champs2005 wrote:Wow, what a gold mine of advice. Why are you all giving it away for free? To what end? Did it occur to you that this person is turning around laughing to her colleagues and saying "Ive stuck it rich...a whole bunch of opinionated foodies and I can pick their brains for free"? Heck with the consultants, bankers, focus groups, etc.

Why bother?

Just my $0.02.

I'm happy to give anyone feedback about whatever it is that they do. Whether it's a restaurant, movie, website, or hardware store, if they ask for genuine feedback about how to make what they do better, I'm happy to give it (if I have an opinion). And I'm especially likely to give feedback to an entrepreneur. I guess that's just how my momma raised me.

I'm not sure he's "struck it rich" here since we're mainly just showing him things that he's completely, glaringly wrong about some really basic stuff that he claims to have nailed. You don't need an consultant to tell you that you missed restaurants, you just need a web browser and the ability to type.

Still, he came here to ask us what we thought of his service, most of us don't find it very comprehensive or useful and we told him so. Should we have said, "sorry, we are reserving our comments in the interest of supporting the focus group and consulting businesses that offer these services for a price." ?

Best,
Michael

Hi,

I just wanted to thank everyone for all the help, advice, and tough love offered to us about localplatter.com. Of course the site is still a work in progress, but your comments certainly helped us find a direction. Many of the restaurant owners and managers are now working with us directly to ensure that we have their most up-to-date specials and restaurant information, and people are accessing our site from home and from work. We had hoped that the site could be a local resource for people, and that appears to be happening. Thanks again for all of your help- we will use your comments to guide us, and I will check in from time to time. This is a great forum, and I appreciate everyone's feedback.

I know that this sounds obvious, but one of the best ways that I have found to save money while eating out, is to look for restaurant specials. I have found that most restaurants have specials of some kind. Last week, I took my wife and daughter to Davis Street Fish Market in Evanston for my wife’s birthday, and we had Alaskan King Crab Legs for $19.99 (Thursdays)- this is typically $28.99. We had to ask the waitress if there were any specials, and she told us about the deal. I do not know whether our waitress forgot to mention the special, or since the restaurant was pretty crowded on a week night, they did not want to push the specials. Additionally, Buffalo Wild Wings offers a great special on wings- 45 cent wings on Tuesday and 60 cent boneless wings on Thursdays. I have found these types of savings throughout Chicagoland, and I thought that I would pass them on- eating out can be affordable.

EKhan

Http://localplatter.com/Specials

Metromix has a fairly comprehensive list of specials that you can view by going to the small calendar on the right side of their web page and clicking on "Deals" for the date you're interested in.

I just looked at the specials on Metromix, and only saw 6 specials for today without prices? Are you sure that this is the best place to look for specials?

EKhan

There are, in fact, 157 deals listed for today, and 141 deals listed for tomorrow on Metromix. One of the events listed under today's deals is a 99-cent menu at Pete Miller's in Wheeling that, strangely, does not appear on your suburban specials site.

Thanks for letting me know. I was only able to find 6 specials there but I will look some more. Also, thanks for letting me know about Pete Miller's- I wasn't talking about our site, but thanks for the info.

EKhan
localplatter.com

All I see is in Metromix is specials for Chicago, nothing for suburbs.

Perhaps this thread should be merged with the earlier thread you started about your website: viewtopic.php?f=17&t=28093

I don't think we need more than one thread promoting your website. Do you?

2late4me wrote:All I see is in Metromix is specials for Chicago, nothing for suburbs.

Did you see the Pete Miller's special on Metromix? It is in the suburbs but wasn't on your website.

What website? All I'm saying is that metromix had only 2 specials for suburbs and 1 of those 2 was for Pete Millers. Is there a reason that Metromix only has 2 specials listed for the suburbs? Maybe for people living in Chicago Metro Mix is a great site...but not for me since I live in the suburbs.