. We are:

* modifying search in some interesting ways.

* adding a new component to restaurants that will improve their presentation and overall look.

* adding new functionality that allows you more of a voice about specific dishes.

* adding to the menu structure to accommodate more types of menus.

* redesigning the look and feel of many pages to make them easier to use.

Why are we doing this? For you. We want this system to be easy to use and pleasant to view. It is very important to us that our users (you amazing foodophiles) have the fastest and most enjoyable experience using our system as possible. Thus, we have taken feedback you have provided and tried to make the system better.

We still need your help, though. There are still things that can be changed. If you have ANY suggestions, let us know. We would love to hear form you. Just come over to our Contact Form (http://marksmenus.com/contact) and leave us a message. Or if you catch one of us out and about, let us know. We are always glad to hear from our users.

Keeping eating out!

Sincerely,

Michael Rowe

Developers Needed!

Hello Foodies,

I have some exciting new this week. We are HIRING! Here's the flyer you may be seeing around town:

We're Hiring

MarksMenus, the hot memphis tech startup, is looking for more talent. If you are in school or fresh out of school, we want to talk to you.

We need a designer with some web programming skill (html/css) and/or programmer with design skill (photoshop/GUI)

Part-Time or Full-Time

Up to $35,000/year depending on skills, experience, and availability.

If you are interested in learning more contact jobs@marksmenus.com with your resume and portfolio.

If you or someone you know is interested, let us know!

Thanks for your time,

Mike

Let's Do It Again!

Our first "Eat-Up" was a huge success! Let's do it again. We are heading to South of Beale in Downtown Memphis this coming Monday, August 16th, from 5:30-7:30pm.

South of Beale is still on their summer menu and we look forward to "eating it up" with you. Since South of Beale loves us, they are offering the following Special Deals:

--You can enjoy 50% off the "Bites" Menu when you show your MarksMenus App.
--Everyone will enjoy extended Happy Hour prices on drinks.

Be sure to download the latest versions of our mobile app for either the Android (@ Android Market) or the iPhone (@ App Store).

Hope to see you at South of Beale.

Have a great weekend,
Mark

PS: There is a Facebook invite here for the event.

Finding exactly what you want, when you want it.

Happy Friday everyone!

Before I get into today's post, I'd like to thank everyone for coming to our Eat-Up at South of Beale earlier this week. We gave away t-shirts, showed off our mobile apps, met our fabulous users and generally had a blast. We've got more events like that planned for the future so be sure to watch this space!

I'd also like to remind you that it's not to late to enter this week's "Make Mark Eat It" contest. This week's contenders are listed here.

Today I'd like to spotlight one of the most interesting features of MarksMenus and how it helps set us apart from other similar services. Most places will let you search for restaurants by a genre, like "Italian" or "Tex-Mex". One of the problems with this manner of searching is that it's not very specific.

Right now I want for you, the reader, to think of the first dish that comes to mind when I say "Italian Food". Some of you are thinking about a dish like Linguini and some of you are thinking about a big ol' Meatball Sub.

Both of these dishes fall under the category of Italian food, but they are representative of two totally different dining experiences. One of them is something that you can grab during your lunch break, the other will probably involve a nice bottle of wine and a date.

Have you ever noticed that you can tell a lot about a restaurant by their menu? If you see that a restaurant has their wine list on their menu, it's a good bet that you should probably ditch the jeans and the Ed Hardy shirt and throw on some Dockers. The ability to check out a menu *before* you arrive is a great way to know whether or not that great "Italian Restaurant" you're taking your first date to is a place with cloth tablecloths or a pizza shack with a wide-screen TV and a Galaga machine in front of the restrooms.

This is just one of the ways in which we separate ourselves from other search engines. By allowing you to search at the dish level, we can help you find not only the food that you want but set your expectation of the dining experience.

South of Beale TONIGHT!

Before I go into the details on our party tonight, I want to send out a big congrats to our winner of last week's "Make Mark Eat It" contest - memknitmafia! I'll announce the next contest in a bit.

Tonight we will be hitting the south main district and rolling into South of Beale a little after 5pm. If you've always wondered what a gastropub is like, tonight is the night to check it out. Why, you ask? Here's why:

• Tonight they are running an extended happy hour until 7:30. That means that happy hour drink prices will be in effect.
• For those of you that have downloaded our mobile app, you will receive 50% off any item on the "Bites" menu.
• The first 5 people that show up with a friend will get a MarksMenus t-shirt.

Come on down and say hello!

Based on last week's Make Mark Eat It contest, I've decided to alter the rules just slightly. Our first winner pointed out that maybe giving them a week's notice for the lunch meet might be better, so I'm gonna give the people what they want. The two dishes in this week's competition are as follows:

• "The Shag" - I absolutely LOVE bananas, so I'm really eager to check this one out.
• Tamales - I have been looking for an excuse to visit this place.

The winning dish will be decided by the number of comments that each dish receives between now and Friday, July 16 at midnight. I will pick two users from the comments on the winning dish and take them out to lunch on Saturday, July 24.

So that's it! Add you comments and I hope to see a bunch of you tonight at South of Beale!

Make Mark EAT IT!

First, I would like to thank everyone that said hello to me during the Trolley Tour. I bought a bunch of free beer for people and got to meet some of our best fans.

Today I would like to announce another contest - Make Mark Eat It!

Here's how it works: I'll list 2 dishes that I have never tried before. The dish that gets the best reviews between now and Friday, July 9 will be the dish that I order on Saturday, July 10 and post my review on MarksMenus.com. In addition, 2 lucky users that posted a review of the winning dish will join me for lunch. The only stipulation is that you have to order the same dish.

Dish 1: BBQ Beef Bologna from The BBQ Shop
Dish 2: The Maximus from Republic Coffee

Ok - so get to commenting!

Be sure that you have a valid email address listed in your profile, because that is how we will be contacting you.

If you miss out on this one, be sure to join us on Monday, July 12 at South of Beale for our tweetup!

Trolley Tour Contest!

IT'S FRIDAAAAAAY!!!

Not only is it Friday, it's the last Friday of the month. Here in Memphis, that means the South Main Trolley Tour. If you have never been to this monthly event, I would HIGHLY recommend that you check it out. If you HAVE been, you need to be on the lookout for me.

This evening I will be in the South Main district and I will be wearing my MarksMenus t-shirt.


I will be hanging out at one of the restaurants in the South Main district from 5:30 to 7:30. The first three people that find me and show me their app get a free beer.

There are a few rules to this contest, so read carefully:

1. None of my family members / MarksMenus staff can participate in this contest. Sorry Mom!

2. You must be 21 years old or older. I don't care if your parents say it's ok - I'm not gonna buy beer for a minor.

3. In order to win, you must be one of the first three people to find me, show me their MarksMenus application on either their iPhone or Android device. For those of you without a iPhone or Android, you can show me the MarksMenus web site on your mobile browser. I will tweet each time a person finds me.

4. This promotion is being run by MarksMenus, not the restaurant staff. This means that you'll have to actually find me. Use the picture above as a guide. I will be a moving target, so be sure to check in at your favorite South Main restaurants.

So there you have it! I hope to see lots of people out and about in the South Main district tonight.

Bad Bread and Good Intentions

One of my favorite things about doing this is talking to people that work in restaurants. I get to hear all sorts of crazy stories that most people aren't privy to.

A few weeks ago I was dining in a local Italian restaurant with my family. When the waiter brought the bread to the table, he said something that seemed odd: "We PROMISE that the bread is good tonight." I was busy helping my brother wrangle my twin nieces into their high chairs, so I had to wait until he returned to the table before I could ask him what he meant.



While one of my nieces was busy covering herself in marinara sauce, I asked the waiter what he meant about the bread being good. He laughed and told me about the following incident that had occurred earlier in the week:

The restaurant hired a new cleaning service to come in after hours and clean the restaurant. When they got to the kitchen, they noticed several trays of freshly bread dough, covered, and sitting on a food prep area. The cleaners decided to store the dough in the freezer while they cleaned the surface of the table and forgot to take them back out of the freezer when they were finished.

When the staff came in the next day to begin cooking for the dinner rush, they were shocked to find that their fresh bread dough had been sitting in the freezer all night. This presented them with a problem: there was no way that the dough would thaw out in time for them to bake the bread and have it ready for dinner. Their choice was to either: A) put the frozen dough in the oven which would lead to bread that was over-baked on the outside and possibly still frozen on the inside or B) run to a wholesaler and get some sub-par bread. Not wanting to deny their guests, they opted for B.

The usual dinner crown came in that night. Every regular in the place IMMEDIATELY noticed the bread. While there was nothing wrong with the replacement bread, it was NOT what they were used to. The waiter had to re-tell the story to every table. Each time, the diners laughed at the situation and continued to enjoy their meal. Most of the diners that evening were returning customers, but there were a few first-time guests that evening. The regulars explained to the new customers that the bread is usually MUCH better than it was that evening and urged them to come back next week.

I found this story interesting because it taught me two things about the restaurant business. First, it taught me that consistency is VERY important. Diners expect each dish to taste the same every time they show up at a restaurant. This is what drives repeat business. There is one place in Memphis that I go to all the time because I know that when I order my favorite menu item, it will taste the same as it did the last time I was there. That's not to say that chefs shouldn't experiment with new ideas. If a chef wants to try something new, be sure to let the customer know. This leads me to my next point: honesty.

Honesty will get you a lot more than dishonesty. For one, being honest with you customers (ESPECIALLY about your mistakes) will create a feeling of trust. when the diners asked the waiter about the bread, he could have just as easily shrugged his shoulders and said, "I don't know what you're talking about" and went on to another table. By revealing the goof, he let the diners know that they actually matter enough to the restaurant to trust them with their mistake. As a result, the diners not only promised to come back (and they did), they had a funny story to tell when they brought their friends.

One of the things that we've seen on MarksMenus is restaurant staff actively engaging with their customers to share stories just like this one. Join the conversation and let us know what you think.

How We Used Guerrilla Marketing to Get Attention

One of the biggest challenges for a new company is getting the word out. Most start up companies don't have the money to buy ads or hire a slick marketing firm. While this might be seen as some to be a bad thing, a lack of funds can force creative thinking.

A few months ago, one of my favorite technology bloggers, Robert X. Cringely, posted that he was going to do a documentary on start up companies outside of Silicon Valley. We saw this opportunity and took it. The cost of entry was perfect (the time it would take to fill out a web form) and the possible reward was national press. Worst case, we get a little bit of traffic from his site. Not a bad deal! We submitted our application and began brainstorming ways that we could give ourselves a competitive advantage.

This is what we came up with (Eat your heart out Mr. Spielberg!)

(For the tech geeks reading this, we shot everything over the course of 2 days with a $250 Flip camera and cut everything together with iMovie)

Seemed like a pretty good idea, right? Sending world-famous BBQ ribs to a tech journalist would SURELY get us some attention. There was one thing that we failed to consider. Imagine this: you are sitting at home with your family about to settle in for a fun Memorial Day weekend. A FedEx driver knocks on your door and presents you with a package containing BBQ ribs. What would YOU do? Lucky for us, Bob was a good sport. Less than 24 hours after we placed the order, I got the following email from the one and only Robert X. Cringely:

Mark,

Did you send us BBQ? My wife is eating it. If she dies you are off the show.

Bob

At first I laughed. Oh, the wit! Then I started thinking - what if she DOES die? I know for a fact that the ribs are safe - The BBQ Shop has shipped HUNDREDS of slabs and has NEVER had a complaint. My paranoid side said, "Yes, but there is a first time for everything!" (I should note that my paranoid side is also a HUGE fan of the show House M.D.) WHAT IF I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR KILLING SOMEONE??!?

Actual picture of my reaction to the news:

Once I could breathe properly, I quickly fired off the following response:

Bob,

We did send the ribs - I hope that they were ok! I hope that you enjoy them this weekend. PLEASE let me know if there are any problems - I would hate to think that I got you or your family sick. Maybe I should hold off on sending that sushi to Scoble...

Please don't die,

Mark Dinstuhl

I paced around, worried, paced around some more all while checking my email every 5 second. A few hours later I got the following response:

Mark,

The ribs were GREAT and Mrs. Cringely appears to have survived, and our son Cole was particularly impressed.

All the best,

Bob

Attached to the email was this photo:

So there you have it. 1 day of brainstorming, 2 days of video production, 2 slabs of ribs and one stress-induced episode later, we managed to get the attention of one of the most influential writers in the technology community. Our team learned a lot from this exercise. We didn't have to spend thousands of dollars with a marketing firm to do this, we didn't have to get signed permission from anyone. We just did it.

And so can you.

(Note: The jury is still out on whether or not we made the cut for the show. Keep your digits crossed!)

Show Me Your App!

Hey everyone!

I'm really excited to be able to officially announce one of our newest features - exclusive promotions for MarksMenus users!

Our Premium restaurants have started offering exclusive deals for you. They will change from day to day and the rules for each promotion might be different. Some of the promotions will require you to flash your app, some promotions might require a secret code word, some just require you to show up.

As we launch more and more promotions I'll be sure to keep you up-to-date on how each one works. To be sure that you are ready to take advantage of these deals, you need to do the following:

1. If you haven't already, go to MarksMenus and register for a username. No, we do not sell email addresses and we won't flood your inbox with useless junk.

2. Once you've created your account, start sharing your dining experiences with other users! We know for a fact that some restaurant managers read each and every user comment on their menu, so this is the chance to rave about your favorite dish.

3. If you have an iPhone or an Android phone, download the MarksMenus app. If you don't have one of these devices, don't worry - we haven't left you out. We're working on some solutions just for you.

4. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook. We'll be using this blog to share ideas and anything that won't fit neatly into 140 characters, but we often use these channels to post interesting information to our users.

5. TELL YOUR FRIENDS! It always amazes me when people that I have never met will approach me and tell me how they found out about the site. The more people that use the site, the more accurate our dish ratings become.

That's it for now! If you've got any comments or questions, feel free to contact us here.

Greetings!

It was a little over a year ago that Eric Mathews introduced me to Scott Brown. We were having breakfast one Monday morning at Republic Coffee when Scott told me about this idea that he had.

"Ever notice that it's almost impossible to find menu items on the internet?", he said.

Thus began our journey into the crazy world of technological entrepreneurship. Over the next few weeks, we worked on a prototype for the site, got great feedback and enthusiasm from our users and launched MarksMenus.com. It's been almost a year since we put the first version of our site online and we are absolutely thrilled with the response that we have received from our users. Your suggestions and comments have helped us create a site that we are proud to call our own, but we're not done yet!

We recently launched promotions for our premium restaurants, an iPhone app and a Android app. We've got a TON of other cool things in the works that I would LOVE to tell you about, but Scott and Eric swore me to secrecy. As soon as they are ready I'll let you know.

To all of our loyal users, THANK YOU! We could not have gotten this far without you. To our new users, WELCOME! We really hope that you enjoy using the site. Remember - if you don't see your favorite restaurant, feel free to add it to the site. To our first premium restaurants, a very special thanks - we're working overtime to figure out new ways to help you connect with your customers.