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.
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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!