Update 9/16...
As of the publishing of this story, Noah Huotari has added 30+ Culver's locations to custardmke.com
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We know that Wisconsin is a state that loves its custard. And with an abundance of rotating flavors of the day, we have a ton of different choices. However, it's not always easy to compare multiple different flavors of the day. Until now. One man proves not all heroes wear capes as he creates a solution to this custard conundrum.
Rather than going Kopp's, Leon's, and Oscar's websites to find the custard flavor of the day, Noah Huotari created custardmke.com. It aggregates all that information to put the flavor for 19 different custard spots on one webpage.
“So every month I will go and scrape all those custard websites. Some of them don’t scrape nicely, so I have to manually put them into a spreadsheet, and then I will take that spreadsheet and import it into my database, and then the website will - just based on the day - will pull the flavors from each location from that database and it will display it on the site," Huotari said.
Watch the video to see what the custard website looks like...
It took a few weeks to build, and the site has been live for about three months. The website lists custard spots in places like Racine County, Milwaukee County, Ozaukee County, and more. So far, feedback has been great with many people telling Huotari they had the same issue.
“Even came across one person who had bought the opposite domain mkecustard.com," Huotari said.
However, that website isn't live. Noah's custardmke.com gets up to a few thousand visitors a month.
Now that the website has been live for a few months, Huotari is working on version 2.0. One of the most requested features is listing the Culver's flavor of the day. However, that's not so easy, Huotari said.
“But each site has their own flavor of the day, so, you know, I think there's a least 10 or 15 in the Milwaukee area, so it’s a little bit more to update that every month like I do for the other sites.”
He is also working on improving the user experience, a better search functionality, and adding flavor notifications so you never miss your favorite flavors.
“Sure you could easily check each site. It doesn’t take that much time, and it’s not really a problem, but it’s pretty convenient to have everything in one spot," he said.
Huotari isn't looking to make it big off this website. It's just a fun project he works on in his spare time. But we can all appreciate him making our custard consumption choices a bit clearer. And that's why not all heroes wear capes.
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