Dining Goes Digital At Stacked - The iPad Restaurant | FOX 11 News. The Birth of the iRestaurant. At De Santos, the high-end restaurant serving up Italian-American fare in the West Village for the better part of three years, waiters buzz around armed with sleek iPad 2 tablets, swiftly taking orders and swiping credit cards on the devices. Behold, the future of restaurants. De Santos officially unveiled its new system August 1, thus earning the distinction as the first restaurant in New York completely run on iPads. "The customers love it," says Sebastian Gonella, one of the owners and co-founders of De Santos. "Who doesn't like an iPad? While it may sound crazy to replace lined notepads that cost $1.50 with $500 iPads, De Santos owners claim the new system saves money—and allows the restaurant to make something of a fashion statement while streamlining its ordering system.
"Any business knows that technology is a very important tool," says Gonella. "Because I'm an artist, I always believed that the visual aspects of any business are pretty important," Gonella says. Order dinner on an iPad at this high-end Manhattan restaurant. Restaurants uploading menus on iPads - Technology & science - Tech and gadgets. CHICAGO — The bar is buzzing on a busy night at Chicago Cut steakhouse as regulars Keith and Peg Bragg sit at a high table scanning the wine list. Within seconds, they have all bottles under $40 at their fingertips using an iPad supplied by their server. "You can very quickly look through to see the price per bottle," said Keith, a finance executive, as he scrolled through rows of selections. "You can read the wine tasting note, how long it has been aged. " The upscale eatery on the northern bank of the Chicago River has invested in 40 iPads at about $700 each for wine selection.
Chicago Cut partnered with a technology firm to create a custom app that looks like a virtual wine cellar. "Eventually the bottle is going to spin around and you can read the back label," said Chicago Cut managing partner Matt Moore. Moore's partner, David Flom, said the iPads were a large investment, but they're already showing returns. "It's cool and trendy and kids love it," he said. For better service, automate the waiters | Rafe's Radar. It seems like everyone wants a piece of the restaurant industry. I don't know why. It's a brutal business with low margins, high employee turnover, no way to reach all your customers at once, and generally stressed-out business owners. At least existing inefficiencies make for creative solutions and some good start-up ideas.
OpenTable proved that you can improve the simple act of booking a table. Storific turns your iPhone (other platforms in development) into an order-taking waitbot. It may appear that this business is about making things better for diners, by making it easier to send orders in. Storific Founder Michael Cohen tells me that, "Curious customers order more. Storific could also help a restaurant reduce its payroll, which is bad news for waiters. The app doesn't handle payments yet. Storific's big challenge, though, is the same as it is for any food-service business: sales. L'iPad, perle hi-tech des Bars à huîtres. 7 Innovative Ways the iPad Is Used in Retail. Sandeep Bhanote is CEO of Global Bay Mobile Technologies, a provider of next generation mobile retail software to top retailers including Guess Jeans, True Religion, City Sports and many others. For more information, visit globalbay.com or follow @GlobalBay on Twitter. In a commercial environment dominated by online and mobile shopping, it’s only fitting that the iPad is leading a brick and mortar renaissance to recreate in-store excitement.
Across the industry, everyone from retailers to restaurateurs have devised new ways to create brand loyalty, generate sales and enrich customer experiences. It's too early in the game to measure concrete ROI and bottom line effectiveness that the iPad has generated for retailers. Image courtesy of Flickr, tyle_r.