Product Plan Components: Virtuwaitress

Problem Statements:

1. Waiting for your bill in a restaurant is frustrating when you're ready to check out so you can leave.

2. Customers sometimes get frustrated when they don't know that the restaurant has something on special or that something is sold out.

3. Customers frequently want to know 'more' about items on menus or 'popular' items on menu which increases table turn time.

4. Restaurants have a hard time gathering all of their social media accolades or customer feedback from multiple sources.

5. Sometimes you wish you could signal to the server that you need their assistance similar to a flight attendant call button.

Market Research:

• While in Vegas I was at MoZen restaurant where they presented the wine list on an iPad.

• While at Chili's in Vegas I saw a payment system at a table on a tablet.

• While in New York I was at a restaurant where they presented the wine list on an iPad.

Competition:

• POS processors include SQUARE, TALECH, PayAnywhere which are not intended to be used as a customer facing tool, they are primarily aimed towards interaction between a user that is an employee of the establishment.

Differentiation:

• I have not yet seen a system that does both menu and payment at the same time.

• I have not seen an interactive digital menu that can sort into categories such as 'vegan', 'gluten-free' and 'vegetarian'.

• Being able to update the database in real time when items are 'sold out' means less frustration for a customer who had previously picked something without knowing it was not available which means a longer wait while they decide on an alternative.

• Being able to have customers rank the restaurant experience as well as the dish means more feedback for the restaurant in terms of being able to recommend 'best sellers' as well as influence menu decisions or inventory ordering.

• Being able to see social media feeds is not something I have seen integrated into a tableside tablet system yet.

• I have not seen a system that has been able to split the check in various ways at the table and not an employee.

User Personas:

• The ideal customer is a small restaurant that has multiple concerns that could include any combination of the following:

1. Initial investment in printing costs of menus
2. Ever-changing menu items that possibly revolve around seasonality.
3. Concerns around keeping customers informed about items that are no longer available.
4. Want to track sales of items for use in inventory supply ordering and replenishment.
5. Want to have a greater social media exposure.
6. Want to solicit customer feedback with a greater likelihood of response.
7. Are concerned about table turn times to get more customers into the restaurant.
8. Are concerned about rising labor costs and need to find more efficient ways for their servers to handle more work.
9. Restaurants with extensive wine lists which are multiple pages that start carrying a new wine or discontinue an old wine and have to re-print or update the restaurants wine lists.
10. Want customers to know which dishes are recommended by previous diners.

Integration Choices

• Node with Express
• Front-end Framework: Ember
• Majority language: Javascript
• Database: PostgreSQL
• Payment Processing: (Stripe)

Advanced Feature Choices

• Secure Socket Layer (SSL)
• Live Events (TBD)

Trello Board Link

• https://trello.com/b/r3Hjkpvf/capstone