Directory App Starter · Industry version
Restaurant Guide Template
A local dining guide — cuisines, neighborhoods, menus, photo-forward reviews — generated into a codebase you own.
Every city's dining scene deserves better than a mega-platform's ad-sorted results. This starter generates a restaurant guide with the fields diners actually decide on — cuisine, neighborhood, price, hours right now, photos of the food — as a site you own, curated with the taste that makes local guides worth reading.
- 6 core entities
- SEO-ready listings
- Code you own
- Vibe + Governed modes
01 · The problem
Why a generic Directory falls short
Dining decisions run on attributes a generic listing doesn't carry. Cuisine and neighborhood are the primary browse paths; price range, reservations-or-walk-in, outdoor seating, late-night hours, and dietary coverage are the filters that close the decision. When those live in a description paragraph instead of the schema, 'open now, cheap, near me' — the query that drives every dinner — can't be answered.
Restaurant data also decays faster than any other vertical. Hours shift seasonally, menus turn over, chefs move, and a third of a city's listings can go stale in a year. A guide without claimed owners updating their own hours and menus becomes wrong quietly, and diners forgive a wrong address exactly once.
And food reviews are visual. A dining review without photos of the plates is half a review, and photo quality is half of a restaurant page's pull. Generic review pipelines treat images as attachments; a dining guide needs them as the content — moderated, credited, and leading the page.
02 · Data model
The data model, adapted
Everything in the base Directory starter —
businessescategoriesreviewsreview_flagsclaimsowners— plus the entities this industry actually runs on:
| table | what it holds |
|---|---|
menus | Sections and dishes with prices per restaurant, owner-updatable — so the page answers what to order, not just where to go. |
cuisines | A browsable cuisine taxonomy alongside neighborhoods — the two axes every dining search starts from. |
review_photos | Diner-submitted plate photos tied to reviews, moderated and credited — the content that makes a restaurant page persuasive. |
03 · Screens
Modules through the industry lens
Open-now dining search
01Browse crosses cuisine with neighborhood, then filters on price, seating, dietary options, and whether the kitchen is open right now. Hours are structured per day with holiday overrides, because 'open now' is the filter diners trust a guide to get right.
Photo-led review stream
02Reviews lead with plate photos; the moderation queue screens images alongside text. A restaurant page becomes a scrollable case for dinner — and photo-rich reviews are ranked up because they're the ones diners actually read.
Owner-maintained hours and menus
03Claimed restaurants update hours, menus, and photos themselves — the seasonal patio, the new tasting menu, the Monday closure. Owner edits keep the guide's freshest data flowing from the people who know it first.
04 · In practice
Workflows it models
Tuesday-night decision
01A diner filters open-now ramen in two neighborhoods, compares photos and price, checks the menu, and goes. The guide won on structured hours and real plate photos — the two things the mega-platforms bury under ads.
New opening gets listed
02A new spot's chef claims the listing during opening week, loads the menu and photos, and marks soft-launch hours. The guide covers the opening before anyone else — the moment local guides build their reputation on.
Editors publish a seasonal list
03A 'best patios' feature assembles from listings with outdoor seating, curated by your editors and published as a browsable collection. Curation is the moat of a local guide, and here it's a query plus taste.
Restaurant Guide template — frequently asked questions
Can the guide show whether a restaurant is open right now?
Yes — hours are structured per weekday with holiday and special-hours overrides, so open-now filtering is reliable. Claimed owners update their own hours, which is the only mechanism that keeps that data true over time.
How are menus handled?
Menus are structured sections and dishes with prices, editable by claimed owners and your editors. Diners browse the menu on the listing page, and menu content gives each page more surface to match searches like a dish name plus a neighborhood.
Do reviews support photos?
Photos are central: diners attach plate photos to reviews, images pass moderation with the text, and photo-rich reviews lead the page. For dining, the pictures are the persuasion — the schema treats them accordingly.
Can I run editorial lists alongside the directory?
Yes — curated collections build from listing attributes and your picks, published as browsable features. The blend of structured directory and editorial voice is exactly what local guides have over the big platforms, and you own both halves.
Related
Dual7 App Starters
Build your Restaurant Guide on your terms
A local dining guide — cuisines, neighborhoods, menus, photo-forward reviews — generated into a codebase you own. Describe your version to start — the output is a project you own.