iPhone Digital Menu Will Call Pete’s Now or Pay for Your Melt!3 min read

Ever try ordering takeout from a restaurant from your iPhone? Viewing a restaurant’s website-based online menu from a computer is generally not a problem; but, viewing it from an iPhone is quite another matter. “It’s a pain,” says Sylvia Rector of the Detroit Free Press.

You’ll either need to use a magnifying glass to read the micro-print that appears on the tiny screen or you’ll need to enlarge the type and maneuver the menu around your screen to be able to read the page — unless, of course, the restaurant has an iPhone digital menu – a special, easy-to-read version created especially for iPhones.

Restaurants have begun to realize that, if they want their customers to be able to place an order from their iPhone, they need to offer them an iPhone digital menu. Most of the big chain restaurants understand the importance of offering their customers a version of their online menu which has been reconfigured for mobile devices and offer their customers an iPhone digital menu. But some smaller, neighborhood restaurants, like Pete’s Place Broadway Café in Ferndale, Michigan, have also started offering an iPhone digital menu to their smart-phone customers.

With an iPhone digital menu, the customer goes to the restaurant’s website and touches the word “menu.” Instead of micro-print, the customer sees all of the available categories (e.g., appetizers, soups, salads, sandwiches, sides, desserts, beverages, etc.) in a completely legible format – without having to move the screen around the page.

Touch the heading for the desired category and the screen on the iPhone digital menu calls up a list of all of the items in that category in easy-to-read font. Select one of the items from that category, and the customer sees a photograph of the item, its price, etc. To select another category, the customer simply touches the screen on iPhone digital menu again to return to the main menu.

Not only does the iPhone digital menu make reading a restaurant’s menu and ordering from a smart phone easier for the customer, it also makes ordering faster and more efficient. At Pete’s Place, once the customer has decided what they want, they touch the “call now” button, and the iPhone digital menu dials the restaurant. At some of the larger chain restaurants, the iPhone digital menu enables customers to order directly from the menu. At still other restaurants, like Melt – inventor of Flip Video, Jonathan Kaplan’s new California grilled-cheese chain – let customers not only place their takeout order, but pay for it directly on the iPhone digital menu — that way, the customer can pick up their order as soon as it’s ready, without having to wait in line.

Restaurants, like Pete’s Place, report that roughly 1/3 of the “hits” on their website come from mobile devices. Pete’s general manager, Steven Reaume, says that 30-35% of the 1,500 hits per month on its website are from smart phones. In light of Nielsen predictions that 50% of Americans will own a smart phone by the end of this year, smart restaurateurs have figured out that using an iPhone digital menu to optimize their online menu for handheld devices is essential to competing in today’s technology-centric environment.

Disclaimer: This is an independent report sourced from one or more news articles and or press releases; none of the company’s, entities or technologies digressed in this report are affiliated with or a client of Aptito.

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