Burpple unveils Pages, a website builder for food businesses

Easy-to-use Website builders are a dime a dozen these days, with Wix coming to mind for general uses and Shopify catering to e-commerce businesses. But how about one for food establishments?

That’s what Burpple is offering. Burpple, if you recall, is a mobile social network for foodies with a growing and passionate fan base. But cognizant of the fact that pure consumer products without a revenue model won’t fly in this part of the world where acquisitions are relatively uncommon, the company has decided to monetize early in its life.

Pages, a new product which was unveiled yesterday, is a webpage builder for restaurants, bars, and food establishments. While it hasn’t officially launched yet, Burpple CEO Elisha Ong gave a hint of what is to come by sharing its landing page on Facebook.

It does more than spew out mobile-friendly HTML and CSS. Pages includes the ability to display interactive menus, it leverages on its mobile social network to promote an establishment through recommendations and testimonials, and it integrates online food ordering for takeaway or delivery (its partnership with Chope probably has something to do with that).

The service works on a tiered pricing model, with a Basic option going at USD30 a month and a full-featured version for USD120 a month. It has a ‘VIP’ option as well targeting the big fishes of the restaurant world.

Elisha hinted to me that Burpple is moving in this direction some time ago when he said that Burpple will be somewhat different from Foodspotting. If you recall, Foodspotting was acquired by OpenTable for USD10M, a pittance in Silicon Valley terms.

With such low valuations, it’s not surprising that Burpple would try a different approach that would distant itself from that connection and create something that better suits a fragmented Asian market. In other words, it’s about building a legit, sustainable business instead of another tech plaything.

And that’s not a bad way to go about it.