Restaurant Rating Site?

[Hockey4Life]

I am currently working at a new restaurant in my area and got an idea recently. We are having some trouble getting our name out there and attracting business. So I thought about this site...

What if I could create a site just for my local area (for now at least) that listed all the restaurants in my area. With the restaurant I could offer details such as hours, directions, photos, type of food (maybe even full menus), prices, size of restaurant, atmosphere, etc... Then, in addition to the details, visitors could rate each restaurant and submit their own reviews on the site.

I think getting the restaurant information would be pretty easy as restaurants are always open to advertisement. I am sure I could get most to give a breakdown of their restaurant including a full menu, hours, etc...

About the making money part... Possibly charge restaurants to be added to my site? I doubt that would work well, especially without an established site. But I could offer "premium" advertisement space for restaurants, like on the main page of my site. Then of course advertisements from Google, Yahoo, etc...

What do you all think?

[kiddoso]

Hi, if I understand what you are proposing correctly, Yelp is already doing it.

[Hockey4Life]

Dang! Lol thanks for the info.

[rejoice]

the money made on a site like you propose is usually through advertising space.... provide free quality content... and interactive... then get traffic and other local businesses will want to advertise their brand or service... might not be restaurant related... maybe a taxi service (no drink driving)... might be a local show coming up... etc...

by the sounds off things... you won't be pursuing that now... but if you where then it would be an ideal scenario to introduce a new product into their fridge...

[Crysco]

There is almost always someone else doing something you thought of. That doesn't mean you cant do it better over time. I am working on a project in the wedding industry check it out: BOSTON WEDDING - NEW ENGLAND WEDDINGS (MyWeddingKnot.com) :: Your Local Source for Wedding Vendors.

Maybe you could do something like this in the restaurant industry.
I plan to use a similar system for my next big project too.