About Me

The Vision

I've had this idea bouncing around my head for a long time now. I'll often want to order takeout from a local restaurant that I know takes phone orders, but doesn't have an official online menu. Often there will be menu photos on Facebook, Yelp, or other aggregators. Pictures are hard to read on mobile phones and are sometimes blurry or don't reflect current prices. Also a lot of those websites now require you to log in, taking your customer's data in exchange for 'free' hosting.

Unfortunately, we don't have a 'menu drawer' in the kitchen anymore so this information has gotten lost in the age of the internet. I want to provide a place for businesses that might not want the deluge of orders that comes from adding themselves to one of the online ordering apps. Catkins.co is a way for customers to be able to find your business and call to place an order, the old fashioned way.

I started with restaurants because that was the most obvious choice, however these microsites are for anyone that wants to display some info about their business that's easier to control than managing a business profile on all the different search engines. I realized about halfway through building the website that I'm essentially recreating the yellow-pages, and I'm ok with that.

There's one big thing that changed that finally made this site possible, the arrival of reliable menu parsing through AI. I don't love the tools, I have a lot of issues with how it's been rolled out, as well as it's negative impact on the environment and marginalized communities. I still can't deny that they are useful when wielded carefully. Restaurant and business owners already spend a lot of time making a menu or service offering that look nice in person. Catkins.co is an easy way to save a lot of manual labor to translate that information into an online tool (time that small business owners rarely have).

I'll be finding ways to offset the impacts of my use of AI by donating a substantial portion of any money that may come from this website to local charities, more on that later.

The Person

My name is Greg Roughton. Because I'm building a website for local businesses, I want to make sure they know there's a person behind the website. I live in northern Vermont with my partner of 13 years who runs a floral business and farm. I've been writing software for 15+ years and have sometimes struggled with finding ways to feel like my work has impact. Building this website is my first real attempt to make something that is genuinely useful to folks, and has a low cost of entry, free!

Outside of work I've found ways to keep my mind and hands busy through woodworking and general carpentry. Through the years I've taken classes on chair making, bowl making, spoon carving, and timber framing. As I get older I find myself wanting to build a community space where I can teach other folks how to make objects with their hands. This website is a small part of hopefully making that possible.