Top 3 Challenges Restaurants Face Online

With the number of online providers these days, choosing the right designer for your restaurant website can feel downright overwhelming. We take a look at three of the most common issues facing restaurant operators online, and explain how getting #poweredbybento can help.

There are plenty of website hosting platforms, but BentoBox is the only one built specifically for the hospitality industry. “Something very unique to BentoBox is that we’re designed exclusively for restaurants,” says Jennifer Langholz. Jennifer is in charge of growth at BentoBox, and she has spoken with hundreds of operators about what they need most from their websites. “Every tool we’ve built is created to make managing and updating website content easy and foolproof, in addition to seamlessly integrating with industry tools for online ordering, reservations, and more. We know how important those platforms are for restaurants and their guests.” We’re anticipating the needs of guests online, just like restaurant owners anticipate the needs of their guests when they walk through the front door. That’s hospitality in action.

“Your restaurant website shouldn’t just be a place to find your contact information and make reservations— there’s revenue your website can be consistently driving for you even when your head hits the pillow at night,” says Langholz, citing online catering, online merchandise, and gift cards as easy revenue drivers. “BentoBox has these ready-to-use tools already available, whereas, the alternative is typically to try and figure it out yourself, fail because the coding is too complex, then hire a designer who is going to charge you an astronomical hourly rate to build or integrate those features over a 6 month period.” Fortunately, our e-commerce tools work exactly how restaurants need them to right out of the box and integrate seamlessly with the rest of your site. On top of that, BentoBox websites are designed to generate traffic, which is proven to convert visitors into paying customers. “We know that 2x more people visit your website than ever step foot into your restaurant,” says Langholz. “Many restaurants put their website on the back-burner, only focusing on the brick and mortar experience, but this statistic goes to show how much power your website holds in capturing more guests.”

Restaurants are dynamic places where things are constantly changing. Menu items get rotated in and out, special events pop up, and there’s always new content ready to be shared. Many restaurant websites fall out of date because it’s too complicated or time consuming to make changes. Oftentimes, operators are expected to be knowledgeable about HTML, as well as coding and integrations. BentoBox is different. We know how busy restaurant operators are. That’s why we make it easy for you stay in control of your own website, with quick and easy-to-use tools that allow you to update information about your menu, promote special events, add new photos and more. “We keep it simple, and as a result, we have everyone from a 65-year-old bakery owner to marketing teams at well-known hospitality groups using BentoBox to update their website,” says Langholz. Your job is to take care of your customers; our job is to ensure your site functions exactly how you want it to.  

At the end of the day, it comes down to hospitality in all directions. We like making websites easy for restaurants, but we also like building a network—from food trucks to four-star hospitality groups— so that we can develop the best possible product for all of our customers. We’re not just designing beautiful websites— we’re transforming restaurants into better businesses online.