EatApp is changing the boring, bland printed menu into something exciting – leaving us salivating at the possibilities. Joshua Gofman, Founder of EatApp, shares his insights.
Dining out has naturally been transformed by technology. Think restaurant discovery, online reservations, social sharing, ordering food, mobile payments… the list goes on. In the hospitality industry, the experience itself is paramount.
EatApp aims to elevate the dish discovery and selection experience to a whole new level.
The app also aims to liberate the waiter from the stress of describing dishes and scribing an order, allowing him to focus on being a warm, gracious, and attentive host.
Removing Confusion
Can’t tell shiso from yuzu? Don’t know a gougère from gochujang? You’re not alone. As culinary trends evolve, the terms diners are finding on menus can be confusing and impact how they order. Will your food be salty or sweet? Bitter or sour? Words make a world of difference when it comes to flavour.
Unfortunately, a menu may leave a diner more confused after reading than when they first sat down.
A Menu Doesn’t Cut It
A menu is many things to many people. A menu can inspire diners to try new and unfamiliar dishes, to whet their appetite, to show them what taste explosions are available to them, to encourage them in choosing the unfamiliar or make them feel at home by showcasing the familiar. It is just as important in protecting diners from potentially life-threatening allergic reactions. But more often than not, menus deliver poorly, if at all, on many of these key requirements.
What Diners Want From a Modern Menu
A 2016 online survey conducted by Harris Poll on behalf of OpenTable revealed that:
- 56% of diners are concerned that ordering a menu item made with an unfamiliar ingredient will ruin their dining experience.
- 53% of the diners indicated that photos of the menu items would make them more likely to order a dish they are not familiar with.
- 91% of diners said they would be more likely to order a dish they are not familiar with if it was better explained.
- When diners encounter a term they didn’t understand on a menu, 67% ask the waiter to explain what it is.
As a restaurateur, how do you address these threats and opportunities?
Eatapp – The Menu Diners Want
This functionally beautiful app opens up a world of menu possibilities to chefs and restaurateurs. Through EatApp, guests can go on a visually rich journey through each and every dish on offer. EatApp easily addresses diners’ confusion with specific dishes, portion size, nutritional information, and potential allergies. It lists in detail all this information, which a traditional menu simply can not do (see Exhibit A below).
Language barriers are no longer an issue, portion sizes are clear, and unfamiliar and unique ingredients can be easily and clearly explained in words, history, and pictures.
Better yet, through the use of pictures, the diners’ anxiety about the unfamiliar dish can be allayed while their curiosity about the said dish is piqued, thereby renewing their relationship with the restaurant.
EatApp helps the prospective diners feel familiar and comfortable with your dishes even if they are unfamiliar with them. Diners tend to ask the waiter to explain unfamiliar menu items, unfortunately, more often than not, with poor results. With its richly visual dish and ingredient images and text descriptions, EatApp can be an amazing source of information and customer satisfaction.
A Revolution for Diners
With EatApp, visitors to eating establishments need no longer look to the waiting staff to explain what a dish is, to recommend a drinks pairing, or even to order a meal. All this can be done through EatApp – freeing diners to enjoy their meals with ease, and their waiters to properly host, without any awkward moment.
For diners, EatApp offers many benefits. The app is easy to navigate, with a warm and inviting design that focuses on showcasing the striking imagery of dishes, their descriptions, and their backstories.
Its Instagram-styled image grid makes for straightforward navigation of meals based on visual appeal.
Guests can scroll through a continuous grid of dish images (see Exhibit B below), with an option to touch any dish image and view the underlying ingredients, pricing, allergy, and other dish-specific information.
The EatApp menu can also be viewed in a traditional menu structure: starters, breakfast, lunch, dinner, all-day dishes, sides, specials, kids menu, desserts, and beverages (Exhibit C, Screens 1 and 2).
Dishes on the EatApp menu can be easily found and prioritised by searching for high-protein, vegetarian, vegan, spicy, Banting and many other diner-relevant search criteria. Ingredients, allergens, and wine pairings, if applicable, appear with all menu items.
Diners will be able to log in and create their personal profiles, including the allergens to avoid. Once logged in, a diner’s personal preferences and restaurant histories will be securely stored and accessible to the diner for future access, review, and analysis.
Taking Menus into the 21st Century
For chefs and restaurateurs, there are just as many benefits. Not only can they maximise exposure of dishes on their menu through stunning images and information loaded onto EatApp’s digital menus, but they never have to reprint updates ever again…among many other positives:
- Menus can easily be kept up to date with the click of a mouse.
- Traditional menus can still be used while also having EatApp run concurrently until customers stop wanting to use traditional menus because EatApp becomes the defacto standard.
- Many customers find traditional menus unhygienic whereas people don’t mind handling their own phones.
- Millions of menus are being thrown into landfills as replacement menus with updated offerings and pricing are reprinted. EatApp is a far more sustainable, eco-friendly option.
- Restaurants can also cross-promote the chains within their collection on EatApp.
Whole New World of Wine Pairings
In addition to beautifully showcasing your food, EatApp also allows restaurants to provide detailed information on the wines they stock, as well as correctly pair the most appropriate wines to complement the various dishes.
EatApp menus can customise every wine on the menu, providing background information on the vintner, the history of any given wine, its taste notes and flavour profiles, and even allows chefs to upload vibrant images that showcase their aesthetic beauty – from a designer label to distinct bottle shape.
A Restaurant Guide to Using EatApp
The EatApp restaurant web-portal was designed specifically with busy restaurant staff in mind, making menu entry and regular updating easy. EatApp software quickly walks you through the process.
Any aspect of a dish can be edited at any given time. This includes:
- Dish name
- Price
- Description
- Ingredients
- Photographs
- Allergies
- Nutritional information
- Extras
- Wine recommendations
Last – and certainly not least – guests can preview their order, and even pay through EatApp, cutting the billing time immensely, and removing the headaches of splitting bills for groups.
About the App Developers
Transforming the founders’ concept into a beautifully designed, user-friendly, globally scalable and technically reliable application was a huge challenge in creating EatApp. To meet this risky undertaking the founders turned to ValueLogic (www.valuelogic.one) – a top-quality software engineering company. ValueLogic took full responsibility for developing an end-to-end solution in an incredibly short 3 months and on budget.
Join The Menu Revolution
Visit our website at www.eatapp.ai to upload your menu free of charge and take your restaurant menu experience to a whole new level.
- Email: join@eatapp.ai
- Tel: +27 (0)76 877 5866
- Web: www.eatapp.ai
