appetites

A friend tipped me off to this story in the Times Picayune, about a restaurant that saw its business affected by a chain email. The restaurant is Manchu Food Store, on North Claiborne, and the email, which was false, claimed that the restaurant had been cited for health code violations:

The message was an e-mail with the subject line, “Manchu Food Alert!” It exclaimed: “Manchu . . . failed their health inspection twice in the last 30 days. They were cited for having rats in the grease, and storing food on the floor.”

The owner, Tommy Nguyen, addressed it quickly. He bought radio advertisements, and bought an ad in the Times Picayune. He put up a banner on his storefront that says, “Manchu Rumors are Not True.” His business, he reports, dropped by 75%.
This is an unusual situation, because in order for the rumor to spread by email, there needs to be some connection between at least a significant percentage of the restaurant’s customers. Otherwise, how can enough people learn of the “problem?” Most restaurants probably don’t have a clientele that is closely connected enough to be affected by a chain email.
But it made me think of something more common – posts on messageboards or blogs that denigrate a restaurant anonymously, and how restaurants should react. That, in turn, had me thinking of an even broader topic that’s been bouncing around in my pointy little head for a year or two: how should restaurants behave on the interwebs?
So I thought I’d take a stab, in the warm afterglow of LSU’s victory over Georgia, at an introduction to the topic. A lot of what I’m going to say is going to seem obvious. If you’ve already got a significant web-presence, then this may not be all that useful to you. You may skip ahead to the more advanced discussion with my permission.
Let’s start with the basics. Do you have a website? If you do, does it communicate what it should? Because if you have a website, and the most essential information you need to communicate isn’t immediately accessible, you’re not doing it right.
The essential information you need to display on a website is as follows: your address, your phone number, and the days and hours that you’re open. If these things are not on the first page I see when I load your web page, then you are doing it wrong.
There are exceptions; I know of a few local restaurant websites that have an artistic “splash” page that fits the ambience of the restaurant, and I can’t quibble too much about that, because generally those splash pages are something you can skip with a single click. But if your page loads with a bunch of pretty pictures, and makes me hunt around for more than five seconds to figure out how to contact you to make a reservation, WHY?
99% of the people who visit your website are looking for information on how to reach you. Why the holy fuck would you hide that? Why would you make it difficult to find? If your web designer advises you to do so, you need to find someone who understands that restaurant websites are not designed to generate page-views.
Let me explain: commercial websites that are trying to sell advertising often make you visit multiple pages to view all of the content they’re providing. That’s because each time you load a page, the advertisements they run are re-loaded too. It’s a model that’s pretty much out of date, but I guess some web designers haven’t figured that out yet, because a lot of web pages still follow that template for no apparent purpose.
Look, I know that your restaurant is special. It is your baby, it is the result of your hard work and it’s a work of art. You want your website to be as special as your restaurant. You want it to reflect the spirit of your restaurant; you want it to reflect the atmosphere, and to give people an idea of what they can expect when they dine with you.
Nobody cares. Nobody but you, your close relatives, and the people you’re paying to make a fabulous website. Again, 99% of the people who visit your website are looking for information on how to visit your restaurant. Your website is advertising, and like any other advertising, the function of your website is to put asses in seats in your restaurant. To the extent you make it more difficult for visitors to your website to contact you and make a reservation, or to find out when you’re open, or where you are? You’re making it less likely for that particular ass to end up in a seat in your restaurant. And unless I’m very mistaken about your business model, that’s what you want, no?
That is not to say that your website should not reflect the spirit of your restaurant, or give people an impression of what they can expect when they dine with you. It is simply to say that you can do those things, and others, while still making sure that the essential information you need to relate is ON YOUR FRONT GODDAMN PAGE.
Everything else is a matter of taste. There are certainly things that you may want on your website in addition to the essentials. A representative menu is nice, as are well-taken photographs of your food. If there are positive media reviews of your restaurant, by all means post them, and provide links if the reviews are online. Personally, I despise embedded music, but hey, I despise a lot of things. Your mileage may vary. Speaking as someone who writes about restaurants, I also like to see a “history” section, and maybe something about the staff, especially your chef(s). Nude pictures are not necessary.
So how did I get here from the original story to which I linked? Well, your website is really the first thing you should consider when you consider your presence on the interwebs. It’s what most people will find first when they plug your name into a search engine.
What I’ll get into in more detail another day is how you should react, if at all, when you plug your restaurant’s name into a search engine (which you should do regularly, by the way) and you find someone slandering you on a messageboard or blog.
For now, I’ll address, briefly, what you should do if you learn that someone is sending emails around claiming that your restaurant is a wretched hive of scum and villainy. First, is your restaurant a wretched hive of scum and villainy? If your answer is “yes,” please do what you can to evict the villains and clean the scum, then pretend the villains and scum were never there in the first place. “What villains? What scum?” you’ll say to anyone who asks.
Your next question should be: “What do I care?” Because lots of dumbasses say all kinds of dumbass things via email all the time. While I was typing this, I received seven offers for Rolax watches, three notices that I have won a Nigerian lottery, and seventeen offers to improve the size of my member, none of which work, I’ve heard. If, however, you are unfortunate enough to be the target of an effective eamail smear campaign, I would suggest that you do not take the “high ground” taken by Mr. Nguyen. If you can find out who sent the original email, by all means do so. Sometimes people make it easy.
If you can find the original sender, you have a dilemma. Contact them, or no? This obviously is going to depend on the circumstances, and the circumstances are far too broad for me to address here. If it’s a disgruntled employee, that’s one thing; a disgruntled customer, another. You may need to seek legal advice (he said, hoping that the reader remembers he’s a lawyer.) The point I’m trying to make is that if it’s affecting your business, you shouldn’t ignore it, and even if, as did Mr. Nguyen, you choose to attack the problem with advertising, you should probably also address the source.
There is one other considertation: is there anything you can do about it? Because if the email says, as in the Machu Food Store instance, “Your Restaurant was cited for having a rat in the fry oil,” which is demonstrably false, you may have some recourse in the courts. If, however, the email expresses an opinion, such as “the food at the Manchu Food Store sucks,” you probably do not. That is because you cannot demonstrate that an opinion is false.
Whatever the circumstances, the universal advice I can give you is that you do not want to make threats on the interwebs. That is what lawyers (oh hay!) are for. This is a topic I will, hopefully, address in the future when I talk about how you should react to negative postings on messageboards, and blogs, and how you should interact with social media like facebook, myspace, and twitter. Also, I will address run-on sentences, and my proclivity to write them, despite my distaste when I read them, and the influence of editors and so on, and so on.
So, go forth and conquer, my monkeys. Fly, in other words.

The glove compartment is inaccurately named, and everybody knows it.