These days, a good website is almost as essential to a restaurant’s success as its kitchen.
Local software developer Eddie Peloke is betting that iPhone applications are the next frontier for restaurant marketing.
Peloke’s company Blue Shoe Mobile Solutions provides restaurant owners with tools to create and manage their own iPhone applications. They can then use their application to manage their menus, advertising, promotions and contact information. Customers can use the application to order food or make reservations.
Restaurants can glean information such as their most popular dishes and which locations they do particularly good business in, and they can keep track of regular customers’ orders.
Peloke said that he came up with the idea for the project by comparing the evolution of the iPhone to the evolution of the World Wide Web. When it began to expand, only very large and rich companies could afford to create websites, but now anyone can create a website.
“I see the mobile app market in much the same way,” Peloke said.
Currently, creating an iPhone application can cost a company more than $5,000, and there are not many tools available that offer help for building and managing these applications, he said.
“I wanted to create such an application and thought restaurants would be a perfect niche as it would be something I would use as an end user,” he said.
An end user is the person on the other “end” using the iPhone.
Revenue for Blue Shoe will come from restaurant subscriptions. Restaurants will pay a subscription fee to get access to the tools to create and manage their application. Peloke said that Blue Shoe has not decided on a subscription price yet. The trial version of Blue Shoe will start March 1 and will be free for all restaurants involved, and once they officially launch they will settle on a final subscription price.
Peloke said that the hardest part of the Blue Shoe creation process is remembering both sides of their clientele, the restaurant owners and the end users.
“Our biggest challenge has really been to design a system that provides the most power to our users while also giving restaurants the ability to tailor it to their unique needs,” he said.
However, the Blue Shoe involvement does not end with providing the tools to create an application. Once a restaurant creates their application, Blue Shoe will submit it to Apple and put it through their approval process. Once the application is approved, it will show up in the official iTunes store. Restaurants will then be able to promote and encourage customers to download their very own iPhone application.
Food for thought:
I understand that iphone apps are a hot commodity, but what does an app give you that the restaurant’s website can’t? Menus, coupons, contacts and online ordering can/should all be available on the website anyway, so doesn’t the maintenance of the app just add another thing for a busy restaurant owner to manage? The cash register tells the owner which dishes are most popular. If this service includes identical functionality available via the web and the app, then that might be valuable, but don’t make the restaurant owner maintain redundant content management, especially since iphone is not the only smart phone on the market.
From the end user perspective, I want one app that allows me to see several restaurants rather than getting an app for every restaurant I like. Then I can let the app help me decide which restaurant I would like to order from by browsing specials and coupons across a variety of options. With individual apps, I have to either make that decision before going to the app or invest more time in pulling up each app and navigating their heterogeneous interfaces to compare offerings. Obviously, a given restaurant owner benefits more from his dedicated app on my phone, but I think the usage and longevity of the app will be greater with a multi-restaurant app.
I believe menupages, citysearch and zagat provide it all already
Like the other two posters, I think the vast majority of restaurants need to work refining the basics of online marketing–web site and emails–with a twist toward linking into the social networks (but not living on them.)
I do some online consulting with a few restaurants (none in Richmond). One offers in-depth knowledge about food and wine in what has become popular weekly email newsletters. With a new service we signed him up for, the newsletters are posted automatically on a simple, clean web site and Twittered at the same. All the newsletters and the web site have buttons to where it’s easy to link into the social networks, of course.
For an iPhone app, this restaurant is trying a firm which is building a network of restaurants which allows consumers to book a table with a touch of the phone’s keyboard. This means my client keeps his reservations online now, for all the world to see. The restaurant database is linked to the web site as well. (Service charges by the reservation after a setup fee. If the reservation comes to the db via the web site instead of the iphone app, the fee is much less.) It is small pain, and it’s not free, I’m told the jury is still out, but for Valentine’s Day about a dozen reservations came through networked db–all from the link on the web site, none from iPhones.
There are several reasons a restaurant would want to have an app in addition to a website. Foremost is that most smartphones don’t do a very good job of showing a webpage, especially if it has moving parts like Flash. An app can provide a better, more controlled experience with greater functionality.
That being said, I think an app devoted to a single restaurant is more likely to support regular customers than someone looking for somewhere to go tonight. Remember, interactive marketing is as much about deeper interactions and ongoing communications as it is about advertising.
Keith West
DigiForce
Internet Staffing and Execution
Thanks for all the great comments. At Blue Shoe, we are looking to provide restaurants with easy access to branded mobile apps. Something that currently, requires a lot of money and development resources. Once we have several restaurants on the platform, we’ll be able to offer both the branded restaurant app and a multi-restaurant app.
The use of an app over a mobile site will allow us at Blue Shoe to provide much richer data to the restaurants on how people are ordering at not only their restaurants but other restaurants on the platform. In most cases, the use of an app over a site will also provide users with a much richer experience. As a user, I can now click a button to open the app and click one button to order what I ordered last time, or click another and get directions from where I am or even another and place a call to the restaurant.
Thanks again for all the feedback and I welcome more as we continue to build our system and make it a viable solution for both restaurants and users. Please don’t hesitate to contact me directly.
Thanks,
Eddie Peloke
Blue Shoe Mobile Solutions
info@blueshoetech.com
hi Scottb,
Would like to bring your attention towards a word called “customer life time value”, now though it might be difficult to adapt and adopt to so many changes happening in technical domain but it is not a choice in today’s date.
In today’s scenario, Any business cant afford to lose a single client/customer just because they have to adapt or embrace something new!
secondly customers have different demography and respective taste & that eventually decides whether to adopt or not!for example a joint serving to a demography of age 50+ age group might not need it but a normal restau serving to all cant take such risk because not having an app might result into losing a business of hundreds of dollars from single customer(CLV i.e. income from client+references+word of mouth publicity)
That is generally our ideology when we suggest any solution to our client.
Regards
Yogesh choudhary
Finoit technologies
info@finoit.com
Although the company I work for develops mobile restaurant applications, I will say that as with any investment, a restaurant owner should think carefully about his patron demographics when making his investment decisions.
Large restaurants can definitely benefit from having a mobile app as a form of marketing. Even if the app isn’t downloaded, the restaurant enhances its brand among a certain demographic.
For example, teenagers, young professionals, technology savvy people, all three of these groups might drop in at a restaurant merely because they heard it has an iPhone app and that spawned some discussion with their peers.
At the end of the day though, the restaurant has to deliver on the quality of the food and the entire experience. It does no good to attract visitors, but then to drop the ball on food quality and service.
So an app is just another piece of an overall marketing strategy. It can definitely help, and it definitely won’t hurt.
Thanks.
Ayo Ijidakinro
Yakuku Mobile Menus
email: ayo at yakuku dot com
I tend to disagree with the idea that having an individual app for an individual restaurant may be a little over the top.
I come form a very small beach city where localized bars and restaurants see more than their fair share of regular customers day in and day out. I think every one of these restaurants would benefit from a specialized app that keeps their customers close at hand.
Really I see very little difference between the emergence of a separate app for a particular restaurant and the existence of a website for that same restaurant…
one is on your phone…one is on your computer, and done correctly they are both equally useful.
I am looking into getting a branded app designed for my restaurant, where my customers can order online & also can book a table easily & with no effort. All your comments have been very useful!