Courtesy / Matt Manry
MDI resident and freelance website designer Matt Manry launched Eat & Drink MDI as an online directory.
Updated: July 6, 2020
New MDI directory offers pandemic-safe practices for restaurant goers
Courtesy / Matt Manry
A new online directory for food and drink businesses on Mount Desert Island is intended to make it easier for potential customers to determine pandemic-safe practices implemented at each establishment.
Called “Eat & Drink MDI,” the directory is “here to assure our visitors that MDI establishments are open for business and operating safely under all current state guidelines,” the website says.
It is the brainchild of MDI resident Matt Manry, who launched it in early June.
“I had free time, so I was thinking about, How in the world can I help everyone at once?” he told Mainebiz.
For each establishment, the website lists the name, hours of operation, address, map location, contact info, type of cuisine, “about us,” and COVID-19 safety strategies such as masking requirements, seating separation, employee temperature checks, hand sanitation, counter shields and safe payment/ options.
Click here to view the directory.
The website is free for businesses to make a listing with no registration needed. So far there are about three dozen listings in the towns of Bar Harbor, Southwest Harbor and Mount Desert.
Manry moved to MDI about eight years ago and began freelancing as a photographer and web designer over the past winter. When restaurants started opening after the shutdown, he was looking for a place to get food in Bar Harbor. He did a web search to find out from each business’s individual website whether it was open, what type of service it was offering, and what type of pandemic-safe practices it had in place.
“I said, ‘Wow, this will be so much better if all of this information were in one place,’” he said.
He reached out to a few restaurant owners to see if they’d be interested in being part of comprehensive directory. The first five said yes and that got the ball rolling.
Manry made the website as user-friendly as possible. Businesses click “create a listing” and fill in an online form. Depending on how much information they put in, it can take five to 20 minutes to fill out, Manry estimated.
Once the form is complete, it generates an automatic email to Manry, who reviews the information before it’s posted. The listings come up in randomized order each time a user loads the directory, he said, in order to eliminate the unfairness of alphabetization. The site provides a QR code and a downloadable flyer for businesses to post. There are links directly to each business’s website and to online ordering options.
As a recently fledged freelancer, Manry is operating the website without compensation but considers it a great demonstration of services he can offer to clients down the road.
“I’m happy to do it,” he said.
After recently loading in data analytics, he found the website drew 450 users in two days. He’s marketing it to businesses through cold calls, emails, social media and word of mouth.
“This week is the week it seems to be catching on, maybe because of the Fourth of July,” he said late last week. “I figured that when businesses saw what other businesses were doing, they might, too.”
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