I seem to come up with ideas left and right and I think it would only be fair to put them out there for the community to mull over and possibly implement. I am opening these up to anything you would like to do with them. You owe me nothing (although if you’d like me involved I’d be more than happy to help) if you use them and I wish you the best of luck — in fact, if you roll it out, I’ll probably review and write about them on one of the many blogs I currently write for. So please, this new category on my blog will be for simply putting the information out there and starting a conversation.
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Text 2 Drink - You want that drink and you want it now.
So, during a late night drinking trip at National Mechanics with Bart (and later had Alex’s input as well), I came up with this interesting concept. There have been similar tries with regards to SMS based advertising and coupons but this takes a little bit different approach.
The idea is that bars would get a system installed. This would be a small computer (think Eee PC) and a receipt printer. When someone sits down at a table, the waiter (or waitress) would take a credit card to open a tab, would then click a button on the computer and it would print a slip with instructions and a generated serial number. The table would get this slip and the waiter would be off to the next table.
Whenever a drink was needed by the table, anyone there could simply send a text message to 37465 (DRINK) with their special ID and the type of drink they desire. This information would pop up on the special computer behind the bar, the bartender would see it, make the drink, set it up for the waiter with information about which table it goes to. This not only saves time but also allows the waiter to reduce the number of trips to each table and allows the drinker to get their next beverage that much faster.
On top of this idea could be built in a sponsorship mode. Instead of drinkers being able to order any drink, they send a text to 37465 with their special ID only and the “drink of the night” is brought to them. Think of Coors, Bud, Philadelphia Brewing Company or any others sponsoring their beer of the night. The bar gets a discount on beers and the drinkers get the savings passed on.
This service could be setup for trial with simply an iPhone at the bar and system setup with TextMarks and a simply API being built. So go ahead, what do you think? Doable or not? If so, do it.
