Restaurants
Latest
Amazon launches a restaurant takeout and delivery service
Amazon's already shown that it's intent on replacing your grocery store, with same-day deliveries and its Dash scanner, but now it wants to help at those times when you don't want to be in the kitchen. As part of its latest Amazon Local expansion, the internet retailer has launched a new Takeout & Delivery service, allowing customers to browse available local restaurants and order a freshly-cooked meal for pickup or have it delivered to their door. If you've used Grubhub or Seamless (before they merged) then you know the drill.
Burger King app available across the pond
Good news, far-flung fast food fans. Burger King has announced that its iOS app (free) is now available in the UK and Ireland. What does it offer? Discounts for one, plus an overview of the chain's menu and a convenient way to find the restaurant nearest you. Lastly, it provides nutritional information for those interested. You can grab the app now and be chowing down by lunch time.
PayPal now lets you pay for packages days after you order them
Wish you didn't have to pay for online orders before they showed up? You won't have to, if you've loaded up a PayPal account. In the wake of a trial run, the company has formally rolled out Pay After Delivery, a service that gives you up to 14 days after your order to cough up the necessary funds. PayPal gives retailers money right away -- it's just waiting for you to pay the difference. Suffice it to say that this will come in handy if you have a high-priority order (say, a holiday gift) that can't wait until you have the necessary funds.
Dash takes the hassle and guesswork out of barhopping
Sure, you might be able to make reservations at your favorite dinner spot (or tip your barista) via mobile app, but that won't tell you how busy it'll be once you get there. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what mobile payment outfit Dash is hoping to solve with its new trick, Venue Vibes. By meshing with a bar or restaurant's existing point of sale system, it's able to glean real-time info on just how hopping a place is based on the number of open tabs compared against its maximum capacity. Looking for a bar that isn't too crowded, but still has some life to it? Aim for a watering hole with a "relaxed" rating. Want someplace rowdy? Shoot for a "lively" venue. The app is currently only available in New York and Chicago for now, with somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 different bars and restaurants on board.
Reserve's restaurant concierge app lets you forget about the bill
You can already organize fine dining excursions through a single app like OpenTable, but you still have to pull out your phone or wallet to pay when the night's over. You won't have to worry about the bill with Reserve's new concierge service, though. The currently iOS-only platform lets you not only find and book tables based on your preferences, but automatically bills you after each meal (tip and all); you'll be charged a $5 fee for the convenience, but that's tiny in the world of haute cuisine. If your favorite eatery is busy, you can even offer to pay more than usual in hopes of securing a spot. Want to give it a whirl? You'll have to eat in Boston, New York City or Los Angeles during the current beta testing phase, although San Franciscans will get to try it relatively soon.
Google pads small-business toolbox with purchase of website builder
By nabbing up Appetas, a company that gives restauratuers a way to build a website in minutes, Google appears to be diving deeper into small business. The culinary outfit announced the acquisition on its blog, along with the news that it would be shuttering the service to get to work on its "new endeavors." Co-founders Curtis Fonger and Keller Smith note that the folks in Mountain View are looking to bring easy-to-use business tools to merchants, but as you might expect, there's no mention of what that might entail. Appetas not only serves up Squarespace-esque design tools, but it offers GrubHub, OpenTable and social integration for key features -- like managing reservations. "We're very excited to use what we've learned with Appetas to create something even better at Google," they wrote in the blog post. Of course, Google purchased Zagat and its crowd-sourced reviews back in 2011, so we'll have to wait and see if it and this offering are paired together in future services. And there's Google+, which could be ripe for a transition to business directory now that its status is in limbo.
Google's 'show me the menu' search brings the most important restaurant info up first
No matter how good the food is, it seems like many restaurants hide the most important info (what's cooking, and how much does it cost?) under a slew of sub pages, outdated Flash interfaces or bizarre PDF scans of printed pages. Google Search users can now pull up those details even faster and in a standardized interface on the desktop or mobile devices, simply by starting their search with "show me the menu." Add in the name of the restaurant and the city it's located in, and you should see the menu right on Google's page complete with prices, where available. Search Engine Land points out that Allie Brown spotted the feature in testing a few weeks ago, although it's not entirely clear where Google is pulling its info from -- menu aggregators like AllMenus.com, HTML tags embedded in restaurant websites or maybe an extension of Zagat. Either way, it seems like a command worth filing away when Yelp, Foursquare and other local info services fall short.
nEmesis system machine reads tweets, tells you which burrito joint to avoid
We all know that customer reviews can be prone to, shall we say, a little positive engineering. What if you could gather genuine opinions about a restaurant, or product before you commit your cash? Well, a new system developed at the University of Rochester might be able to offer just that. The "nEmesis" engine uses machine learning, and starts to listen when a user tweets from a geotagged location that matches a restaurant. It then follows the user's tweets for 72 hours, and captures any information about them feeling ill. While the system isn't able to determine that any resulting affliction is directly connected to their restaurant visit, results over a four-month period (a total of 3.8-million analysed tweets) in New York City found 480 reports of food poisoning. It's claimed these data match "fairly well" with that gathered by the local health department. The system's creators admit it's not the whole picture, but could be used alongside other datasets to spot potential problems more quickly. The only question is how long before we see "sabotage" tweets?
Dash wants you to pay your happy hour tab with your iPhone
Alternative payment methods seem to be all the rage these days, from retailer-specific virtual cards that can be loaded with currency to the movement to make NFC-based payment kiosks an option at retailers. As VentureBeat reports, New York's Dash wants to do things a bit differently and by targeting eateries and bars, it may have a good chance to carve out its own niche. The Dash app for iPhone allows patrons of participating bars and restaurants to view, split and pay their tabs without ever reaching for a purse or wallet. The system has the added benefit of keeping you from having to wave down a waiter or waitress when you're ready to hit the road -- but food service workers don't have to worry about missing a tip, as Dash has a built-in feature for that as well. It's a novel idea, but since getting restaurants nationwide to jump on board isn't easy, Dash is starting with New York City, where the company claims it already has over 50 bars and food joints on its list. Dash is slated to hit the App Store in August, and if things go well, the company is ready to expand to cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Miami.
Daily Update for April 29, 2013
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
TripWhat is a free travel companion for iOS
There is a seemingly endless supply of apps that use Google Local Search and other services to get you information about where you are or where you are going. TripWhat is a free iPhone app that uses data from Google, Urbanspoon, Yelp, Seatgeek, Last.fm, WikiVoyage and others to offer data on area restaurants, points of interest, even local events happening that day. You can create an itinerary and get directions to selected activities via Apple's Map app. When you find a place you like, you can get website links and reviews, along with one-tap phone numbers. What differentiates TripWhat is its focus on current, local events like street fairs and nightlife, complete with details and links to ticket purchasing. It worked smoothly where I live, and will be helpful to those traveling in unfamiliar territory. The app claims more than 600,000 attractions and over 100,000 events in 250 cities in the US and Canada. This is not an app to use to plan an overseas trip. %Gallery-184695% TripWhat runs on iOS 5.1 or later. It's a worthwhile download to add to your travel apps folder.
KFC gets free UK WiFi through The Cloud: get some data with your drumsticks
Hey, it worked for McDonald's, didn't it? KFC would certainly prefer that its British customers hang around for long enough to justify a bucket of chicken rather than a Snack Box, so it's teaming up with The Cloud to offer free WiFi in all of its UK restaurants. The gradual rollout will just ask that visitors face a KFC landing page before they wander over to cat videos and ex-partners' status updates. We're glad to have one more avenue for internet access when we're feeling peckish, although we may question our path in life when we're Instagramming a Boneless Banquet For One.
Google announces simplified Zagat ratings, launches new application for Android
Avid Zagat users may or may not tell you that the Google-owned restaurant finder service hasn't exactly been offering the best rating system possible. With the most recent update, however, the hard-working devs from Mountain View are aiming to fix those woes, announcing that it's now "easier than ever" to publish reviews on the platform. The new rating system, as you can see above, will let users in on a more simplified scoring method, with the ability to simply rate as "poor-fair," "good," "very good" or "excellent." Meanwhile, Google also launched a revamped, free-of-charge Zagat app for Android, which brings all the features you love to both handsets and slates. You'll find the fresh application at the Google Play link below.
Groupon launches iPad-based restaurant point-of-sale system
Groupon is primarily known as a company that provides special deals to consumers via a free app, but they've now branched out into the restaurant point-of-sale (POS) system market with a new offering called Breadcrumb. Breadcrumb runs only on the Apple iPad, and client establishments pay US$99 a month to run the service on one iPad or $199 a month for two iPad kiosks. Larger restaurants get a discount, with the cost for five iPads at $299 per month and up to 10 iPads at $399 per month. Clients can either buy their own iPads or purchase iPads through Groupon at cost. Breadcrumb has been tested at about a hundred New York locations, but today the system launches across the US. Items such as cash drawers, receipt printers and the bane of chefs everywhere -- kitchen order printers -- can be added to the system easily. Unlike competing systems, there's no long-term commitment to use the system. The system literally takes only minutes to learn, it's easy to enter menu items and prices into Breadcrumb, and the system can be used by managers to dive into sales, food cost, labor cost information or get reports via email. With Breadcrumb, Groupon is not only going head-to-head with traditional restaurant POS providers such as OpenTable, Aloha and MICROS, but will compete with mobile payment leader Square with a much more restaurant-oriented offering. [via AppleInsider]
Would you check your iPhone at the door of a restaurant for a discount?
Ever have a date look at you sideways because you can't refrain from Instagramming your meal? If you need some persuasion to kick the distracted dining habit, then you may want to visit Eva Restaurant in Los Angeles, California. Owner Mark Gold is running an interesting promotion that'll give you a 5 percent discount on your meal if you check your cell phone at the door. Gold told Airtalk, a radio show on Southern California's 89.3 KPCC, that he did this for his customers. Gold says, "It's about two people sitting together and just connecting, without the distraction of a phone, and we're trying to create an ambience where you come in and really enjoy the experience and the food and the company." Of course, this promotion only works if customers are willing to let go of their handset. Would you drop your iPhone off at the door for a discount or would you rather take other measures to coax you to talk and not tweet on your date? [Via PSFK]
Google+ Local sees reviews from friends, Zagat invade your restaurant hunts (video)
We'd been wondering what Google would do following its acquisition of Zagat, and now we know: it's part of Google+ Local, a boost to Maps, general search, and Google+ itself. Zagat's point system now automatically shows up in search results for restaurants that have been given the extra scrutiny. Those of us who don't trust The Man for reviews will also now see Google+ friends' picks surface at the same time. The addition is considered important enough that Google is even adding a Local tab on Google+ just to show recommendations, so you won't have to abandon your constant updating (you're always posting on Google+, right?) to find a well-rated sushi place. Local should be live soon, if not now, and will make search plus Your World that much more omnipresent.
Daily Update for February 8, 2012
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen.
Polaroid launching new tablet, color screen e-reader at CES?
What's this here, then? A sneaky tipster sent of some shots of what looks to be a new Android tab and a color screen e-reader from the photo-shaking folks at Polaroid. Not a lot to go on here, but, fittingly, the company is pushing the photo-taking capabilities of the slate, pitching it as a "tablet + camera," with what appears to be both front and rear cameras / flashes, the latter of which are prominently displayed on the rear of the device. The speaker also seems to get prominent placement, just above the screen. For the record, we whole-heartedly approve of the app selection on the device. On the reader front, we've got what certainly appears to be a color screen device, apparently suitable for reading the latest George R. R. Martin novels.
Google acquires Zagat: good news for foodies, bad news for Yelp?
Long before Yelp, there was Zagat -- a point-based restaurant rating guide, compiled from the best (or worst, depending) crowdsourced reviews. Today, Google has acquired the brand and plans to integrate Zagat's now expanded shopping, eating, drinking and hotel tips into both search and maps. For gastronomes, travelers and locals, that means crowdsourced tips for superb noms and activity recommendations from around the world. Sounds great, guys, as long as your new found friendship helps us find the best bacon-flavored ice cream cone, we're all for it.
Recco claims to provide hyperlocal restaurant savvy
The New York Times recently profiled a new iOS app named Recco. It's yet another social network app, but this time one built around restaurant recommendations. Rather than a service like Yelp, Recco is attempting to be extremely local, picking up restaurant recommendations not from people in your state or city, but from your actual friends and a few food experts. It's an interesting idea, even if the Times' piece makes the app sound just like any other social network startup. The Times actually mentions that Recco only has 2000 users so far, which is adorably tiny in this day and age. Still, if you have a circle of friends out frequenting new restaurants and ready to let you know which ones are the best, Recco seems like it might be an interesting experiment -- it's a virtual replacement for the kind of standard food chatter around town. Recco launched back at SXSW this year, and it's available for free on the App Store right now.
