A little more about me:

Candidly speaking, one thing I have learned in life is when you want something bad enough, you’re going to find a way to reach and obtain your final objective and goal no matter what it takes and hopefully you do it on the right side of the law. In my first opening sentence here, I don’t mean to imply or condone that you do anything illegally. I think we all know where that can get you and what that end result would be! I simply mean that if you want something badly enough, you have to do whatever it takes to make it happen because it’s not going to happen all by itself or over night or by magically becoming a reality for you.

When I first began thinking about putting my menu sites together and finally publishing them to the web, I had to do a lot of research first. Good thing I did because I learned a lot. I found out that there are plenty of sites that offer the same services as mine. Some terribly designed and some that have abilities that are very impressive and some with abilities you really don’t need.

Now even when I knew there were other sites on the Internet that offer the same services as mine, I was confident enough to believe that I could build my sites, with just the right amount of my own personal touch and design so that it would appeal to the general public and restaurant business owners and that they would advertise on and visit my sites on a regular basis.

Now as I said there are many menus sites on the Internet and I have looked at a lot of them but for all intents and purposes, I am going to focus my attentions on two of them. One on the lower end of sophistication and one on the higher end. In this simple review and comparison of those two sites and my own, I hope to convince you that as an advertiser, my sites offer you the best value for your dollar and bang for your buck. As a visitor, I hope to show you that you can enjoy a more user friendly experience by visiting, viewing and reading the other relevant and fun facts, content, and features that my sites will include.

The first site I’m going to talk about is the lower end of sophistication located at http://www.yourhometownpages.com and is owned and operated by a person who simply calls himself “The Cowboy” I have no clue who he is because for one, I have had no luck in having him communicate with me by email except for one little short one that directed me to call his cell phone. When I did that, I simply got a recorded message and no effort to contact me back. His site above appears to be a script driven web site where you input a menu code for a certain restaurant into a text box and “BAMM” up pops that restaurants menu. The site is very BLAN looking with one little banner graphic at the top that depicts a pizza baker and a scrolling marquee that indicates also that all he deals with is pizza shops. If that’s the case, why doesn’t “The Cowboy” just call his site “yourhometownpizzashops” It seems to me that a web site called “yourhometownpages” could include a whole lot more content about your local community and hometown than just pizza shops! Personally, if I owned that domain name, I would create a directory of all local businesses in a given area; make it national site like my menus sites and really offer his visitors some more content to read and enjoy. But hey, that’s just me. I’m also not saying that I don’t agree with websites that use and employ software scripts to run or allow the ability of certain and user interactivity features that a lot of sites today have but this site appears to me and in my humble opinion to be very generic. I also use software scripts in some of my sites. One positive thing I can say about his site is this. Just like my sites, “The Cowboy’s” site does present the menus that are available in a PDF file format and this allows for full vivid color pictures of menu items available.
“Enough said!” and “Cowboy”, your welcome for the back link!

The second site I would like to talk about is a bit more sophisticated and is located at http://www.foodle.net and this site appears to enjoy advertisers that number just over four thousand menus. As well as providing the menus of local restaurants, the site also links maps and directions to area restaurants through a service provided by Mapquest.com. While Mapquest is a free and very useful site and I myself have used quite often, it appears to be becoming more and more obsolete these days because more and more people are relying on and buying GPS units for their cars to help navigate them around. They are very easy and simply a pleasure to use. Yes, I have one and use it just about everyday and usually about 15-20 times a day because as I already said, I am a part time delivery person for a local pizza shop.

Also and unfortunately, foodle.net presents there menus in a text only format with no pictures available as far as I can tell. The only pictures I could see on their site were from the various banners that advertisers pay them for impressions on their pages. I don’t know about you but when I look at a menu, I like to see a presentation or pic of the food I’m about to order. As they say, pictures can speak a thousand words. Foodle also has some little icons that let you know whether the restaurant is dine in, take out, delivery and what type of cuisine a restaurant serves. It is also an International site that includes menus from the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. In my humble opinion, unless you’re a world traveler who likes fine dining in other countries other than the United States, this site for my taste is a little overkill but overall, it does suit it’s purpose. The cost to advertise on this site with all its bells and whistles, surely adds to the cost of advertising as well.

Now, let’s talk about my menu sites. I have and maintain two of them. They are recently launched this February 2009 and are still getting the final touches applied to them. They are similar in appearance but both serve the same purpose.
The first one I created is for restaurant businesses that offer a delivery service. It is called and located at http://www.mylocaldeliverymenus.com   I came up with and developed the concept for this site when I started delivering for a local pizza shop close to my home. It wasn’t until I started my research into the concept that I found out somebody else thought of it first. Go figure! Anyway, I didn’t let that stop me and I continued with my work on my site with my own ideas and twists on things. I did more research and seeked out permissions to use graphics that were copyrighted but I felt were a perfect match for my site and what I wanted to use them for. After I had gotten all my ducks in a row, I went to work and was just about finished when I said to myself; myself, you could do the same thing for dine in restaurants as well.  So, before I completed work on my delivery site, I started working on http://www.mylocalrestaurantmenus.com   Both sights are complete and open for business on the Internet as you are reading this, I am happy to say!

Now they may be complete but they will be ever growing because in the future they will feature restaurant reviews for both sites as well as other tidbits of information and interesting topics while you are waiting for your food to be delivered or while you’re waiting for your significant other to get ready and go out to eat!

Speaking of additional features and news, I recently came across a great site called
http://www.foodbuzz.com  and they have a great widget that I have included on my site. It seems to fit my desire to bring you reviews, maps and directions to many restaurants for those of you who would make use of these features without adding all the technical code into my pages and enabling me to keep my advertising costs at a minimum. I'm still testing it out but would appriciate your feedback on it. You'll find it on the right panels of every webpage on the site. Check it out and enjoy! 

Also in my research of other sites of the same purpose, I have discovered and made sure that my costs are in fact less costly for advertisers then any other site I have seen. I have developed a marketing strategy called the Powers of Seven and if you are a restaurant owner or manager in charge of your advertising, you can go to restaurant menus advertising to read more about it.

Thanks to all of you for letting me ramble on to you and…. what, what’s that sound I hear?

Is that your stomach talking to you?

Go order something or go out to eat!

Regards To You and Yours,

Marty Figgs
Owner/Self-Taught Webmaster
http://www.mylocaldeliverymenus.com
http://www.mylocalrestaurantmenus.com

P.S. My sites don’t provide self contained maps and directions but if you have a GPS and if you’re hungry enough, I’m sure you’ll find your way!  Take Care!