A shift in thinking
Michelle Jones was frustrated. Not angry, give-up frustrated, but motivated, energized frustrated. She had searched the Web for basic information about local restaurants for her popular blog, Consuming Louisville, and consistently run into walls. Some sites had PDFs with musical accompaniment. A few had text-based menus. She approached several restaurants about redesigning their Web pages and discovered that if Web design wasn’t the business’s primary concern, it showed on their websites.
“It’s not the restaurants’ faults,” she was quick to explain. “If it’s not your focus, it’s hard to know what you should and shouldn’t do.”
Once she realized that restaurants just didn’t have the capability to address the problem, she re-envisioned the solution: Instead of helping restaurants construct better Web pages, she focused on getting restaurant information to consumers.
“I want the menus. I want the hours.”
The first step Jones took was to conduct market research in the form of surveys. When she asked people what they liked and disliked about restaurant websites, she received the same answer regularly: “I want the menu. I want the hours. I want to know if they’re open. I want to know what they have to eat. That’s pretty much it!” The title of her app, Menu and Hours, was a no-brainer.
Geeks helping geeks
Once she concluded her market research, Jones said the development process began quickly, beginning in July of 2011. She already knew many local Web designers through connections in the Louisville “geek community” and chose David Yeiser by early December. She had a specific vision for the look and feel of the app and Yeiser had the design aesthetic Jones liked.
“Promote the heck out of it!”
After Yeiser came on board, Jones immediately launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the project. While she had a built-in network of Consuming Louisville subscribers, this accounted for only a fraction of her supporters.
“I would say 30 percent of my backers don’t live in Louisville,” said Jones. “Some are in California, Georgia, Florida – one is from Singapore.”
Good press also helped. The app was covered in TechCrunch, a technology blog, and articles about Jones appeared in The Courier-Journal in December and again in February. Kickstarter allows you to set your own time limits for campaigns. Jones wanted to raise $6,000 in 30 days.
“I promoted the heck out of it,” said Jones.
Nine days before the campaign ended, during the first week of January, Jones reached her goal. By the time she received her money from Kickstarter in early February, she was already investing in a reliable host and getting local restaurants on board.
Beta, launch, and beyond
Currently, Menu and Hours is in the testing phase, which means Jones is working out the kinks and checking for hardware compatibility. Apple hasn’t given her word yet on when it will launch, but she expects it will happen in a few weeks. Eighty-five Louisville restaurants are searchable on Jones’ app and more can easily be added. Menu and Hours will cost $2.99 to download. Jones plans to reinvest her earnings. She has had requests to develop a similar app for other cities. If she has enough sales, she will investigate a second city. Currently, the app will only be available for iPhones, but Jones says that app sales will also allow her to develop the app for Androids.
-Amy Miller
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