Menu and Hours + +

Menu and Hours Homescreen Icon

Oh hey. What is this? Why it’s the Menu and Hours homescreen icon on an iPhone.

Once again I couldn’t be more pleased to have David Yeiser’s design talent for this project. 

And in case you wonder why we didn’t just go with the awesome logo that Matt Dobson created for the t-shirt it just didn’t work well sized down to fit into the homescreen icon constraints. We will still use that on the load screen (the screen you see when you first launch an app), so you’ll still get to experience that cool image on a regular basis. 

Who Is Already In Menu and Hours?

Folks have asked me for a list of the restaurants that have already agreed to be included in Menu and Hours. They’ve asked because they want to know who to thank for being included and on the flipside which of their favorite restaurants to encourage to be included in the app. 

Before I share the list I should note that I have asked many, many restaurants to be included in the app. Only two have straight up refused. So if your favorite restaurant isn’t on this list it’s most likely that they have just not responded to my communications yet, not that they’ve refused. In other words: your help in spreading the word about Menu and Hours and asking your favorite restaurants to be included in the app is much appreciated. 

Without further delay here are the restaurants that have either already given me their written or verbal consent to be part of Menu and Hours: 

Against the Grain
Annie’s Cafe
Avalon
Baby D’s Bagels
Bank Street Brewhouse
BBC
Bourbons Bistro
Cafe Lou Lou
Cake Flour
City Cafe
Coals Artisan Pizza
Corbett’s
DiFabio’s Casapela
Eiderdown
El Mundo
Equus
Feast BBQ
Four Pegs
Garage Bar
Gasthaus
Gavi’s
Ghyslain
Hammerheads
Harvest
Heart & Soy
Heine Bros
Highland Coffee
Hillbilly Tea
Holy Grale
L&N
Mayan Cafe
Miss C’s on Chestnut
Mozz
Nancy’s Bagel Grounds
Napa River Grill
New Albanian Public House
North End Cafe
Please and Thank You
Proof on Main
Quills Coffee
Red Hot Roasters
Rivue
Roots
Seviche
Simply Thai
Sweet Surrender
Taco Punk
The Bard’s Town
The Blackstone Grille
The Cafe
The Corner Door
The Irish Rover
The Silver Dollar
Varanese
Vint
Volare
Wild Eggs
Wiltshire on Market
Zen Garden

If your favorite restaurant isn’t on this list and you want to tell them about Menu and Hours please share this link: http://menuandhours.com/restaurants

That’s got all the basic info, including frequently asked questions, my contact information and the form we need the owner/manager’s signature on to include their restaurant in the app. 

So Fresh and So Clean

Our designer David Yeiser is straight up knocking it out of the park. Check out the Mayan Cafe’s listing:

That, in my humble opinion, is a fresh, clean, easy to read, gorgeous look. Things are getting exciting! 

Menu and Hours T-Shirts For Sale (aka inching toward Android)

Much like the school band selling fruit to help finance new uniforms I’m selling t-shirts to help fund development of the Android version of Menu and Hours. Of course the Menu and Hours shirts are way, way cooler than a crate of grapefruit. 

Every shirt sold gets us a little bit closer to having Menu and Hours for both iPhone and Android platforms. 

The shirts are being printed locally in Louisville by a small screenprinting company.  The shirts will be dark blue with white printing. The price is $17, including sales tax. Here’s the design that will be printed on the front of the shirt: 

If you are interested in buying a shirt please send an email to info@menuandhours.com with the size you want and whether or not you’re in Louisville. For Louisville folks we can make arrangements to meet up for delivery so you don’t have to pay for shipping. You can pay with cash or credit card (shoutout to Square). For out of town folks please give me the address you’ll want your shirt shipped to and I will calculate the shipping cost and get back to you. 

A Brief Progress Report

Things are progressing really, really nicely. Even so, there have been a couple bumps along the way that I want to share with you. 

After a few uncomfortable meetings with some restaurant owners who didn’t quite get what Menu and Hours is all about I adapted my “pitch” to them. I put together an information sheet, gave them a list of other participating restaurants and even handed out my phone number (if you knew how anxious talking on the phone makes me your faith in Menu and Hours would increase tenfold knowing that I’m talking on the phone for it!). Now more and more restaurants come on board everyday. It’s wonderfully exciting when one of my favorite restaurants agrees to be part of the app. 

When I’ve mentioned that not every restaurant is excited about participating I’ve been asked why. It’s hard to explain. It seems like there is a bit of suspicion about new technologies and a bit of disbelief that I’m not trying to charge them to participate. When I go in to speak to a restaurant owner that I don’t know there is a wall that comes up. I’m sure they get pitched by salespeople all the time, so their uneasiness speaking to me (not to mention I’m interrupting their already busy day) makes sense but sometimes it’s really hard to breach that wall. Sometimes I can’t, so I just leave the packet on the bar and hope that they decide to read the info. Folks have asked me to tell them who these restaurants are so they can, um, encourage the restaurants to get onboard but I’m not ready to do that. I’m hopeful that it will just take a little more time and convincing and then these restaurants will join Menu and Hours. 

If you want to help in this area please share this link with any restaurant owners or managers that you might know. If you’re a regular at a restaurant ask them if they’re on board with Menu and Hours and if they happen to be one of the ones I haven’t hit up yet please send them to menuandhours.com. There they can get all the info about the app and sign up to be included. 

On the development side of things we hit another small bump when we found some issues with the architecture we were originally going to use on the backend. But that led to us finding an even better way (go Jeffrey!) to accomplish what we need to. The design of the app is coming along beautifully because David Yeiser is a rockstar. 

For Kickstarter backers thank you cards are going out almost everyday, design of the t-shirt is complete and I’ll be sending out surveys next week to find out what size shirts, what kind of baked goods and the specs for the dining guides folks at the various backer levels want. 

So that’s a brief progress report. I’ll update you again next week. 

On Chains

Someone recently mentioned that she hopes a restaurant called Chuy’s will be included in Menu and Hours and she was a little unhappy when I said it won’t be because it’s a chain. There is only one Chuy’s in Louisville so perhaps it doesn’t seem like a chain to some folks but in my mind it is because it has locations in several states and many locations in Texas. The conversation surrounding this particular restaurant made me realize I need to be more specific when I say that Menu and Hours won’t contain info about chain restaurants. 

In restaurant industry marketing terms it seems like 10 is the magic number of locations for something to be considered a chain but I think if something has 7 locations spread across four states that is as much of a chain as 10 locations. So after giving it a great deal of thought I’ve decided that something is a chain as far as Menu and Hours is concerned if there are more than 6 locations or there are locations in two states that don’t border one another (say one location in Florida and one location in Kentucky). I am going to make an exception to the two states rule for restaurants whose original locations are here in Louisville. For example Wild Eggs has locations in Louisville and in Colorado but since the original Wild Eggs is on Dutchman’s Lane it makes sense to include it in Menu and Hours (assuming Wild Eggs gives me permission to do so). 

 I understand this decision is somewhat arbitrary but this is what makes sense to me. That being said, this is not a completely written in stone rule. What I mean by that is if someone has a compelling reason for Restaurant X to be included in Menu and Hours even though by my definition it is a chain I’m willing to listen to what that reason is and consider it on a case by case basis. 

A Few Post Kickstarter Developments

Since the Kickstarter project ended successfully a week and a half ago I have finalized arrangements with the designer David Yeiser and the developer Jeff Jackson. I’ve also drafted brilliant local artist Matt Dobson to design the Menu and Hours t-shirts for Kickstarter backers who chose that reward (and we might sell a few shirts down the road) and I’ve gotten several other restaurants formally onboard. In a word: progress! 

It goes without saying that none of this would be possible without the tremendous amount of support that the community has shown this project. I feel so lucky to have such community support and I feel a great responsibility to be worthy of that support. I want each backer and supporter to know that I am committed to making Menu and Hours something that you will be proud to be an early supporter of. David, Jeff and I gathered together this morning and as we were working we all, in one way or another, commented on how great it is to work on a project that we’re so passionate about and so excited to deliver to the community. We’re going to make something great for you.