Made-to-order iPods are music to diners' ears - Times of India

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KOCHI: The waiter comes, smiles, greets you, pulls out a notepad.., sorry, iPod and takes your order. The customers are invariably impressed - now, this joint, they smack their lips in anticipation, is no pea in the pod. In a growing trend, various restaurants in Kerala are customising iPods with appropriate software to send orders to the kitchen as well as the billing counter as soon as the waiter types it in.

"It has made the whole process of taking orders, getting it to the chefs and billing quite fast and easy," says Ranjith Menon, manager at Noushad Big Chef, Kochi. The 30 tables in the restaurant are covered by four iPods. "The idea originated from the management side. The software we use was developed specially for us an IT professional," Menon reveals.

The customers too are lapping up the innovation. "The food is always on time here and I've never had any other issues regarding time in this hotel. The system they use has made service here better than any other hotel I go to. At other places, they say they'll take just five minutes, but they actually take around half an hour," gushes Lakshmi Harindran, a frequent visitor at Big Chef.

Moti Mahal in Thrissur too uses iPods to take orders. For Motilal Narayanan, the proprietor, the struck him when he saw a similar software being used in a restaurant in London. 'The software used here is called open core wireless billing system. It was developed in Bangalore.'

He has invested Rs 1.5 lakh for two iPods and the software, which according to him is profitable. "It helps in quick service, saves a lot of time, both for the customers and for us, is very accurate and also makes account tallying easy," he says. These iPods also come with net access, which lets the owners keep a tab of what is happening in the restaurant even when they are not there. "Every half hour I get an SMS showing a summary of the orders. In the case of home deliveries, the software activates Google Maps and shows the exact location and roads to take when an address is typed in," Motilal explains.