Why digital menu? How? And what is the thing we want?

It was rather difficult to pick a topic for the first blog, in spite of the fact that it was obvious – to tell why we decided to develop the digital menu application. But during the developing process so many things had happened and we had learned so much, that apart from this, obvious first topic “why”, there is a string of other topics I consider worth describing, retelling and sharing. But, let’s start from the beginning – why and how 🙂

We didn’t came across the idea while we were sitting locked in our office, planning to stay there until we come up with something. Everything happened spontaneously, through a joke: “It would be awesome if we could order food and drinks through our cell phones and tablets. It would arrive more quickly, and we could drink more!” We all approved of the joke, and the idea was born.

In the beginning, we knew little about catering industry, their problems and business processes. Our perspective was the perspective of the end user, that is to say, of the customer. In the end, this was a great advantage, because DaShef was built in such a way that the customer is the priority, but as we went deeper, talked to caterers, we came across many “holes” which can be filled by the digital menu and the technology behind it.

Apart from learning about the business process in the catering industry, we also learned that similar solutions already exist. But, in general, those were only basic menu forms, mostly only copied, traditional paper menus, without many features technology offers.

We wrote down a few things (okay, we didn’t really, but that’s an expression), we found areas and ways to satisfy both sides – customers, as end users, and restaurant owners – their employees, ad to solve problems both sides have. And so we made a basic list of features DaShef would have (or, as developers like to call the “killer features”). The first is the advances recommendation system customers will be happy with, because they will receive recommendations about things they enjoy. The owners of restaurants/bars will be satisfied with the feature because it will bring up sell. The other feature is the loyalty program. Yes, I know that the loyalty program isn’t a novelty or a revolutionary thing, and that almost everyone has it. But this is a global loyalty program which includes all the interested catering businesses in our system. You will read about this in more detail in one of the next blogs.

In the end, or just before the end… What do we really want? The answer is simple – to draw this technology closer to everyone and to make it possible for every catering business to use it and to upgrade their business by using it. This is the very reason why we decided to develop the application for the Android platform, since Android offers a whole array of tablets, some having a rather low price, and some not so much, but there is something for everyone. Using the menu requires less than minimal knowledge about computers, and if you know how to send an e-mail, you’ll know how to use the digital menu.

I will end this with a motivating thought – we are not worried about whether the digital menus will live. Today, everything is digitalized. The only question is: how fast will you realize that the digital menu is here and that there is no need to wait for the future 🙂

P. S. Maybe it’s not a killing feature, but I’d like to mention that we also have wine lists, as we love wine! 🙂