Slow service. It’s a perennial dining concern. There are few things more discouraging than visiting your favorite restaurant only to find a line as long as the Nile River flowing out the front door.
Wifi Waiter wants to ease the ordering process by offering guests at restaurants and entertainment venues an app-less way to place an order. The service works by repurposing a property’s WiFi login screen into an ordering system. Instead of getting a screen that prompts them to login, guests that access Wifi Waiter get a screen that lets them order from the establishment’s menu, bypassing the lines. Wifi Waiter does not provide free internet access, but it does promise to speed up service.
“The way it works is consumers can place an order from their phones by simply connecting to our WiFi at the property,” said Anup Balagopal, Wifi Waiter co-founder and CEO.
The Tampa Bay-based company launched in 2016 and re-launched earlier this year, after participating in the Alchemist Accelerator program based out of San Francisco in 2018. The company, which has three employees in addition to its two co-founders, has raised $175,000 from investors and processed more than 10,000 orders to date, according to Balagopal.
Shortly after launching the company, Balagopal ran Wifi Waiter through a yearlong pilot program in downtown Tampa. The service is currently available in spots around Tampa Bay, including St. Petersburg’s Green Bench Brewing, Ybor City’s Rock Brothers Brewing and Tampa’s newly opened mixed-use space Sparkman Wharf. Balagopal said WiFi Waiter is also available at a couple spots in California.
For each order placed through the Wifi Waiter, the company charges a transaction fee. The transaction fee ranges from 5% to 15%, which Balagopal said could be absorbed by the venue or passed onto customers.
Wifi Waiter isn’t solving a new problem, Balagopal admitted. It’s solving an old problem in a new way.
“The customer experience problem that we’re targeting, of having to stand in line to place an order, is something that has existed for a long time now, and multiple different technology service providers who have tried to solve this,” he said. However, many other companies try to solve the problem through kiosks, which can be expensive, or mobile apps, which can be inconvenient since customers have to download the app to place an order. Balagopa thinks Wifi Waiter’s simple set up gives it a competitive edge.
Balagopal said the company’s pilots have shown that Wifi Waiter’s best fit is in the hospitality space, such as food halls, stadiums and airports. The company is now looking to partner with venues in larger urban areas such as Chicago, New York and Los Angeles.
