Magazine: There is a solution for everything – Smartphone applications for restaurants

Millions own smartphones all over the world and mobile application offer solutions for practically every situation. Simpler ones can be used by restaurants with a small advertising budget too.

TableXchange was developed to capitalise on the market value of table reservations in hip restaurants. The application works in New York and Chicago and can be used to sell or buy table reservations: a reservation’s owner simply has to upload it to TableXchange with a price marked and the person who makes the first bid gets the reservation data, for which he has to pay through the PayPal system. Reservations cost USD 15-75 and the application makes it possible to book tables in popular restaurants in the last minute. Useful applications conquered the wine market too. Cor.kz is a multifunctional programme that only costs USD 4 and provides access to the database of CellarTracker.com, with its 2 million wine reviews and the data of 1.1 million different wines. The system also displays prices from Wine-Searcher.com and the application can be used to scan the barcode of a bottle of wine to acquire consumer information in-store. VintageChart+ is a free application that offers reliable evaluations of wines to iPhone owners. Vino Mobile Wine Vintages does the same for Android mobile owners. Hello Vino and Wine Picks only run on iPhone and both of them were designed to pair wines with different dishes.