Minston’s Hospitality Group Leaves SpotHopper for MinerOp

Minston’s Hospitality Group is Winston and Miranda’s company in Alpharetta, Georgia. It runs a Jamaican deli, a full-service catering company, and short-term rentals called Charli’s Place. Three of their websites ran on SpotHopper. We replaced them with three websites, each built around how that business actually works. The deli now takes orders on its own site, and they go straight to the Clover POS its kitchen already uses. Online orders at the deli are 5x what they were on SpotHopper.

Three Businesses, One Family

• Minston’s Jamaican Deli & Market on McGinnis Ferry Road. Counter-service Jamaican food plus a small market of goods from small makers.
• Minston’s Catering. Box lunches, corporate bundles, hors d’oeuvres, weddings, staffing, and rentals.
• Charli’s Place, their short-term rentals.

The deli, the catering company, and the group itself each had a SpotHopper website. Charli’s Place never had one. These are very different businesses. A lunch counter, a wedding caterer, and a holding company do not need the same website. On SpotHopper, they all got the same one.

What Was Wrong Before

The Same Template as Everyone Else

Every SpotHopper site we have looked at uses the same website template. We looked at the code behind all three Minston’s sites, and they are the same site with the logo, colors, and photos swapped:

• Same builder. All three load from the same SpotHopper builder, with the same code underneath.
• Same sections. The same sections for the banner, the about section, the reviews, and the footer.
• Same layout. A centered logo, a row of menu links split by lines, a full-width video with pause and mute buttons in the bottom left, and a chat bubble in the bottom right. The deli and catering sites also share the same announcement bar on top.
• Same pages, even when empty. Each site had food menu, drink menu, specials, events, and gift card pages whether the business needed them or not. On the catering site, Specials and Events said “We are updating our specials. Please stay tuned.” The deli’s Specials, Happenings, and Events pages were empty too.
• Restaurant wording everywhere. The group site’s page title called a holding company a “Must-Try Restaurant.” The catering site said the same.

We have seen this exact template on another, unrelated restaurant’s SpotHopper site too, with a different logo on top. Put the three Minston’s sites side by side and you can see it.

Old sites, from Internet Archive copies. Tap any screenshot to see it larger.

Catering Was Set Up Like a Takeout Counter

The template is built for restaurants, and catering was set up on it like a restaurant. When we went through it, we found:

• No event date. Orders were “order now” with a 30-minute lead time. A $400 lunch for 20 people, or a bartender, could be ordered for pickup half an hour later.
• Fees that did not add up. A $1 pickup fee was charged but not shown anywhere. The 18% service fee was faked as a 1 cent “Service Fee” menu item.
• The menu was entered twice, and neither copy was complete. One copy had 27 items the other did not, and 2 items had different prices in each.
• Their best menu was hidden. A 76-item holiday menu, the best organized of them all, was set up but never shown.
• Directions went to the wrong place. The catering site’s Get Directions button pointed at the deli.

The Group Site Sent People Nowhere

• Order Online opened an empty menu.
• The phone number and email were hidden. They were in the page, but switched off on every screen size.
• The Instagram link went to someone else’s account.
• Charli’s Place linked to a blank page on a domain that had nothing to do with them.
• The address said Cumming in one place and Alpharetta in another.
• The site’s visitor tracking reported to SpotHopper’s own accounts.

The Deli Sent Orders Somewhere Else

Ordering on the old deli site handed customers off to a separate SpotHopper ordering page. The order did not happen on the deli’s own website.

How We Worked With Them

We do not start with a design. We start with the business: what it sells, how an order gets to the kitchen, who answers the phone, and what the staff are already standing in front of.

What We Looked At

• Every page of every old site. We wrote down each page, compared it against the new plan, and noted why anything was dropped. Their own words were kept as written.
• The real catering catalog. The menu page only showed part of the picture, so we pulled the full catalog out of the old ordering system: 219 items, 64 of them with choices to make. The corporate lunch bundle alone has you pick sandwiches from 12, plus a salad, a side, and drinks.
• How the kitchen works. The deli runs on a Clover POS with kitchen printers, and the cooks work from printed tickets. Staff work at the POS all day.

What We Asked

Anything we could not answer ourselves went on a list for the owners. 16 questions for catering and 9 for the group, including:

• What are your lead times and minimums for catering?
• What is your delivery area, and what does delivery cost?
• Is the $1 pickup fee meant to be there?
• Two prices disagree. Which one is right?
• What is Charli’s Place, and how should people reach you about a stay?
• Which social accounts are really yours?

What We Decided Together

• Ordering happens on their own website. Our own cart and checkout. No handoff to SpotHopper or any other outside ordering app.
• Orders go to the POS the kitchen already uses. No new screen to watch. Staff should never need to log into anything else to work an order.
• Every dish is matched to its POS item by hand. Matching by name only worked for 44 of 89 dishes, so every dish the kitchen cooks has an exact match on the POS and prints in the right place.
• Catering prints in the kitchen that cooks it. The deli kitchen makes the catering food, so catering orders print on the deli’s POS. Every catering order needs an event date, with notice times set per category. The $1 pickup fee was dropped.
• Three businesses, three designs. Each site has its own typefaces, colors, and structure, because they are not the same business.
• The group site has one job. Send people to the right business.

What We Built for Each Business

The Deli: Order Online, Straight to the Till

jamaicandeli.com is built around ordering. The menu page is where customers browse, add to their order, and pay, all on one page. Each order goes onto the deli’s own Clover POS and prints in the kitchen like any other ticket, marked as paid online for pickup.

• Sold out at the register means sold out online. When the kitchen marks a dish as out on the POS, the website stops selling it.
• Order ahead when closed. Customers can order up to 3 days ahead, and the ticket prints with the day it is for.
• Their own deals, run automatically. 10% off online orders Monday to Wednesday, no code needed. Lunch specials are served Monday to Friday, 11 to 3, and checkout enforces it.
• Catering from the deli too. Boxed lunches, platters, and hot trays with a day’s notice, on the deli’s catering page.
• Order texts from their own number, for customers who choose to get them.
• Reservations and private parties on the reserve page.

Catering: A Menu With Real Rules, and a Way to Plan an Event

minstonscatering.com is built for events, not takeout. The full catering menu is priced and orderable: 217 items, with the choices, minimums, and add-ons applied properly at checkout. The 18% service fee is worked out properly at checkout. Every order needs an event date.

The Plan an event page gives customers two ways in. Build your own order and pick a date, and the team confirms before anything is cooked. Or choose “Let us plan it” for weddings, events with staff or a bar, or a headcount you are not sure of yet. Tell them what you know, and they come back with a menu and a written quote.

Paid catering orders print on the deli’s Clover POS, one line per dish with the choices listed, because that is the kitchen that cooks them. The site also has pages for corporate catering, weddings, drop-off, event staffing and rentals, and holidays.

The Group Site: Send People to the Right Place

minstons.com is deliberately simple. It asks one question, “Where would you like to go?”, and sends people to the deli, to catering, or to a stay at Charli’s Place. The phone number and address are visible. The social links go to their real accounts. There is a careers page for people who want to work with them.

Charli’s Place

Charli’s Place never had a website, and it does not have its own one yet. Before, its link went to a blank page. Now the group site has a contact form that opens ready for a stay, so a guest can ask about dates and reach the right person. Booking online is coming later.

Email From Their Own Name

Emails to their customers are sent from each business’s own domain, properly signed.

Results: 5x Online Ordering

Online orders at the deli are 5x what they were on SpotHopper.

Ordering is part of the deli’s own website, and orders go straight to their own Clover POS, the same one the kitchen already works from. Customers are never sent to another app or ordering page to finish their order, and there is no delivery-marketplace commission on it. The customer stays with Minston’s from the menu to the pickup counter.

The catering site went live more recently, so it is too early to report results there. We will share them when there is something real to say.

Looking for a SpotHopper Alternative?

Your restaurant is not the same as every other restaurant, so your website should not be either. Here is what changes when you move to MinerOp:

• Your own site on your own domain, built around how your business runs, not a shared template.
• Ordering on your website, straight to your POS. Orders print in your kitchen like any other ticket, with no marketplace commission.
• A customer list that grows with every online order, in your own account.

See how it works on the Restaurant Platform page, or tell us about your restaurant and we will tell you plainly what moving would involve.

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