Mackie's Bar & Grill, Owner Sang Lee's American Tavern in Old Town In The Old Layla's Space

[cheezepowder]

Layla's is closed.

Signs on window indicate Mackie's Bar and Grill will be coming soon.

Mackie's opened on Oct. 10 with a limited menu and their dining room opened on Oct. 17.

[Escoffier]

I'd really like to check this place out if I only knew where they might be located.  Their web page has absolutely no information on location.  Maybe downtown San Diego?

[deangold]

One of the most bizarre website designs I have ever seen.  Bet it cost thousands.

The Facebook page has the address, but there is no link to the facebook page that I can find on the website.  The about info should have the address and doesn't.  Half the links do nothing.  And does anyone think that having a link jump around or disappear when you mouse over it is a cool idea?

[DaveO]

I'd really like to check this place out if I only knew where they might be located.  Their web page has absolutely no iformation on location.  Maybe downtown San Diego?

No location.  No prices on the menu.

One of the most bizzare website designs I have ever seen.  bet it cost thousands.

This website is way too cutesy and completely devoid of information I'd like.

[JayCobb1045]

Several comments have been made about the website already, so I'll pile one more on!  The "brunch" link on the menu reveals two items: breakfast and lunch.  Must be run by the same folks who ran the diner in My Cousin Vinny...

[The Hersch]

I do love this description of the "duck breast" on the dinner menu:

pan seared duck breast served with some sort of a sweet dressing

It seems refreshingly frank. It might be improved by adding "or other" to the end.

[DaveO]

I think Rich Boone nailed it as to why this website is bad with this observation made over in the thread in news about restaurant web sites:

It's an off-the-shelf Wordpress theme for restaurants called Barnelli. They clearly haven't finished it and probably don't know what they're doing. In any event, it's definitely do-it-yourself. Looks like undercapitalized and/or novice owners. Doesn't bode well for their chances.

It looks like they did it themselves.  Are they undercapitalized or novices, I don't know.  But I wouldn't blame an experienced restaurateur for going the route of this WordPress theme rather than hiring a fancy shmancy designer.  Frankly a lot of them design with wordpress anyway, and for all you know they start with a custom theme.

In this case...the owners need help to get this site up to snuff.

[durwoodx]

Has anyone actually eaten at this fine establishment? I spied it across the street from Redrocks (which has slipped quite a bit and I cannot recommend for brunch, by the way) and was surprised to discover it had been open for at least six months. We had no idea the place was even a thing. (We should really get out more.)

[StarStraf]

We have eaten there twice - I'm a sucker for dry aged Kanas Beef.  Front bar is VERY loud, but restaurant is thru a closed door and much quieter - though tables are almost touching.  Staff is friendly, food is yummy.

On the topic of web pages - I was having a conversation with some (much younger) friends and they were ranting about restaurants using PDF menus and how that is not mobile friendly and shouldn't be done for a variety of reasons. ... here is the comments from one of the young (20 something) folks in the conversation.

"First, if you're changing your menu weekly, you're not redesigning the entire thing or adding fancy graphics. You're copy/pasting it into a template. Which means there's no excuse not to be also copy/pasting it into the HTML on the site. 

If they're small time, they probably have a simple CMS like WordPress, which is incredibly easy to update. If they spent the money on a designer to create a fancy site, or they're a chain, they better damn well have made sure that either they have someone to keep it running or that they can make changes when the designer leaves.

And I don't mean people are searching for menu items. I mean people are searching for restaurants nearby. They don't necessarily want to download a PDF to their phone or laptop. The bigger the file (i.e. the bigger the menu), the more data needed to download it, the longer it takes, etc. It is, in short, obnoxious when you want a quick answer. 

Unless they're properly optimized, PDFs aren't readable by Google, and even if they are, it's a very limited capability. Which means Google can't read the information, which Google really hates. It wants to pull data from your site to display. 

If the site isn't designed to be mobile friendly, it's going to get dinged in search results, which means fewer people see the link. And the ones that do? if they don't want to download a PDF or can't, they're going to leave, which hurts bounce rates, which can also lower website rankings. Not to mention those potential customers are not going to go to that restaurant, because they're already annoyed that they can't get information."

[DaveO]

We have eaten there twice - I'm a sucker for dry aged Kanas Beef.  Front bar is VERY loud, but restaurant is thru a closed door and much quieter - though tables are almost touching.  Staff is friendly, food is yummy.

On the topic of web pages - I was having a conversation with some (much younger) friends and they were ranting about restaurants using PDF menus and how that is not mobile friendly and shouldn't be done for a variety of reasons. ... here is the comments from one of the young (20 something) folks in the conversation.

"First, if you're changing your menu weekly, you're not redesigning the entire thing or adding fancy graphics. You're copy/pasting it into a template. Which means there's no excuse not to be also copy/pasting it into the HTML on the site. 

If they're small time, they probably have a simple CMS like WordPress, which is incredibly easy to update. If they spent the money on a designer to create a fancy site, or they're a chain, they better damn well have made sure that either they have someone to keep it running or that they can make changes when the designer leaves.

And I don't mean people are searching for menu items. I mean people are searching for restaurants nearby. They don't necessarily want to download a PDF to their phone or laptop. The bigger the file (i.e. the bigger the menu), the more data needed to download it, the longer it takes, etc. It is, in short, obnoxious when you want a quick answer. 

Unless they're properly optimized, PDFs aren't readable by Google, and even if they are, it's a very limited capability. Which means Google can't read the information, which Google really hates. It wants to pull data from your site to display. 

If the site isn't designed to be mobile friendly, it's going to get dinged in search results, which means fewer people see the link. And the ones that do? if they don't want to download a PDF or can't, they're going to leave, which hurts bounce rates, which can also lower website rankings. Not to mention those potential customers are not going to go to that restaurant, because they're already annoyed that they can't get information."

First the current website for Mackie's is not the one they had back last fall.  This one is better.  Glad to hear that the food is good.

Your young friend is correct.  He/she writes in the manner of someone familiar or who practices "search engine optimizing".

I've been doing that for a decade.

While the point made might not be the biggest point in the world its relevant and when people are searching for restaurants on their mobile, turning some of them off with something that is easily correctable is a little step to attract at least a few more customers in a very easy way.

Speaking of searching for restaurants on mobile and coincidentally rather striking in Alexandria....there is this rather striking growth in people searching on google for a term like this...."restaurants near me"  I ran a google trends report comparing search trends for the following phrases:

restaurants, pizza, and restaurants near me.

There is relatively significant growth for the "near me" search phrase.   Its mostly on mobile  If you look at the bottom of the graphs, where it is broken down by city....the cities that tend to pop up are smaller and visited by a LOT of out of town visitors and surprisingly Alexandria pops into that list.    Of course if you are a restaurateur you could also "work" every concierge at every hotel to attract the out of towners...or you could take up google on its newest advertising "ploy"