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NMRestaurants.com Press Room |
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| NM Business Weekly June 18, 2001 |
The Santa Fe New Mexican December 5, 2000 |
New Mexico Business Weekly December 4-10, 2000 |
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| NM Business Weekly June 18-24, 2001 Eileen Garvin NM dot-coms- What's Cookin?? Keeping the Sunnyside Up Company Name: NMBars.com, LLC Web sites: NMBars.com & NMRestaurants.com Founder: Brett Hills Location: Albuquerque Number of Employees: 3 part time and 2 full time Date of Origin: February 2000 Mission: To expose the best bars and restaurants in New Mexico and to increase their client base. Brett Hills says, 'We are a marketing firm that specializes in integrated marketing programs for bars and restaurants. We use television, radio and print in conjunction with online presence to promote establishments in New Mexico.' Hills says the tow sites work to develop a cyclical relationship between restaurants establishments and customers. The company provides Web development and exposure to restaurants in exchange for food and beverage credits. Customers can purchase those credits as gift certificates on the site at a 30 percent discounts. How did you fare in 2000? Hills says 2000 was a good year. "We are growing rapidly," he says. "We had nine restaurants when we started and now we have 36. 2000 made us wiser. We are thinking big, but acting small, refocusing our efforts." What are your plans for the future? Hills says he wants to finish proving the business model here in New Mexico and move on to other cities like Denver and Las Vegas, Nev. |
The Santa Fe New Mexican December 5, 2000 Bob Quick N.M. Eateries Find a Home on the Web First it was NMBars.com, a Web site featuring night spots in Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Now comes NMRestaurants.com, an interactive online restaurant directory, which kicks off Thursday featuring restaurants in Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Taos. "These are completely different sites," said Brett Hills, the president and chief executive officer of both sites. "NMBars has a dark feel to it. It's about night life. Whereas NMRestaurants is light, airy and with lots of digital images of food." The vice president of the venture is Chad Cooper and the art director is Grant Price. The strategic adviser is Santa Fe businessman Ken Dettelbach. Santa Fe computer programmer Ruth Andrews "is the brain child behind the data base of the site," Hills said. "She's also responsible for making NMRestaurants a wireless technology. And we're converting NMBars (to wireless) right now." As a wireless technology, "NMRestaurants and NMBars will be accessible through (wireless) PDAs," Hills said. "We are a business of tomorrow, and we have to anticipate where people's needs and technology are going to meet." (PDAs, or personal digital assistants, are hand-held devices that combine computing, telephone/fax and networking features. Used widely in Japan, they are slowly gathering popularity in the United States.) In addition to the eight client restaurants, including the Blue Corn Café in Santa Fe and Tim's Stray Dog Cantina in Taos Ski Valley, NMRestaurants will list 850 restaurants in Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Taos with addresses, type of food served and other information. Customers also will have a chance to rate all the restaurants on a scale from average to excellent in a variety of categories. "It will create great awareness for tourists and conventioneers coming into the state," Hills said. Client restaurants, which will pay a $250 monthly fee to be on the site, will have a "hot button" to a special section of the site that will give in-depth information about the eatery, including an image of the special. In addition, NMRestaurants will "heavily market" those restaurants in traditional forms of media, including television, radio and ads in such publications as Local Flavor and La Cocinita, Hills said. Diners won't be able to make reservations at the featured restaurants, at least not yet. "Not enough of our clients have it together on their end to set that up," Hills said. |
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| New Mexico Business Weekly December 4-10, 2000 Karen Jarnagin NMBars.com Adds Cuisine Just eight months ago, University of New Mexico MBA students Brett Hills and Chad Cooper were banking that their idea for a Web site featuring New Mexico nightlife would be a success (NMBW May 1-7). Today, their site, NMBars.com, has not only tripled in size, but has spawned a sister site: NMRestaurants.com, which launches Thursday. "We've been well-received by the restaurants," Hills explained last week over coffee at Starbucks on Rio Grande Boulevard, which serves as a convenient meeting place for the telecommuting company president. "I firmly believe it's a great value, the amount of exposure restaurants can receive by being a part of our network." For $250 a month (which requires signing a one-year contract), a restaurant gets five custom-designed Web pages that include a history of the establishment; a description of the décor and cuisine style; location; photographs of both the meals and the business's interior; a listing of daily specials; and a biography of the chef. The restaurant also gets listed on a page where viewers can compare establishments based on price and quality. The overall site's homepage features a "Restaurant of the Day," "Special of the Day," and "Chef du Jour" listing, all of which rotate among the clients. So far, nine restaurants in Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Taos - including Rio Grande Yacht Club, Artichoke Café, Monte Vista Fire Station and Sauce/Liquid Lounge - have signed contracts with NMBars LLC, the parent company for both Web sites. In addition, some 800 restaurants in those three cities are included in a 'yellow pages' type of listing. The site is organized to easily allow visitors to fine restaurants by either city, restaurant name, price or cuisine. They can even post reviews on their dining experience, and eventually may be able to make reservations online. But the site's coolest feature, say Hills and Cooper, both 28, is its remote access capabilities. Unlike NMBars.com, NMRestaurants is accessible via wireless web devices, like Palm Pilots. That may be a boon when pitching Web contracts to restaurant owners, who will hopefully realize that a mobile consumer with access to dining information on the fly is an excellent target audience, the pair say. For example, "If someone's already out, they can log on to our Web site to get the specials at the Blue Corn Café," Cooper says. "We definitely want to be on the forefront of that kind of technology." "We have to be building a business for tomorrow," adds Hills. "Things happen so quickly with the Web that we need to think a year ahead." Wireless access will eventually also be available on NMBars.com. The pair, who run the company with help from database manager Ruth Andrews and art director Grant Price, are also looking to the future with their NMBars site. The team has expanded the site's listings from nine bars to 27, and recently launched a new "Bar Bucks" coupon card that users can print out at home and use for discounts at participating member bars. They're also publishing an email newsletter to subscribers listing upcoming events and specials. Hills and Cooper say they intend to license their product to other cities, like Denver or Las Vegas, once both sides of the business have market recognition. |
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