Narrow Your Choices inside Our Directory
(Below are options we use to list restaurants – Click a state button above to get started narrowing choices)
Frequently Asked Questions
Have Any Questions For Us?
Click on a question at right to learn more about how AreaFavs works.
How do you Choose the Restaurants on your site?
Restaurants choose participation, but currently we’re currently working on reaching out to organizations and restaurants within more popular year-round tourist destinations visited in each state. Any small restaurant business in any city though may contact us with their information to get started by clicking on the “Restaurant of Interest” link below to learn more. The only stipulations are: (1) they must not be a chain with more than 12 restaurants in the state, (2) they must be honest about their offers, (3) they must participate with a yearly poll after being in business for at least 6 months, (4) they must pay the nominal marketing participation fee, and (5) they must display the tag with the QR code in their restaurant.
Why Choose AreaFavs?
Decision fatigure is real, and it stops people from making decisions more often than many care to admit. Instead, people lean towards the convenience of what they’re used to, and that hurts small restaurants in that area! AreaFavs is built with a consciencious desire to help small restaurants as well as help make decision-making easier for anyone even thinking about trying a new restaurant, whether in the area they live, or in a city they’re visiting. We know restaurant owners start with a passion and put a ton of time and money on the line, and it saddens our heart to hear of small restaurants that close. **Personal Story: Our Founder would drive over 14 hours to visit their 2 favorite well-established restaurants, each existing for over a decade, only to find both deciding to close within the same calendar year- even amid a very bustling downtown location where many people walk! We’d like this to never happen again for all the favorites restaurants across America.
How Might you be better or different than Yelp?
We launched AreaFavs after learning that Yelp is not very affordable or as helpful as needed for small restaurant owners. We wanted to begin an easy and extremely affordable solution for small restaurants, and offer it in such a way that showcases the restaurant’s best “niche” and focus on showcasing those with “best of” photos, without added trending or paid advertisements, or. having the small restaurants compete beside some larger chain restaurants.
Why not just use Google maps to find restaurants?
Our Founder has been informed they’ve been among Google’s top 10% of restaurant reviewers, yet ironically has been highly unsuccessful using Google reviews to make their own decisions about which restaurant to try next. While their directions are still helpful, and Google maps is readily easy to use, reviews can be one-sided, very old, difficult to trust, sometimes written in anger or by competition, and many times due to choosing dishes or sides that are simply not a specialty of the restaurant in the first place. AreaFavs aims to allow the regulars to participate about what is their “best of” so the right restaurant-goers easily choose the right restaurant for them, to improve the odds for a win-win on both sides!
How do you get the results of polls?
Each participating restaurant using our helpful marketing service is given 7-10 days (depending on the time of year and the size of the business) to run a poll with their QR code. This poll asks regulars what menus/items they’ve tried and liked best. After the poll is completed, we gather the results for the restuarant and request they provide a photo of these dishes for us to display online. Once the photos are received, that same QR code will then lead to show the latest results for the next approximate 360 days, when a new updated poll will then be run again, should they choose to continue their participation. The pages you see here on this site are the same ones that restaurant’s QR code will bring up, but every restaurant has their own page and shows up in relatable search results with just the basic info as well. Throughout the initial year of the restaurant’s participation we’ll also offer our newsletter, along with limited discount service offerings.
What if I can’t find a city or wish to suggest a restaurant?
If you have a city you wish was added, you can use this link to mention it, and if you have a restuarant you think may benefit from participating in this service, please feel free to share this site with that restaurant, where they can find a link below to learn about the cost and process for getting on-board. (Hint: it’s extremely cheap and even more so for the first year!) Then, all you have to do is participate in their poll and get all the other regulars to do so too. (Kind work, if we do say so ourselves!)