With 2011 coming to an end, our team would like to start this post by thanking everyone involved in building and improving the MenuPlatform product, especially our early test users that have provided valuable feedback. We are going to adding more beta restaurant users over the next few weeks, so if you are interested in free access to our online dashboard to manage your online menus, make sure to request access at menuplatform.com.

Many have been asking us what we see as the big trends in restaurant technology in 2012. There’s been a lot of talk about NFC, mobile wallets, the future of daily deals, social media dashboards, hyperlocal commerce… but how will these buzz words translate into more traffic, starting January 1?

Here are our key predictions for 2012 – with tactical recommendations for each that can have real, immediate impact on your revenues.

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We have been getting a lot of questions from restaurant owners about daily deals. Are coupon deal sites relationship focused? Are they looking out for the best interest of restaurants? Should restaurants be promoting these deals?

Well the (infamous) answer is: “It depends!” Over the past few years, companies like Groupon, LivingSocial and BuyWithMe have seen tremendous growth and the benefits and risks for small business owners have been widely discussed: 

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A lot of people have asked how they can change their Facebook URL from something rather cryptic like http://www.facebook.com/pages/Example-Restaurant/182019435199420 to just http://www.facebook.com/Example-Restaurant.

There’s a short answer: You need at least 25 people to “like” your page i.e. be a fan of your restaurant on Facebook. 

UPDATE (Oct 5)

“Facebook has quietly removed the limitation for its Username service, facilitating the registration of Pages regardless of how many Likes they do or do not have”

Then navigate to Basic Information and follow the instructions next to Username. 

Be careful though, once you have claimed a username it is not possible to change or transfer it. Even when the account is deleted, it will not become available due to security reasons, according to Facebook.

This past March the FDA instituted new regulations regarding restaurant menus for those food establishments with 20+ locations. Check out the new law in verbatim. The new law is forcing these restaurants to put calorie content directly on their menus and all other nutritional information to be available upon request. Now, this could be interpreted as positive or negative depending on the type of food you serve, but regardless it brings up the question whether this law will eventually be imposed on all restaurants. And, updating menus can be time-consuming and costly.

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Online reviews are booming. There are more and more restaurant review sites popping up every day. People can review restaurants on Yelp, Google, Zagat, CitySearch, UrbanSpoon, ChowHound, OpenTable, just to name a few of the bigger sites. With each new review site comes an additional opportunity for an unsatisfied patron to write a negative review about your restaurant. Even though your first reaction to a negative review might be to delete it, ignore it, or punish whomever caused the negative review, there actually is some benefit to them - if dealt with the right way. 

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