I was checking out Gomobo.com to see how things were getting on with them when I found a story via the Wall Street Journal about unattractively ‘does-what-it-says-on-the-tin’ named SoftwareForRestaurants.
Turns out they’re a UK establishment offering restaurants, amongst other things, the ability to receive orders by SMS. Their site appears to have the online equivalent of a charisma bypass. I hit their frontpage looking for the mobile ordering system details and found nothing. Nothing. I had to click about and peer closely to read the stupid small text and finally found the right page.
I will save you the heartache and agony and give you the facts. They offer a system that enables people to text their order to the restaurant. The restaurant pays nothing up front — just 21p per successful order received by text. Sound’s promising.
But geez the marketing is terrible. I couldn’t be bothered to read the text on the site! I soldiered on. I dug a little deeper and, really, I just — I can’t quite be arsed to pull apart their text to give you the salient facts.
Ok I’m gonna knuckle down. Here goes.
In order to use the mobile ordering, you first have to login and register on the Restaurant’s site (which has to be using the SoftwareForRestaurants system). Once you’ve done that, you can set the system up with keywords which you can then issue from your mobile to order your meals for delivery.
It looks like it’s a pretty comprehensive system — integrating into the back end restaurant operations. But the frontend stuff really needs a complete makeover if it’s to get anywhere near the level of simplicity and ease of use that makes the likes of Gomobo.com so successful with the consumer. I couldn’t, for example, see Pizza Hut UK integrating a SoftwareForRestaurants solution into every one of their takeaway outlets — it looks far too complex. But I could easily see them deploying some sort of Gomobo style solution.
Noah & team at Gomobo: please please please please sort out something with Pizza Hut here in the UK. Even if it’s just online ordering!