The Garage48 start-up project-building competition in Helsinki gave birth to an inventive mobile application called Ordimo that potentially makes service in cafes and restaurants a more pleasant, smoother experience.

Imagine you go to a larger dining establishment during the lunch rush and manage to find a table. It turns out you wait ten minutes before someone brings a menu. Or if the menu is already on the table and you have made your pick, you have to wait 20 minutes before someone comes to take your order. All of the waiters are buzzing around and it seems that everyone else is being served but you.

So be it. When the food is finally brought to the table and you have finished your meal, you might want to order a cup of coffee or a bit of dessert. Once again the server is busy doing something else.

You get ready to leave. You want the check. But again, where is the waiter – never where you want him to be. Once again attending to another table. You wait. The waiter appears. You ask for the check. He goes away. More waiting. The check finally comes. Again the waiter leaves. You lay the money on the table and wait. The waiter re-emerges, takes the money and heads off in the direction of the cash register. More waiting. Finally he comes back with the receipt and change. But all this took so long and so much awkward waiting. Ordimo wants to ease this, even if a little bit.

Hatching the ida for 18 months

The man behind the concept, freelance software architect Jaak Sarv says he has been hatching the idea for 18 months, gauging interest in such an innovation. “No doubt it seems like a completely alien concept in the beginning. Ordering by cell phone? People want to interact with wait staff, especially if they’re an affable type. But this can be only so if the are available and are not busy with other customers,“ says Sarv, who is related to legendary Estonian digital guru Henn Sarv.

Ordimo, which well-known start-upper Jüri Kaljundi helped develop, basically gives diners self-service if they are equipped with a smartphone or computer. Using the telephone’s barcode reader, you load the menu information to the phone and go through the selections on the screen. The information is sent to the establishment’s cash register where the orders from various tables can be seen. After the meal, the check can be paid by m-payment in the same environment.

Now, a couple weeks after the Helsinki Garage48 event, Sarv says Ordino is in a busy development phase. He’s also looking for some more forward-thinking restaurant or bar where the system could be piloted. He has a few candidates in mind but if there are any more, let Jaak know!

He likes to try it out in a cafe

 “I would like to test out the system in some outdoor café in the Tallinn Old Town come summer,“ says Sarv. Various barcode solutions are expected to have a great 2011 worldwide. Ordimo is latching on to the trend with all ten fingers.

The company’s income from the app should amount to a small cut of total sales, says Sarv. But before that, restaurateurs have to be convinced that they really need Ordimo. Various pro and con arguments have been voiced – some have said Ordimo could work for customers who want the menu du jour during the lunch rush for instance; while others say it’s pointless as people come to restaurants partly because they want attractive, polite, human service.

But Sarv is thinking up new add-ons for Ordimo: why not use it to book tables or order food ahead of time?

Ordimo seems to have that certain something, even though the first impression may leave one sceptical. Do all interactive workflow-related problems necessarily have to be solved with online apps?