Menu A La Carte
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Menu A La Carte

Posted December 18th, 2009 by admin

Dorothée Coupat is theMarketing Director of menu-alacarte.com and its co-founder.

How did the idea come and what's the concept behind it?
With my family I was lucky enough to go live abroad, had the amazing opportunity to learn English from a very young age and studied in International Schools as well as British and American universities.  With the travels and mix of cultures surrounding me, I became alert to a lot of things from quite a young age.

In 2005 my sister and I started exploring the idea of working together on a project.  We therefore started brainstorming and asked our father for advice.  We all came up with great ideas but my father was the true founder of the concept. 

Each time we went in a restaurant, whether in China, or France, we would, by habbit I suppose, look at the translated menus.  We then identified a true lack of good translation in French restaurants (or restaurants in French speaking locations) and found it a pity as we are the number one destination in the world.  In January 2009 our website went live on the Internet!

So the service is only available in France, or do you also develop your activities abroad?
Our activity is mainly focused on France, however, we also of course do business with restaurants in other French speaking countries like Belgium and Switzerland.  This fall we are starting to develop the Quebec market where I spend some of my time over the year.  I however am always reachable by phone, email and via our website of course.

We have some other destinations in the works, but we primarily focus on French-English and English-French translations.

I'm a restaurateur and I want my Menu to be translated into French, how do i go about it ? and of course I want it for tomorrow morning!
That is what our concept is about.  We want to be able to give the best service possible to our clients. 

For the fixed menus we return the translations in less then 72 hours, however, we can of course operate in a very short time should we receive such a request, we are flexible with our clients’ needs.

For daily menus we ask to receive the menu no later then 6:00pm so as to return it no later then 11:00am the next day, leaving more then enough time for both parties to be efficient.  Everything is done by email, so not waste of time by the post.

We also offer a revision service for restaurants that may already have an existing menu but are not certain of its accuracy.  Due to a growing need we have also started to translate restaurant and hotel websites.

How do restaurateurs welcome the concept?
They are very happy to work with a “human-size” company with a constant team.

The personalized translation with explanation of dishes, if necessary, is also truly appreciated.

Our personalized translation time span and our rates were also well received.

Any funny experiences about wrong translations?
Yes numerous, that is what makes our work interesting! 
For your readers who speak both French and English, a common mistake is “Dos de loup” (the fish) badly translated is “Back of wolf”!

Menu-alacarte.com was founded 1 year ago, how is it going?
www.menu-alacarte.com was launched nearly a year ago to this day.

Things are going well but the first year of an activity is always a little hard.  We are looking forward to stabilizing and growing the business but with a growing amount of customers, a lot which have already returned several times, several good partnerships; hopefully our efforts will be rewarded.

During this first year we also obtained the support of American Express, some hotel chains and recently from the ACFCI (Assembly of French Chamber of Commerce & Industry).

Larger successful companies were not built in a day.  We strongly believe that roots grow before the leaves!  So ask us the same question in 5 years and we will give you an update.

You have a Facebook group, a twitter account, How do you use these tools on your day to day business?
Yes we try to use the most up to date means of communications.  Being often on the North American continent I am able to have the best of both worlds and merge their technologies with the ones existing in Europe. 

A business mainly depending on the internet for its development is not easy so we try to make the information get to our clients as quickly as possible and also create a sense of community.  Twitter and Facebook are two tools out of numerous others with which we try to achieve this. 

The restaurant Industry has been particularly hit during this recession time. Any advice for restaurateurs who seek to boost their business in such difficult times?
Our advice is to capture/attract the foreign client right from the outside of their establishment.  With a menu in English in their window, the clients will be easily tempted by their menus: if not, they will end up in a fast-food or will go straight to the few restaurants appearing in guide books.

What's the best way to contact you?
There are several ways to reach us but as previously mentioned we try to be as responsive as quickly as possible as we know restaurateurs are busy people. 

They can therefore reach us by phone (+33(0)642925796), by email (webmaster@menu-alacarte.com) or through our contact form on our website (www.menu-alacarte.com).

We strive to go with the 24 hour response rule!

At last but not least, what's your preferred dish?
It may sound cheesy but I would definitely have to go with my father’s roast pork and potatoes.  He is certainly an excellent cook and my very own favourite.