Web Sites That Wow (Restaurants USA, September 1997)

September 1997 issue

Web Sites That Wow

Restaurants USA magazine's final issue was published in September 2002 but these archived articles remain available for our readers' convenience.

Restaurants USA, September 1997

Don't get lost in cyberspace looking for useful Web sites. We've surfed the Net for you and searched out some of the best restaurant-related sites.
By Paul Moomaw

The World Wide Web is packed with resources for restaurateurs. Food professionals of all kinds are hanging out online, doing informal research, swapping war stories, sharing recipes and placing help-wanted ads. All it takes is a computer with a modem and access to the Internet.

Since the Internet can bombard you with information, this article is designed to save you time by providing a no-nonsense tour of several Web sites. Restaurants USA logged days and days of research time on the Internet, wading through dozens of Web sites to provide you with analysis that will help you spend your time online wiselyÑinstead of getting lost looking for good sites.

Taking into account the hectic pace most restaurant-industry professionals must maintain, this article does not include sites that require you to pay subscription fees, to be a computer expert or to fill out lengthy forms before you are granted a password for access privileges.

Restaurants USA reviewed Web sites that offer valuable information (free of charge) in three areas: food and cooking, running a small business, and obtaining financing.
You can have an Internet-loving staffer visit these sites on your behalf and print out highlights for you to view at your leisure. Or better yet, spend a few hours online yourself exploring the bountiful resources out in cyberspace and finding out what other chefs and restaurateurs around the world are doing to boost business and keep their concepts fresh.

This listing of sites is only a starting place for your cyberspace research, however, and many fine sites are not listed here. Consider this a jumping-off point for your exploration. Click on.

Food and cooking sites

Food and cooking resources abound on the World Wide Web. In particular, the number of recipe archives has exploded; there are now hundreds of thousands of recipes available on the Internet. (Of course, most are geared to home cooksÑbut theyÕre still a great source of inspiration.) Here are some of the best all-around food and cooking sites for food pros.

o The electronic Gourmet Guide, "the eGG" (www.foodwine.com). ItÕs easy to get oriented at this magazine-format Web site. There is a daily wine column, a daily food column, home-cooking articles, interviews with chefs and cookbook authors, and lots of recipes. The site includes a nifty calculator for converting recipes from metric to U.S. measures. If you are a foodie, youÕll feel right at home at the eGG.

Restaurant-industry folks will love the siteÕs ongoing soap-opera-like serial called "Back of the House: The Saga of Eaters and Feeders." It features restaurant-industry characters, many of whom you will recognize from your own establishment: the waitress with seven earrings, the diners who leave tiny tips and a restaurant owner with opening-night jitters. The elegantly designed site also features fine links to other food-related Web sites.

o Star Chefs (www.starchefs.com). The slick home page of this site does glorify many well-known chefs, but behind that introductory page are lots of other goodies.

Many restaurant-industry professionals seem to congregate here, and that means the message boards offer good discussion threads on food and restaurant-industry topics. The classified ads for industry positions are up-to-date and plentiful. Both employers and job seekers post positions and availability almost daily. (Many are fairly high-level kitchen positions, such as executive chef, banquet chef, pastry chef.)

The site will be of particular interest to those who long to sneak a peek into the work habits and menus of "star" chefs.

o Culinary ProfessionalÕs Resource Center (www.vnr.com/rcenters/cul/cul.html).
Come to this site prepared to roam; this site is above all a gateway to other food-related Web sites. You could spend an entire evening (or weekend) visiting all the sites linked from this site, which is sponsored by Van Nostrand Reinhold, the publisher of many food-industry management books and textbooks.

Visit the "Restaurants" and "Chefs" sections to see what some of your peers are doing in terms of Web-site design. The "Online Shopping" section gives links to commercial food sites where manufacturers are hawking everything from china to mushrooms to training videos. The "Schools" button sends you to a list of links to the Web sites of culinary schools.

Food pros looking for a one-stop link to a broad selection of food-industry Web sites will appreciate this site, which features helpful editorial comments from chef Gary Holleman, an enthusiastic analyst of food-related Web sites.

o Food and Nutrition Information Center (www.nal.usda.gov/fnic). This fine U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) site is headquarters for information on food safety and nutrition. You can see a list of food-safety courses coming to your town or read through materials on the HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point) food-safety system. Or you could browse through a list of food-safety consultants, post a food-safety question, print out brief articles on current nutrition findings and download a pretty version of the USDAÕs food-guide pyramid. ThereÕs lots of information and good links here for people working in the food-safety field.

School foodservice professionals will want to tour the "Healthy School Meals Resource System," which is packed with information on planning healthy school meals and adhering to governmental guidelines.

Both the food-safety and school-nutrition sections of this site have their own forums where you can discuss issues with others in your fieldÑa good way to network with your peers nationwide and get answers to questions from fellow experts.

Finally, thereÕs a "USDA Food and Nutrition Information" section with reports on the dietary guidelines, nutrition research and links to other USDA Web sites.

o Epicurious (www.epicurious.com). This site is operated by Conde Nast, publisher of Bon Appetit and Gourmet magazines. The Web site is not specifically geared to food professionals, but it is noteworthy for its enormous file of recipes from Gourmet and Bon Appetit. A fine recipe-search feature allows you to plug in the ingredients that you have on hand (say you just got a great deal from your distributor on tomatoes) and pull up recipes that feature those ingredients.

Another clever gimmick allows you to automatically e-mail one of the recipes to a friend. Overall, the site is a fine source of inspiration when itÕs time to change the menu.

o The Internet Food Channel (www.foodchannel.com). This site is great if you have research to do, if you need background information to give a speech about food trends to peers, or if you are looking for a list of consultants.

Click on the "Food Pros Area" button on the home page to get right to the good stuff. A highlight for professional research is the siteÕs "Directories" section, which includes a list of "Research Resources." ItÕs a good place to locate a consultant, since it includes contact names and phone numbers for food-research companies and marketing-research firms, among others. Another area compiles "Product Development Firms" available to help you roll out new food products.

Go to the "Articles" section for access to dozens of stories on current food trends, with topics ranging from beer trends to analysis of the home meal replacement market. There are as many articles on packaged foods and supermarkets as there are on restaurant trends.

The Internet Food Channel is splashy with color and ambitious with graphics in placesÑvery attractive, but the fine design may leave visitors using slower computers waiting a while for pages to be shown in their full glory. This site, which is run by the food-marketing consultancy Noble & Associates, consolidates information gathered from a lot of other sources, so thereÕs plenty here in the way of food trends, marketing data and consumer information.

o The Food & Wine Online Newsletter (www.indianharvest.com/html/fwolfs.html). This newsletter is the brainchild of aforementioned Gary Holleman, a tireless compiler of online foodservice resources. You can view both past and present issues of his newsletter, which feature up-to-date Internet addresses and descriptions of dozens of foodservice-related Web sites. ItÕs an outstanding resource for foodies, but many of the Web sites touted in the newsletter are the blatantly commercial sites of food companies, equipment makers, wineries and other merchandisers.

If you are interested in continually receiving news on food-related Web sites, you can place yourself on a list via this site to receive the newsletter regularly via e-mail.

o The Internet Culinary CyberCity (www.culinary.net). Dubbing itself "The Food and Drink Capital of the World Wide Web," this site has recipes galore, food discussion areas and lots of short articles about foodÑalthough many of them are promotional materials in disguise.

On this site and others, be a wary consumer of information and consider the sources. For instance, most of the recipes on this site are from food companies or trade groups, and it is maintained by a company that specializes in producing press releases. So use the site for what you will, but donÕt consider it a source of expertly edited information.

Small-business sites

Outside the food realm, the free information available on the Internet just keeps flowingÑif you know where to go in cyberspace.

o CCH Business OwnerÕs Toolkit (www.toolkit.cch.com). Business publisher CCH has put together a site that is extremely useful to business owners and that goes well beyond ads and articles.

Go straight to the "Business Tools" section for downloadable business documents you can use, such as a termination notice, a sample business-loan application, a bank-review document (to see how bankers review your loan application), time sheets and sample sexual-harassment policies. The forms are generally excellent, representing a great starting place for the treatment of many employee management and financial issues. The "Real Property Lease Checklist," for instance, is a smart tool to employ for lease negotiations. There is a special section of forms for business start-ups.

In some cases, these forms might save you a trip to the lawyerÕs officeÑor at least save you from having to buy some business books or software.

o Entrepreneur MagazineÕs Small Business Square (www.entrepreneurmag.com). This top-notch site displays a practical bent that will be appreciated by business owners. Click on this siteÕs "Resource Center" to see the bulk of the useful tools for running your business. Visit the "Starting Smart" section for a series of articles on steps to take in starting a business, such as choosing your legal structure, writing a business plan and raising capital.

The "FormNet" section allows you to download literally hundreds of business forms that can simplify your life or better your business discipline. For example, included are a cash-flow analysis form, a second-notice billing letter, a classic sales receiptÑall practical forms that are free for the taking. There are some free demographic reports available, and the "Raising Money Now!" section has many resources related to financing your business.

Finally, the "Small Business Links" section, with links arranged by topic, makes this a rich siteÑit truly delivers on being more than a series of articles placed online.

o U.S. Small Business Administration (www.sbaonline.sba.gov). Here is a fine place to get the lowdown on how the government can help your business. The site is a good way to find out where your local Small Business Administration (SBA) offices are, including addresses and phone numbers and events in your area. Also included are addresses and phone numbers for your local SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives) offices, which you may contact for free advice on starting or running a business.

The SBAÕs loan programs are explained here, and there are links to dozens of government resources for small business, including many free publications and services, and even free "shareware" software.

Financing sites

Every business could use some more cash, and the Internet offers a growing number of fresh sources of business-financing information. ItÕs a smart way to start a finance search, and it might be more time-effective than randomly calling lenders.

o AmericaÕs Business Funding Directory (www.businessfinance.com). This site aims to match lenders and borrowers. You type in a description of your business and its funding needs in some detail, and the site spits out a list of lenders, phone numbers and addresses that have apparently expressed an interest in businesses of your type. The types of lending matches include equipment leasing, commercial real estate, SBA loans, venture capital and more. Of course, your prospects for meeting a lender online would seem somewhat hit-or-miss, but the siteÕs promoters claim to have made matches for tens of millions of dollars. At the very least, the names and phone numbers of lenders are likely to be more up-to-date than those in many library books about small-business financing.
Even if you arenÕt yet prepared to plug your numbers into the siteÕs online application, thereÕs a decent educational component in the hopefully titled Raining Money! funding guide. This 16-chapter online booklet walks you through the process of finding capital, including preparing a business plan and statements that could impress a lender. The booklet can be downloaded for free and is just as good as many books on the subject.

o Commercial Finance Online (www.cfol.com). HereÕs another site designed to link lenders with borrowers. It claims to be "The worldÕs most popular search engine of business-finance resources."

Click on the "Search" button, and you can look for names and contact numbers at banks and other lenders. You can sort by geographic region. To further the matchmaking, the site requests that you plug your companyÕs numbers into online forms that resemble loan applications. The success of such a strategy is difficult to gauge, but this site claims "businesses have had great success when publishing their needs" via the online forms.

o BankWeb (www.bankweb.com). Nothing fancy here, just a nice long list of links to the Web sites of banks, arranged by state. Because the links to so many banks are right here, it provides you with a quick way to tour the financial products of several of your areaÕs banks, since you can quickly click to all the listed banks in your area from BankWeb.

Back to top

Paul Moomaw is a business writer in Austin, Texas.