It's a Piece of Cake
Have you ever tried to get a last-minute dinner reservation, only to call half a dozen restaurants, before giving up and bellying up to the bar of the closest burger joint? What about sitting at the table of your favourite restaurant after a satiating meal and sublime service, only to become annoyed waiting for your bill for 20 minutes? Or maybe you're as dazed and confused as I am by the seemingly daily launch of new craft breweries?
Whether they see an opportunity derived from personal frustrations or are toying with new skills and a personal passion for a pint, local developers are creating apps for our smartphones to help us manage our collective culinary angst, making dining and drinking out easier. Technology has already disrupted major media, the hotel industry, the taxi system and it's finally coming for the culinary world.
App8 — Eat, pay, leave.
Instead of complaining after several occasions of waiting for his bill for what seemed like an eternity, Elias Hage, a graduate of the University of Ottawa's Telfer School of Management and a consultant in business management, decided to take a closer look at the typical restaurant's payment process. He discovered that 15 per cent of a server's time can be spent issuing bills to tables and processing payments. That can be an issue for restaurants that need to turn over tables in order to turn a profit. And for diners, almost a quarter of their dining-out experience can be dominated by trying to settle up. If customers have to wait too long, that can leave a lasting impression.
Determined to solve the issue for restaurant owners, servers and guests, Hage continued to research the problem and the feasibility of an app that would make it okay to dine and introduced him to her childhood friend, Hani Jabbour. Also a graduate of the University of Ottawa in computer engineering and an experienced software developer, Jabbour soon partnered with Hage as the company's chief technology officer.
They officially launched App8 in spring of 2018, after a pilot-run at Father and Sons Restaurant and Bar late in 2017. Since then, El Camino, Clocktower Brew Pubs, Broadway Bar & Grill and Al's Diner have signed on as participating restaurants.
While the app is free for users, restaurants pay a percentage of each transaction paid with App8, similar to the fees they already pay for processing credit card payments. There are no other fees and no hardware, it's a turnkey application. And Jabbour and Hage continue to work on integrating App8 with various restaurant point-of-sales systems, as part of their growth strategy.
To use App8, install it on your iOs and Android device and create an account. When you walk into one of App8's restaurants, check in on the app and let your server know you'd like to use it to pay your tab. As you order, your meal will be itemized on your smartphone. Then, talk, talk talk, eat, eat, eat — enjoy your meal and the company and, as soon as you're ready to leave, just tap "pay bill." You can add a tip, split the bill with friends and store the receipts. It's that simple. — app8.ca
Craft beer passport — Explore the city by the glass
The craft beer passport, an app that users can download for free to discover, tour and taste craft beer at local, independent breweries, started as Mike Stulberg's personal entrepreneurial program. With an undergraduate degree already under his belt, Stulberg took time off to travel before researching his next step — entrepreneurial school. But when he compared the price of school programs to that of launching his passport business, the cost was about the same.
"I thought, if it fails, I'd probably learn a lot and if it succeeds, I'll have a business," Stulberg says of his decision to start the craft-beer passport, which at the time was a printed passport customers could use to discover breweries and buy stamps for a dollar, qualifying them for a 12-ounce draft beer for $2 at participating breweries, bars and restaurants.
The first iteration of the passport was a success with more than 5,000 craft-beer enthusiasts buying the 20-brewery printed passport. And because Stulberg gained, what he calls, a 360-experience, running every aspect of the business, he decided to go back to school for a program that would do the same. He found the masters of design program in strategic foresight and innovation at the Ontario College of Art offered him a well-rounded, multi-disciplinary approach, incorporating mixed design, business and strategy. It gave Stulberg the tools to design the user interface of the passport app to ultimately go digital.
He partnered with his neighbour, James Eberhardt, a software developer, and later, Taras Petryk, to help with the coding and development. They launched the passport app and, to date, 26,000 people have downloaded the app. It has the potential to reach even more people, those who want to use it as a guide to discover the new breweries and those who will take the opportunity to try a new beer for a few dollars. Stulberg talks about the potential to make it even more engaging, adding content about the brewers and what's on tap and, of course, adding more locations.
There are more than 100 participating breweries throughout Ontario — in Hamilton, Toronto, Stratford, Collingwood and lots of smaller towns in between. With a little more than a dozen breweries participating in Ottawa, including the newest members, Broadhead and Overflow Brewing Co., you can start exploring in your own backyard. — craftbeerpassport.ca
DINR — Same-day dinner reservations
When you spend a lot of time at the bar, it's amazing what you'll hear and who you'll meet. Kyle Marshall Nares met Bryan Mahoney while serving him wine as a regular customer at Garde Manger, one of the two restaurants Nares co-owns in Montreal. "After hearing diners complain about struggling to get into hard-to-get restaurants and those same restaurants complaining about having empty seats due to same-day cancellations and noshows, we created DINR," Nares says. Nares focused on sales and business development and Mahoney, who is the co-founder of Dynamo, a Montreal-based digital-design studio, took charge of the technology side.
Think of it as a matchmaking service for restaurants and diners looking to speed-date for the last available table. It works for a curated list of 30- to 90-seat restaurants, such as Nares' own Le Bremner and Garde Manger, that are in demand, often requiring a reservation months or weeks in advance. When you operate on tight margins and have limited capacity to make a profit based on a finite seating plan, an empty table or two can really impact the bottom line.
DINR is available in Montreal, Quebec City, Toronto, Vancouver and Ottawa. Participating restaurants in the capital, include Fairouz, Fauna, Stofa, Town and Supply and Demand.
The app works for same-day reservations only and requires diners to secure their reservation with a credit card. If you skip out on the reservation or have fewer people in your party, a $30-per-person fee is charged. It's a tactic that's long been debated in the industry, but it works. The industry average for no-shows and empty tables hovers at 15 per cent, but securing a reservation with a credit card effectively eliminates no-shows. And diners can still cancel the reservation at no cost with at least two-hours notice.
If you're anything like me, often basing your dining-out decisions on mood and level of I-don't-want-to-cook at the last minute, while still being a picky eater, DINR will come in handy tonight. — getdinr.com
