IT Milk: entry

I’ve been thinking about the new purple cow in online menu technology after recently meeting Justin Goldman, founder of Lionmenus.com. First, let me state that I think Lionmenus.com is great — I use it all the time for delivery and takeout orders. Their online transaction storefront for restaurants makes life convenient for thousands of college students at Penn state who want food delivered to their door with a few clicks.

However, there’s much room for innovation in this space, and there are many ways Lionmenus.com can radically change before a competitor acts on it first. Justin said Lionmenus.com is rolling out new features and always looking for ways to improve the user experience, but rather than letting feature-creep take over the product design, there must be a way to simplify and progress forward as a refreshing step forward rather than dragging the feet inch-by-inch.

Here’s an idea. Think Ning for the online menu industry.

Ning allows anyone to create a fully-functional social network on top of its constantly evolving platform, where you can easily plug in features like profile system, discussion forum, photo/video gallery, personal blogs. Want to create a niche social network about Wacom tablets or Orbit gum? It literally takes 5 minutes to set up and fly.

So we take that Ning model and create an online menu system to give the power of control to restaurants. Let’s call this hypothetical system “Muguh,” which means “to eat” in Korean. For this example, I’ll say that I am Fuji & Jade Garden in State College (my favorite restaurant in the area).

First, I would pick a subdomain on the Muguh system. Something like http://fujijade.muguh.com. This would be my own unique identifier where the customers can locate our storefront, but I have the option to plug in a premium domain name ($15/month).

Next, there would be an elegant AJAX interface that would let me as the restaurant create a menu. I can add categories like Sushi Bar and Lunch Specials. Then under those categories I can insert menu items with their respective prices.

The next page takes me to online specials, where I can quickly add daily specials based on the menu I’ve built up previously. The Muguh system takes care of the messy backend calculations of determining whether a certain order today is eligible for a discount based on my set of rules.

The final step to launching the online menu for Fuji & Jade Garden is picking a design. There are 24 preset designs for a multitude of themes, such as fast food burger joint, pizza shop, and tacos. I pick the asian-looking design themed with cherry blossoms and cute sushi rolls lining the the header.

Later, in the settings, I can setup my store’s financial details, delivery options, open/close hours, and more. From the administrative interface, I can also add other value-added content such as a blog, time-sensitive promotions, and an about page.

The revenue model is taking a small cut of the online transactions as well as offering premium features such as the custom domain name.

Why can this Ning model work for the restaurant industry?

• Since the subdomain is on a restaurant-basis, no need to replicate multiple domain names like Lionmenus.com, Cockymenus.com, DubVmenus.com, etc…
• Complete control over your online menu storefront
• Integrate your menu with the informational site aspect
• Instant editing capability of your menu items
• Customized look for your menu
• Use your own domain name
• Advanced analytics interface

This is simply one idea out of many that can revolutionize the current market dominated by Lionmenus.com. I came up with this on the spot, so there may be many flaws that could render it useless or impossible. In any case, I would love to see Lionmenus.com continue to thrive by adopting a new business model such as this.