Wincfood.com in the News!!

On Saturday Feburary 16, 2008 Wincfood.com was featured in the local newspaper, The Winchester Star. Below is an excerpt from the article.

Advertising goes digital
Web sites offer new venues to lure customers
By Lorraine Halsted
The Winchester Star

Jayden Sibert was amazed by all of the commercial growth that took place in the Winchester area after returning from college in 2004.

He was eager to try some of the new restaurants, but unless he happened to stumble upon them during his wanderings around town, he had no way of knowing what all of his options were.

That’s when Sibert decided to partner with fellow Handley High School graduate Mark Turner to start Wincfood.com, an online listing of local restaurants, which includes their addresses and contact information, and descriptions of the types of food they serve.

"It kind of started out small," Sibert said.

Then the partners added the ability for people to submit reviews, and the popularity of the site grew to about 1,600 hits a month.
Star photo illustration by Jeff Taylor

"After we saw how many people were coming to the site, we realized the advertising potential," Sibert said.

The restaurants pay nothing for their listing on "Food Finder," but rates for button and banner ads range from $40 to $60 a month. Restaurants can also pay $80 a month to be listed in the animated "Our Recommendations" section.

And the reviews, depending on how good they are, can enhance the restaurant’s presence on the site.

But even if the review is somewhat unfavorable, the restaurant can still benefit from it, if handled the right way, according to Ronan Keane, CEO and president of UpClick Marketing, a Leesburg firm that specializes in "optimizing" Web sites, so they’ll achieve high rankings on a search engine’s results list.

"If someone gives a bad review of a restaurant, they should leave it there, and then tell customers what they did to rectify the problem," he said.