Let's Make 'em Drool

It works pretty well, actually! Most days, we need to be heads-down coding or designing. Living in the Old World means that we get a half-day of uninterrupted working hours before you all wake up. Sometimes we'll even have requests knocked out before you have your first cup of coffee!

The biggest thing you'll notice is that 1) we have to meet on video and 2) we have to meet in the morning.

Good question! We work with many of the leading AI tools and pay close attention to developments happening in AI.

Our prediction is that AI will consume a lot of standard search traffic — what time does Jim's Fried Chicken open? where is it? — the same way that Google Maps preview did. But customers will continue to evaluate restaurants by their digital storefront(s).

We suspect that AI assistants will privilege sites with data. If someone asks for 'best vegan muffins in minneapolis', we suspect that the AI will privilege contextualized content. What could this look like? Perhaps the website provides detailed menus with embedded ingredient lists, invisible to humans but plain as day to the robots.

Regardless, a revolution is coming. We suggest joining folks who are thinking deeply about your pocket of the internet.

Sure!

We just think that might get a little expensive. After our one-time fee, our sites cost roughly $30/mon (not to us — you will host your site with a third party — we have recommendations if you like).

Having been around for awhile, we've noticed that pure IG restaurants tend to run out of steam. You just have to keep feeding the beast, paying for photography and video, and spending time posting the stuff and engaging with users and navigating the whole web of it... and then they change the algorithm!

We like to think of investing in a website the same way you might invest in a good bar top — less like you're buying a bag of lettuce. It's long term investment.

We use fixed bids in our proposals so you'll have a number to put in your budget. We've done enough of these sites to have a sense of where it'll all come in.

But there are a few additional costs to consider:

• Hosting: this is around $30/month for a good server and less for less good. Our sites will run on most any server, but we do recommend paying for solid infrastructure
• Domain Registration: this is around $20/year. Registrars are generic — whatever's cheapest works!
• Premium Plugins: we carry a number of 'developer' licenses that allow us to use tools on unlimited numbers of sites. We bundle these license fees into the fixed bid. But say that you want to allow customers to book appointments to pick up catering. We'll often find a tool, have you license it, and then we'll incorporate it into the site. These tools are between $30-$100/year.
• Content: We're happy to play with your existing content, but we don't produce new stuff (tho we have folks we can recommend).

Wordpress.

More specifically, we build on Pro Theme by Themeco. This is a 'framework theme' that allows us to work from a blank sheet of paper, design-wise, and incorporate all the latest and greatest APIs and various tools. If you want a real technical definition, we build on a quasi-headless Wordpress-React hyrid with a WYSIWYG editor reminiscent of Squarespace.

Other standard tools include: Wordfence (security), WP Rocket (performance), PerfMatters (performance), Gravity Forms (contact form), Yoast or SEO Framework (Search), and Shortpixel (performance).