Looking to allow customers to control their dining experience, restaurant goers can now order from their iPad using Menyou.
Inventors Thaves Ponnampalam and Aravinthan Ehamparam created a “tablet-based platform” that allows the guest to make menu choices based on their own “dietary restrictions such as meals under 500 calories or gluten-free options,” reports the Star Business Club.
Customers can also call for waiter assistance for unanswered questions. Not only can this digital menu provide guests with options, but it can also give restaurant owners customer details and eating preferences, allowing businesses to promote certain items, upsell, and feature advertisements.
Already, a trial has begun for the prototype of Menyou in a Toronto restaurant called Cassie’s. More trials are scheduled at other restaurants and in venues, golf courses, and hotels, the Star Business Club reports.
Ehamparam said the only thing keeping Menyou from taking off is the traditional restaurant experience.
“In restaurant space, especially the bigger ones, you have an older generation that is familiar with technology and have used it but aren’t as comfortable as the younger generation,” Ehamparam said to the Star Business Club.
“Although we can explain to them rationally the benefits of using technology, for them they believe it will ruin the whole experience.”
Menyou partnered with Dine.TO, an online dining guide of the Greater Toronto Area, to present Menyou directly to customers.
Ehamparam and Ponnampalam also plan to allow customers to pay from the iPad through payment processor Lucova, so that customers will receive notifications through their profile stating that their bill was paid, reports the Star Business Club.
And to think, Ehamparam and Ponnampalam thought up Menyou while watching a waiter punch order codes into a palm pilot at a Singapore restaurant.
“Being both foodies, we thought the next logical step would be letting the customers take control of the ordering experience,” Ehamparam said to the Star Business Club. “That’s how the idea of Menyou was born.”