IMMEDIATE RELEASE

30 November 2009

MenuMania has topped the list of all New Zealand food and beverage web sites

MenuMania has for some time topped the list of Nielsen//NetRatings as New Zealand’s busiest and most popular dining and eating out website. Results just published by leading international internet analyst “Experian Hitwise” (www.hitwise.com/nz/ ) show MenuMania’s popularity with the dining public has made it the busiest of all hospitality industry web sites in New Zealand, this includes the Pizza Hut, KFC and Dominos online ordering systems. How locals, businesses and tourists obtain their eat-out information and make their dining choice is rapidly changing with the use of the Internet and mobile phones.

Experian Hitwise - Category Spotlight

Food and Beverage - Restaurants and Catering New Zealand

This category focuses on restaurants, eating places, restaurant guides, and catering services. All data below is based on All sites > Weekly rankings for the week ending 21/11/2009 > Ranks by 'Visits'.
Food and Beverage - Restaurants and Catering (All Sites > Rankings for the week ending 21/11/2009 > Ranks by 'Visits')
Rank Website
1. MenuMania

2. Pizza Hut New Zealand

3. Domino's Pizza

4. KFC New Zealand

5. Hell Pizza

6. DineOut

7. Menus.co.nz

8. Eatout.co.nz

9. McDonald's New Zealand

10. Subway - International Locations

MenuMania.co.nz is New Zealand’s leading restaurant and dining search, reservation and review web site offering its visitors the opportunity to read about restaurants and cafes in their community and wherever they travel. Visitors can see menus, check dining offers and prices, read or write reviews, make reservations, and send restaurant information to their friends. A new feature in 2009, on MenuMania’s home page, visitors can also search wedding venues, conference or meeting spaces and out caterers.

Following in the footsteps of social networking sites, diners can read or write dining reviews which inspire and create consumer confidence to perhaps try somewhere different. Simply put, its word of mouth – amplified, last month alone MenuMania helped 112,000 diners choose where to eat, diners searched just under 550,000 menu pages on MenuMania.

For business owners, MenuMania enables restaurants, vineyards, pubs and cafes owners from Logan Brown to Takapuna Beach Café publish their menus, dining promotions, photos, ambience and location information at the click of a mouse or iPhone.

MenuMania.co.nz was first launched in 2006 by Cristian Rosescu and Karen Gibson, in 2009 chef restaurateur Mark Gregory joined as the third partner.

Cristian who leads the in-house technology and Auckland web development team, after three years of site development says “It’s incredibly exciting to see so many people enjoying and using MenuMania, and most fulfilling of all they keep coming back over and over, the site is great and we love that people use it.”

The “Hitwise” results are especially important as the hospitality sector faces one of it’s toughest years, business owners can now advertise their menus and dining offers or take reservations 24/7. The dining public are now using the internet in rapidly increasing numbers when making their meal buying decisions – view the Hitwise list above. This is good news for New Zealand hospitality and tourism.

MenuMania’s industry support and charitable initiatives in 2009 saw the launch of free and unlimited online reservations for diners, community support for “Wellington on a Plate”, Sunday Star-Times “Restaurant Month” and the industry charity DineAid.

Partner and Meilleur Ouvrier Chef Mark Gregory said: 'MenuMania is a quiet success story of New Zealand innovation, I am exceptionally proud to be part of MenuMania, the team work incredibly hard and the fact that so many diners choose to use MenuMania just motivates us to make it even better. As a chef/restaurateur its hard to believe so many in our industry don’t properly or adequately communicate using on of the most popular mediums in the country: 112,000 diners used menu mania last month that’s an incredible amount in a country of 3M adults.”

- Ends-

Notes: About MenuMania

1. November 2009 – Hitwise Food & Beverage Category: Listed MenuMania as New Zealand’s busiest web site. MenuMania is already listed as New Zealand’s busiest dining web site by Nielsen//NetRatings

2. MenuMania has a search database of over 10,000 restaurants, cafes and takeaways and over 2500 hotels in NZ

3. MenuMania is recognized by both industry associations: (a) The Restaurant Association of NZ (b) The Hospitality Association of NZ and hosts their member restaurants, cafes, pubs and hotels

4. In 2009 re-designed the Home and City Pages, launched its iPhone application and mobile friendly website, Free and unlimited online reservations

5. MenuMania supports the restaurant Charity DineAid by building and hosting all its online restaurant sign up and search facilities: www.dineaid.org.nz

6. Experian Hitwise web details: www.hitwise.com/nz/

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