Yelp-affiliated startup tests mobile POS solution for restaurants
Eat 24 -- a service that small restaurants can use to facilitate online ordering from their menus -- is the latest player to eye the mobile POS solution space.
The small San Francisco-based company, which has a strategic partnership with Yelp, is beta-testing something called Yes! POS, which is a cloud-based point-of-sale application. The service is moving into a private beta test; any local restaurant that currently uses the Eat24 online ordering platform can apply for the pilot, according to details released by the startup.
The POS solution will support in-house table management and reservations, phone orders and driver management (there's a GPS geolocation component) and will be configured to handle electronic signatures upon food delivery. The Yes! POS will also integrate, of course, with the Eat24 online ordering service.
"Restaurants are the heart and soul of our business," said Nadav Sharon, co-founder of Eat24, announcing the test. "It's easy for us to send a restaurant 1,000 orders in less than a minute, but how would they manage it? We created Yes! POS to sove that problem (if you consider booming business a problem)."
The reason the company decided to develop its own application is because other mobile POS service providers weren't interested in integrating with its platform, Sharon said.
More than 25,000 local restaurants in more than 1,000 cities are using the Eat24 platform, which helps food establishments take information to the mobile Web. GrubHub is probably the best-known "name" in this space (it includes the Allmenus and Campusfood services).
At least two-thirds of consumers have used their smartphone or tablet computer to place an online order for food, either for delivery or pickup, according to data collected in January by the Interactive Advertising Bureau.
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