Thread by @militaru_bogdan

1/ I build the Customenu startup and I’ll #buildinpublic, using this thread.

What is #customenu?

A digital menu platform for #restaurant.

Instead of using boring paper were to check the #dishes, you can see a nice representation on your smartphone.

2/ This is the second release and this time I decided to share my journey on Twitter.

I started for the first time, one year ago in June. It was a pandemic situation and in #Romania, new rules were coming for the #restaurants' businesses.

3/ Only me thinking about this project.

What should do?

1. Scan a #QRCode
2. Open the #menu
3. Check #products in categories and subcategories

4/ How this should be managed?

The system is built from 4 components:
- back-end
- admin app
- mobile app, it’s a web app actually
- showcase #website

5/ How did I start?

Happy and enthusiastic. I started to see which is my competition in #Romania because I thought to target only my country. I am a #developer so my #business skills are not so well developed and it made me feel more confident, because of the cultural context.

6/ I understood which are my competitors and I saw some red flags:

- few of them offers #demo
- bad #seo for most of them
- vague information about how it works and what it does
- not strong value of propositions
- the advantages proposed by the #system were not appealing

7/ So what a great #developer does?
#code. Meh, actually I sketched a bit with a pen on the paper some #screens, and what is the flow.

Then code. And have an #MVP.

Aside, I started to read #books about this, joining FB groups for #entrepreneurs in this niche, and so on.

8/ How to get clients?

- FB #ads
- commenting on topics
- sending DM to the #restaurant on #socialmedia
- go on google maps and get contacts of restaurants then send cold emails
- write #blogposts
- write documentation about how to handle by yourself the full process

9/ Some clients?

NO!

I had some people which tried the product, but the sale was not made.

Is my product that bad?

Idk, maybe.

10/ What I found was that the price should not be too small, because that’s a red flag for #customers. One actually told me that in the face!

I increased the price on the same margins as my competition and things were better.

11/ Need to mention that until now, in my story, the restaurants were fully closed.

I tried to sell to them by offering a #FreeTrial for 6 months, until they will open again, because of the #pandemic situation.

12/ They started the activity, but I don’t think #digitalmenus were their priority at that moment.

And let’s remind that probably the guilty for 0 sales is on me, I assume that.

13/ I continued until April with the project live.

I decided to enroll myself in an #businessincubator in #HORECA.

I had an initial discussion with two guys which told me I better close the #project because is already dead and the chances for success are pretty low.

14/ They mentioned an existing product in the market, which was invested in, one year before and was a total loss. The investors from that incubator are not interested in a #digitalmenu again.

After this meeting, I was rejected from that incubator.

15/ I tried harder, but after some time and 0 sales, I decided to focus on something different. And I stopped the servers on #linode.

The story is longer, but I would like to reference it later.

I'm back on #customenu so stay with me, I'll try to share more.

16/ I've created a blog post, if someone wanna see this in a blog way, link here: boobo94.github.io/startup/story-…

17/ I found a thread from @Aazarshad which talks about #AffiliateMarketing. I add it here, because it looks interesting and helpful.

@Aazarshad 18/ Being only one person for the moment in this project I switched from Trello to #githubprojects.

I have 3 repositories and this helps me to stay in one ecosystem. Writing a note and create #issues in the corespondent repositories.

19/ So the user can see home with all categories > subcategories > products.

I think that is too much, the most #restaurants has two categories:
1. food
2. drinks

I decided to remove the subcategories. One product linked to a category is enough.

20/ Added preparation time near price and weight seems to be a nice and useful feature

21/ Need to find a better #UI for the #customenu #app. Some suggestions where to find nice and clean ideas?

#uidesign #userinterface #app

22/ Search for a #livechat to introduce on the #presentationwebsite, for #wordpresswebsite

24/ I decided to offer #customer #support for those who doesn’t have time to fill the content in the platform.

Discussed with some contractors and get some #offers.

25/ Back to #sales. As the #website is still live, some new customers are coming and fill the contact form.

Let’s go baby!

I had a client which requested the offers, which are very well defined on the website.

I replied to them, but not feedback. Thinking to follow up.

Need to add #FreeTrial. I think 7 days are enough for a #digitalmenu #app. The #restaurants have time to test if this is what they need.

Nice idea from Pradip. Highlight the features available for #FreeTrial of your #saas

Hard decision to make

The website is very well indexed on google, with more keywords on the first page.

But no clients.

I don't know if I wanna focus on this project, at this moment.

But another email came this morning, from a client which reached organically.

What is funny?!

The domain expires in a month and I don't know if I should keep it or move the project to the recycle bin?

I would like to use the traffic from customenu.ro for cmevo.com, but I don't know if the best option would be to keep the domain and redirect the traffic to https://t.co/PDuE2HqXNe or how?

I canceled the Customenu project.

I set the redirect from customenu.ro to cmevo.com.

That's all :D

Today I made a showcase video to present customenu as a product under cmevo umbrella.

Disclaimer: language Romanian

How the customenu admin panel works is described in the following video.

I’ve made a tutorial which presents from A to Z how the platform works.

Language Romanian

How does the app work? Take a look at this video

Disclaimer: Romanian Language

Huh, after some hours of work I finished the 3 videos about Customenu:

1. Presentation
2. How to manage the digital menu
3. The app demo

More details here:

cmevo.com/portfolio/digi…