For example everyday at least a couple dozen people look at the Croton Menu Hub. How could a restaurant owner not appreciate what it means to have that daily captive audience? Traditionally they'll throw hundreds of dollars away on print ads or cheezy TV spots. But good luck exlaining to joepizzaguy why he might want to throw me a slice because every freaking day local people are looking at his menu thanks to this hub...When they see ideas validated by some sort of national attention or something then they want to be the devoted followers...but before that, they just play dumb usually. THAT bean said.

  Many restaurant owners either don't have computers~or more often they're simply too busy to find the time to go online. This menuhub project is an inexpensive (as it is effortless) way to give restaurants a positive first time web experience. There is nothing new about eateries advertising on the web, but believe it or not, many of the websites restaurant owners spend small fortunes on, often times don't even bother to include the menu. 

   Another important point to consider is that even when a restaurant has a website, even with a menu, their "url" (or the "web address") may have a hyphen or a shortened spelling that people have no way of figuring out quickly and easily. No matter how clever, cute, or witty their domain name is (i.e "where2dine.com " or "eatthis.com" ) anything with more than 5 letters simply can't compete with growling tummies.

   So this is where the farmy.com "menu hubbing" idea comes in. Like a Grand Central Station of restaurants waiting for hungry passengers to peruse a library of mealtime ideas....If you already have a gorgeous website we'll link right into your "menu-page" first. If people want to read "histories" and "faqs" they can and will do that also ~but first things first!  Really-it makes sense to start with a simple menu-page and then maybe invest later in having someone design a gorgeous site with your always increasing web audience. The beauty of farmy's inexpensive advert oppurtunity is that even if only a dozen people use it, even if you only sell one pizza pie a month to a websurfer~it's more than paid for itself. The computer isn't like a fleeting 30 second televsion spot~designed to be seen once and then evaporate.  Online your info is there whenever anyone needs to pull it up.

   Just imagine 100's of hungry office workers in your town, (or on their way home to your town) looking for fresh food ideas. Online restaurant info is usually too scattered to be reliable (on all the differentas they are incomplete "dining guides" out there). Too many pictures of dining rooms, chefs and large music files will often make people's computer's crash before they have a chance to even see anything at all-and then they don't bother coming back to the site because it's probably been more annoying than helpful. Simple basic and useful vs. knocking your sox off with flashy bells and whistles. Slick looking sites are too often more about image than usefulness. It's as if the average person has been laughed out of the arena by the web design snobs who need to feel superior by making the novice computer user feel inferior.....that needs to end before the computer world is made up of nothing but spam mailers and porn sites. The computer is meant to be more about one-on-one communication than it is the TV mentality where only "millions of hits" is indication of a "succesful site." The computer is not the TV!

    FARMY is a work in progress, but as you can see for yourself....it's starting to happen...