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Business of the Month
The Bizstop, August 1999
Dineaid.com is the on-line business venture of chef turned entrepreneur Wayne Jagoe. Combining his cooking and restaurateur interest, knowledge and abilities with his entrepreneurial spirit resulted in the creation of Dineaid.com approximately two years ago.
Wayne saw a niche market opportunity for a "dining community" site, one where people interested in dining out in Atlantic Canada could quickly find listings of restaurants in communities throughout Atlantic Canada, and not only read about the restaurant, but actually view their menus on-line as well. to date, Wayne has over 70 restaurants profiled at Dineaid.com and the list is constantly growing.
To make the site a true on-line community, he's added a number of features to Dine-Aid. Visitors to the site can enter a contest for dinner for two, find specialty Maritime recipes such as steamed mussels and salmon with tarragon-leek sauce, find definitions of any manner of cooking terminology, write reviews of their favorite restaurants, or visit Chef on the Net, a regularly updated profile of an Atlantic Canadian chef.
For those visitors thinking about opening a restaurant, bar or cafe, a helpful links and industry section will make the job of finding suppliers and learning about the restaurant business that much easier.
Wayne has learned a great deal about doing business on the Internet over the last couple of years and has some helpful tips to share with those of you who have or are thinking about having an on-line presence.
First of all, don't rely solely on search engines for generating traffic to your site. Articles in regional business magazines and local media can be far more effective. after an article appeared in the local newspaper, Wayne saw a dramatic rise in traffic to his web site. But being the savvy business person that he is, he didn't leave it at that. He sent a thank you letter in the letter to the editor section of the newspaper thanking them for the story and signing it Wayne Jagoe, www.dineaid.com and experienced even more traffic to the site!
He's also a firm believer in having contests as a draw for people to visit his site on a regular basis. You'll notice that the BizSTOP shares his point of view. The cost of a dinner for two or a t-shirt on a monthly basis in not a great expense and it provides the opportunity to e-mail everyone who entered the contest with news of the lucky winner and remind them to visit the site to enter the next month's draw and visit any new additions to the site at the same time.
Another pointer Wayne provided was to watch web site traffic carefully after any news release or advertising promoting the site. If web site hits increase noticeably after the ad or publicity comes out, then it was effective. If it doesn't. then it's time to look at other methods.
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