If you carry a Web-enabled phone and you like to eat, chances are it’s happened to you. You’re out. You’re hungry. You want to check out a new restaurant nearby, or perhaps you’re visiting another city. You pull out your phone to search for a restaurant. Even if you use a fancy, location-based app like Yelp or UrbanSpoon, you still want to see what’s on the menu. So you click through to the restaurant’s site, and… nothing. Turns out, the restaurant owner paid some kid who knew Flash to built a slick website for them five years ago that has no chance of loading on the BlackBerrys and iPhones of today.
EnterChompStack. Like other tools we’ve covered, ChompStack is a Web-based, WYSIWYG tool for building mobile websites, but one that was designed for restaurant owners specifically. Much like the desktop Web before it, the mobile Web continues to explode, but not every restaurateur has the resources to hire a developer to build them a mobile-friendly site.
Recognizing these realities, ChompStack CEO Steven Wei set out to build a product he could market to restaurant owners and take the heavy lifting out of building mobile Websites for an industry that can’t afford to miss out on mobile opportunities.
From one simple back-end interface, ChompStack customers can manage menus, pricing information, promotional deals, locations and other business details. Adding static pages, Google Maps directions and a click-to-call phone number is matter of a few clicks.
The control panel also enables customization of branding and color scheme, as well as a site preview tool for those who may not have brand new iPhone 4, Droid X and BlackBerry Bold handsets laying around the kitchen.
Crucially, CompStack integrates with social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, Yelp and OpenTable.
The service starts at $15 per month for single-location restaurants, $30 for those with multiple locations or $45 for larger chains.
