Hey Nick, sounds like a good idea to me. It would also work in large offices with an inhouse coffeeshop or so. Of course it is key that the site would be stable and secure. Furthermore you would expect easy content management to update products and prices when necessary. But yeah, why not..How is the idea going anyway? Did you started? Do you have a site where I can take a look?
I suspect the cafes/caterer will deliver? Isn’t this idea already done, for example with pizza deliveries through web orders? or would they all have their own website instead of 3rd parties like you hosting the site and application?
Thanks for your thoughts.
Martin, our target will be corporate catering. Example when the secretary has to schedule catering for a meeting. Instead of picking up the phone or faxing the order, s/he goes to the site and selects items from a menu. Once orders have been they can be reselected, or set up as recurring orders.
Yes the site will have to be secure, we are looking into different payment models atm. We have started, in fact a protoype is almost ready. We are going to test it on some local cafes/ caterers first so we can get eye to eye feedback. If all goes well there should be something to look at soon. I’ll keep you posted.
Newbie, the person who places the order can select for either pickup or delivery. So yes this has been done to an extent on an individual scale. Our idea is a single system that allows caterers to come and setup an online presence without any web design consultation. So we would provide hosting.
Well, were pushing ahead & based on this poll so far 2 out of 3 people think its a great idea!
Is this so that hotel guests can order room service via a web interface, or so that hotels can order food/beverage supplies from wholesalers? Or is it not aimed at hotels at all?
Hey, Its nice Idea and I think in todays world it will surely work… and Its good that you will have web based system. I will surely think on it for my clients…
I have extended/developed some established Point-Of-Sale software which might be useful for you to incorporate into this project and it’s FREE (honest!)... it’s based on an established Open Source application that gets more than 10,000 downloads per month (allegedly).
It’s perfect for anything from a wee Cafe through to a mutli-terminal and/or multi-site… depends how you want to set it up. Takes 5 minutes to install and will run stand-alone, or if you’re going the online route you could hook it up to a central MySQL, Oracle or Postgres database… your choice. There are manuals to download too to get you going.
I think web based software is suitable for every business that is represented on the Web, whether we’re talking about pizzerias or cafes. I would personally like the idea of ordering a pizza or a coffee over the Internet as this a faster option, especially if you don’t really have the time of going to buy one yourself.
The remaining great business breakthroughs, at least a large percentage, and of greatest impact, will be digiitally implemented solutions. The last break throughs of the brick/mortar industries are all gravity related, moving this and that, infrastucural band-aiding, crowd control and weapons systems, and even those things final methodologies, development and management will be computer aided and controlled.
This is the best idea for the cafes and caterers because it would be the beneficial for the both customer as well as shopper. If it is available then we can order on the internet so it will save the time and get the faster service then the real activity. I agree with this system and i think it should be implement on the shops.
Hi Nick, it is an idea people have worked on for a while, it may work in fast food premises, but Hotels and Restaurants, are different animals, having worked in restaurants and hotels, the problem they all had, was the belief that they could take orders and minimise waiters, it is not that simple, to do what a waiter requires to do, first of all is has to be a very sofisticated piece of electronic, the problems will start with taking the order for drinks, the food, for explanation, for tardiness, for something not properly done, amongst other things, but I will leave it here.Ciao
