SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Recent surveys reveal 80 percent of individuals say it’s important to have a menu online1. In stark contrast, of the nearly 340,000 independent restaurants, only 4 in 10 have their menu posted on their website2. GoDaddy and Locu are giving independent restaurants the tools they need to leverage the power of the Internet. Website Builder provides hundreds of customizable designs and many ways to change the appearance – making their digital identity exactly like their restaurant. Seamless integration with Locu provides a menu manager, letting restaurateurs quickly and easily update their menu.
Locu specializes in easy menu-management and has hundreds of thousands of menus from all over the U.S. pre-loaded into their database, waiting for a restaurant to claim them. Once claimed, a restaurant can set prices, change descriptions and add photos of their meals. That means menu items don’t have to be entered manually on the website – it’s already loaded.
If a restaurant is brand new or Locu has not collected their menu, the automatic conversion of a document, pdf or image of a menu quickly enables users to have an SEO-rich menu online. Restaurants can print menus on a daily basis, making changes as often as needed for their menu.
“Restaurants have an ever-changing menu and they need a website that can easily keep up,” said GoDaddy CEO Blake Irving. “Website Builder with Locu was specifically designed for ease-of-use and versatility – giving restaurants complete control of their identity and menu without wasting time. GoDaddy is doing whatever it takes to help our customers cross the digital divide to take advantage of technology previously only available to the big guys.”
“GoDaddy has built a business on serving small businesses and we are excited to partner with them to better help local businesses get found online,” said Locu CEO and Co-Founder Rene Reinsberg. “This integration makes it extremely easy to keep the key information on restaurants’ websites in sync with the rest of the Web.”
Changes restaurants make on their Locu menu are published on websites and mobile apps across Locu’s partner network, including OpenTable, Foursquare and Citysearch. Customers using the Locu’s premium plan will have access to automatically update websites like Yelp, Facebook and TripAdvisor. In addition to menu management, Website Builder automatically creates a mobile-friendly website. In the same surveys referenced earlier, more than 80 percent of customers said they have searched for a restaurant using their smartphone. Yet, research shows only 1 in 20 restaurants have a mobile presence.
When a Website Builder user publishes their website, it is automatically converted into a mobile website. The website will then detect which device a visitor is using and automatically deliver the best experience.
GoDaddy, the Web’s top platform for small businesses, is introducing the partnership at the National Restaurant Association Conference tomorrow and expects the Locu integration to be widely available by mid-June.
“I love the fact that if my menu changes, I can go in and change it in a snap,” said Malee’s Thai Bistro owner Deirdre Pain. “This is not only helping me find new customers, but also keep my regulars up-to-date and offer specials. Now I can focus on what I really love – making delicious food and serving my customers. I know if I’m not online, I’m not really in the game.”
To find out more about how to get your website online quickly and easily using GoDaddy Website Builder, visit GoDaddy.com.
To learn more about Locu, visit Locu.com.
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GoDaddy is the world's largest domain name provider, Web hosting provider and new SSL certificate provider, focused on helping small businesses grow larger. GoDaddy provides dozens of cloud-based services, and is the largest worldwide mass-market hosting provider by annual revenue according to 451 Research (Mass-Market Hosting Report-Fall 2012), and is the #1 provider of net-new SSL certificates for 2012, according to the Netcraft, LTD Secure Server Survey. To learn more about the company, visit www.GoDaddy.com/PR.
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1 Jan. 2013 survey conducted by Chadwick Martin Bailey
2 Restaurant Sciences – April 2012
