Chris Maclean: the new snake oil salesmen of the 21st century
The chefs are being pestered by a company keen to get the restaurant advertised on the internet.
These appear to be the new snake oil salesmen of the 21st century offering the potential of the world wide web to share our information with. If we buy into the process people throughout the world can get information on what we are and what we do. If we don't we might as well fade and die. We will be invisible to everyone.
Poppycock.
The particular site on offer operates on the basis that people might look to the internet to find somewhere to eat and, if the message is clear and relevant, people might then flock to eat here. But entries are entirely of those places that choose to pay for the advert. There is absolutely nothing to distinguish a good restaurant from a bad one.
There are other websites, organised by those who eat out and base their experiences on eating in various places, which offer opinion and insight into what the experience will be like but, like a lot of opinion-based sites, this can be manipulated.
There are now emerging hybrid sites which list all businesses of a type with an opportunity, for an additional fee, of enhancing your profile. Even the BT phone book does that.
But what is extraordinary is how some businesses have incredible online presence and others appear invisible. I know of fish and chip shops that offer e-mail ordering and glossy websites which seems bizarre to me. And other businesses, providing services which need a presence, but which are impossible to find on the internet.
Businesses need to discern if they truly need a presence. Pubs which do food, entertainment and accommodation probably do need to be visible. Pubs that don't probably don't need to waste their time.
But the really sad thing about this predatory website service pushing for our restaurant's business is that, when you actually visit their site, they only have three clients. People would have to be pretty stupid to base their dining experiences on a choice of three paid-for adverts for the whole of the South East of England.
But there again snake oil does have some very good properties.
