36 replies to this topic

[VicHockeyFan]

ForkJoy

A lot of work went into that, the creators admit some is outdated already, but it has a wikipedia-style method of user-updates.

[VicHockeyFan]

Nobody thinks it's good? Or bad? Or anything?

[Mike K.]

Forkjoy sounds like the name of an Asian restaurant.

I just don't think a wikipedia style restaurant info site is a good way to go. There has to be control of content otherwise unscrupulous competitors could be enticed to muck about. And for what its worth Yelp and Urbanspoon do what they do so well that any new competition will likely only attract a niche following.

[VicHockeyFan]

Forkjoy sounds like the name of an Asian restaurant.

I just don't think a wikipedia style restaurant info site is a good way to go. There has to be control of content otherwise unscrupulous competitors could be enticed to muck about. And for what its worth Yelp and Urbanspoon do what they do so well that any new competition will likely only attract a niche following.

You think Urbanspoon does a good job? Less than 20% of their listings have a menu.

[bicycles]

Ok, but restaurants can add their menu whenever they want to. I don't think it's the fault of Urbanspoon and I don't see how this isn't anything more then a replication of that.

[VicHockeyFan]

Ok, but restaurants can add their menu whenever they want to. I don't think it's the fault of Urbanspoon and I don't see how this isn't anything more then a replication of that.

Oh, I agree. But this already has the menus for 95% of the restaurants in Victoria, so I can't see how it's no better than Urbanspoon.

[Matt R.]

Hey, that's not a bad looking website, and the information seems to be up to date. I wonder where they get it all from?

Too bad the animal mascot looks like pedobear.

Matt.

[tedward]

OK, well you asked.

The interface is confusing. Right at the top in large letters are the words Menus, Photos and Reviews. None of which are clickable links.

I tried using the search function searching for "I would like..." and narrowing my search by "Neighbourhood". Instead of giving me what I expected, a list of restaurants serving pizza in or near James Bay I was given a list of menu items.

First ten results:

• pizza sub with cheese, subway
• Buffalo Chicken Flat Bread, Villages Pizza
• 591 Ml Bottle Pepsi (et al), Villages Pizza
• Caesar Salad, Villages Pizza
• Chicken Tenders, Villages Pizza
• CBR Souvlaki, Villages Pizza
• Cheesy Garlic Toast, Villages Pizza
• Gourmet Garlic Parm Bread Sticks, Villages Pizza
• Flatbread Pizza, Swiftsure Restaurant and Lounge
• Jumbo Roadhouse Wings, Villages Pizza

Only one of those first ten items would I consider and accurate reflection of my search query if I was looking for menu items.


I then tried to browse for "burger" and was brought up a list of menu items.


This site is, for me, a total fail. I do not search by individual menu items but rather I would like to find a restaurant that serves the kinds of meals I want to eat. I appreciate that others might wish to have the option to search by popular or new dishes but that should not be the basic default setting.


The wasted space on the front page with an irrelevant (and yes pedobear-ish) cartoon character is off-putting and rather silly when they seem to have a nicely designed logo that is hidden in the top-left corner. Shouldn't a start-up want to build brand awareness?

Interestring idea and certainly a niche that has some room, sadly this version misses the mark and could have used some more beta-testing with real people.

[Gary H]

Alright, I just signed up. I'm always taking pictures of our meals when we travel so I've got pics of some great dishes. For me, being able to easily add a pic for a specific dish is really cool. This is something no one is doing right now - complete menus with ability to add pics. Pictures of dishes can really help sell a dish and while it's great to have menus online, most don't include pictures of all the dishes. It's strange but what came to mind is stamp collecting - Forkjoy provides the album (with a blank picture placeholder for each menu item) and we collect the stamps (pics).

It appears the focus of the site is more towards individual dishes than the overall restaurant. How many times have you been to a restaurant that is mediocre overall but has that one killer dish. You don't want to give the restaurant 5 stars but if you could just highlight that one dish, then you're doing your fellow man a big favor. Yeah you could write this up on Yelp but the dish focus of Forkjoy is more helpful. I put up a pic and comment on Lure's Cranberry Pecan French Toast. It's crazy good, but the other meals we've had there haven't been that great. Go for the french toast, go for that dish. I think that's what Forkjoy wants to help us do.

That said, I agree with tedward that the site's search engine needs to be improved (doable). If I search for pizzas I don't want to see calzones!

[manifest]

I am one of the co-owners of ForkJoy. We have been working on it for the past 8 months and we are finally ready to launch it. Our iPhone app JUST got approved today (you can download it by going to ForkJoy for iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation) and iPad on the iTunes App Store).

I just wanted to respond to a few of the posts on here. We love the criticism. It's what will make our site better in the long-run. We are also aware that there are still some bugs throughout the site, and the homepage needs a bit of work as well.

Hey, that's not a bad looking website, and the information seems to be up to date. I wonder where they get it all from?

Too bad the animal mascot looks like pedobear.

Matt.

We've acquired all the information through the menu pages on the restaurants' websites as well as physically going in to places to either grab a menu or take pictures of them. Every item from every menu has been manually put into our website. We've also tagged every item to improve search results (I'll get into that more in a future response). Currently we have 449 menus and about 35,000 items indexed on our site.

Also, yes. There is a resemblance to pedobear. I want to replace that section with something more descriptive. Actually, now that I think of it, I'm going to work on some mock-ups today because I'm sick of the homepage.

Only one of those first ten items would I consider and accurate reflection of my search query if I was looking for menu items.

I then tried to browse for "burger" and was brought up a list of menu items.

This site is, for me, a total fail. I do not search by individual menu items but rather I would like to find a restaurant that serves the kinds of meals I want to eat. I appreciate that others might wish to have the option to search by popular or new dishes but that should not be the basic default setting.

The wasted space on the front page with an irrelevant (and yes pedobear-ish) cartoon character is off-putting and rather silly when they seem to have a nicely designed logo that is hidden in the top-left corner. Shouldn't a start-up want to build brand awareness?

Interestring idea and certainly a niche that has some room, sadly this version misses the mark and could have used some more beta-testing with real people.

The search will get better over time as more items are rated, photographed, commented on, etc. We have created a simple algorithm to track the most popular items on our site. That is the order that the search results are listed in. Unfortunately, only about 500 items have any sort of activity on them so far. I think the closest we have so far for something good is if you search "burger" (Search Results | ForkJoy).

We are trying to differentiate ourselves from companies such as Urbanspoon or Yelp by offering something different than just restaurant reviews. It's pretty obvious that we can't compete with their giant user bases or their funding capabilities. I love looking at a menu before I go to a restaurant. In the past you could only do this by going to the restaurant's website (if they had one) or trying to read the information off of a horrible camera phone picture on Urbanspoon.

Alright, I just signed up. I'm always taking pictures of our meals when we travel so I've got pics of some great dishes. For me, being able to easily add a pic for a specific dish is really cool. This is something no one is doing right now - complete menus with ability to add pics. Pictures of dishes can really help sell a dish and while it's great to have menus online, most don't include pictures of all the dishes. It's strange but what came to mind is stamp collecting - Forkjoy provides the album (with a blank picture placeholder for each menu item) and we collect the stamps (pics).

It appears the focus of the site is more towards individual dishes than the overall restaurant. How many times have you been to a restaurant that is mediocre overall but has that one killer dish. You don't want to give the restaurant 5 stars but if you could just highlight that one dish, then you're doing your fellow man a big favor. Yeah you could write this up on Yelp but the dish focus of Forkjoy is more helpful. I put up a pic and comment on Lure's Cranberry Pecan French Toast. It's crazy good, but the other meals we've had there haven't been that great. Go for the french toast, go for that dish. I think that's what Forkjoy wants to help us do.

That said, I agree with tedward that the site's search engine needs to be improved (doable). If I search for pizzas I don't want to see calzones!

Thanks for being our first "real" user! I have to admit, your food pictures are pretty awesome. It's great to see someone we don't know finally using the site. Hopefully you will have other people to interact with soon.

As mentioned before, the users are going to have to rate, photograph and comment on some more pizzas in order for you to not get any calzones in your search .

[Matt R.]

I wonder how many people had to Google 'pedobear'!

Matt.

[Nparker]

I wonder how many people had to Google 'pedobear'!...

I shall reluctantly admit I did. The Wikipedia entry (Pedobear - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) was really quite interesting.

[Gary H]

... Also, yes. There is a resemblance to pedobear. I want to replace that section with something more descriptive. Actually, now that I think of it, I'm going to work on some mock-ups today because I'm sick of the homepage.

Yeah, I would definitely get rid of the bear - it serves no purpose and takes up too much space.

The search will get better over time as more items are rated, photographed, commented on, etc. We have created a simple algorithm to track the most popular items on our site. That is the order that the search results are listed in. Unfortunately, only about 500 items have any sort of activity on them so far...

As mentioned before, the users are going to have to rate, photograph and comment on some more pizzas in order for you to not get any calzones in your search .

The area I think needs the most improvement is in the search function. You have a great data set but you need to leverage it better. Your homepage should emphasize an easy to use, quick, and accurate search.

While I like the ability to type something in to the search box and immediately see a list of either menu items or restaurant names, it needs further refinement. The current mechanism gets you to the restaurant you're looking for quickly - good. However, I think your search needs to fundamentally distinguish between dishes and restaurants. I would suggest something like the following:

_______________________________________ SEARCH

(x) Dishes ( ) Restaurants

(x) Trending ( ) Alphabetical

[Neighborhood - All]

The () are radio buttons. The [] is the neighborhood drop down list. So now if I search for pizza with the default options checked you would return all menu items, sorted by trend, that contain "pizza" in the dish name, description, or its tag. No calzones would show up in the returned list because you'd ignore menu items whose only "pizza" reference is in its parent's restaurant name or its tag. Currently, you return a list of dishes, sorted by trend, from everything in the database containing "pizza", including restaurants containing the name "pizza" or tagged "pizza" that contain non-pizza dishes, and if they trend higher then they show up ahead of actual pizza dishes - this is not a logical expected result and gives the impression your search engine is weak or broken. Finally, if I search for "pizza" and select Restaurants then you would only return restaurants that contain "pizza" in the restaurant name, description, or its tag. No dishes would be returned. Also, having the ability to sort the result by trending or alphabetical would be helpful. I would have this search capability prominently on the homepage.

You said your current model hopes to improve search results over time with more user input. The problem is if potential new users are turned off by the unexpected search results they'll never join and you'll never achieve the crowd you need to source your database.

[manifest]

Sorry for the delay in answering you, it has been a hectic couple of days getting ready to start bringing in users. As you might have noticed, you are pretty much the only active user on our site right now .

You'll be happy to know that our mascot has been removed from the most visited pages of our site. He still makes his appearance in the app, but at least he's not as creepy on there.

We have redesigned the home page to focus solely on our search function. We still have a lot left to do on the search function itself, but at least now we think it is clear that you should search for something to try out our site before you just look at a confusing page and leave.

We will be tweaking the search algorithm to give less importance to the restaurant name. Currently if you search for "pizza" you will be getting back salads and other entrees from places like Boston Pizza. Obviously that is not a good way to handle things. We will also be placing filters and sort features on the search page. You will be able to filter by location and price (just like you can on the search page now) but you will also be able to sort it by price, alphabetical and maybe some other stuff. What do you think of the ability to enter in keywords you don't want to have included in your search result? Using your example of pizza, you could enter the word "calzone" into this box and it would remove all calzone results from the search. We think this might be a good way to help narrow down your search in order to find exactly what you're looking for. The problem with these broad searches is that we have over 35,000 items in our database. If you're searching for one word phrases it is increasingly difficult to provide you with great results. If you search for "chicken burger bacon cheese" you end up with only 35 results of exactly what you're looking for.

[VicHockeyFan]

If you're searching for one word phrases it is increasingly difficult to provide you with great results. If you search for "chicken burger bacon cheese" you end up with only 35 results of exactly what you're looking for.

I think only a moron would type that phrase in.

[manifest]

Haha, fair enough. I guess that was a bad example.

I'll just leave it at "we will make the search better".

[SamCB]

Wife and I went on a cinnamon bun search this morning. We could have used this website... and I think we will from now on. Nice work!

[Bernard]

I have to say I do not like the interface. The browsing by dish is odd - I chose rabbit and four the results had no rabbit in them at all.

I then browsed African and got Jamaican and tea in the list along with a lot of Moroccan food

Meanwhile Mediterranean, which is similar to Moroccan I got dishes with the name Mediterranean in the name but nothing from restaurants that actually make anything Mediterranean

Polish got me honey garlic spareribs from a Chinese restaurant

I searched for cheese plate and got a pita

As an interface it is not working for me in the least

[vandervalk]

Wife and I went on a cinnamon bun search this morning. We could have used this website... and I think we will from now on. Nice work!

Cobbs Bakery. I love their cinnamon buns.

[SamCB]

Cobbs Bakery. I love their cinnamon buns.

Not sticky enough for my taste. We ended up at Bubby Rose's and were satisfied.

I think this website is gonna be a hit with my wife. She's the type to get specific cravings. For that purpose it looks excellent.