Menu and Hours + +

I'm Michelle Jones, publisher of Consuming Louisville. Menu and Hours is my brainchild.

During the fall of 2011 I was very frustrated with the process of finding information about local restaurants on my smartphone. I realized that when I was looking up a restaurant on my phone the vast majority of the time I just wanted to know what they had to eat and when they were open. In other words, I realized I was just looking for the menu and hours. With that realization the idea for an app was born.

To be sure I wasn't trying to solve a problem that didn't actually exist I surveyed smartphone users about their experience using restaurant websites on their phones. The response was near universal: the experience sucks, we want a better way.

To be sure I wasn't creating a product that no one wanted to use I launched a Kickstarter campaign. Kickstarter is a great method for securing funding for a project but also as a product idea validation method. The Kickstarter campaign was a great success and reached its funding goal in early January 2012.

At that time I secured the services of a great Louisville designer, David Yeiser and a great Louisville iOS developer, Jeff Jackson. Work on the Menu and Hours iPhone app is ongoing with a planned release date of Derby 2012.