Youth create ‘software’ digital menus (and the Pizza Hut already … – Reuters

             Engineers say the tool created to help restaurants “do more and better.” The SIMI has sold 200 licenses and now closed a deal with Pizza Hut. Internationalization is an objective
 
           

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It’s called SIMI and is a project created by a group of youths in April 2013 counted on few ingredients: a small office (“a cubicle”), some computers and a very specific idea – create a “software” digital menus that conquered the world of restoration. This week closed a deal with Pizza Hut, which is replaced by digital menus project in five outlets across the country and plans to expand this network to 24 spaces to the end of the year.

Miguel Pinto and John Machado abandoned in 2011 “stable job” to grab “some business ideas” that had up his sleeve – and to ensure the success of this passage decided “not to bet all the chips in the same game.” The SIMI project – one of three that are part of the parent company chamadaBluwalk that integrates Bus Events (which rents vehicles for brand activation) and LeanHub (a tool for organization and collaboration of teams still in the embryonic stage) – was the answer a market opportunity. “We tried that problems existed and needed a solution out there and saw that there were some products of digital menus but that in Portugal there was absolutely nothing,” said the P3 Miguel Pinto, who with John Machado, Pedro Paixao, James Amaral, Sérgio Vasconcelos and André Oliveira makes up the current team of SIMI.

The aim of the project created by young engineers between 24 and 30 years is to make the restaurants “do more and better,” via a “software” that provides “a lot of features,” how to see menus with appealing images and descriptions of food, access to suggestions of combinations (food with wine x y), ordering, call or ask the employee account with billing information.

Since it was officially launched in December 2013, the SIMI sold 200 licenses “tablets” and have already been introduced into the system 14 000 different products, with a monthly average of 67 000 applications for customers of restaurants that have SIMI made through the platform.

“Backoffice” configurable

The client licenses purchased over the former students of the Faculty of Engineering of Porto University is, for now, the pizzeria Luzzo in Lisbon, who chose to remove any menus on paper and has 90 tablets in the restaurant. In Viana do Castelo, a chain restaurant La Bomba has 22-inch tablets embedded in the wall. For each client, there may be a custom solution: “There are restaurants who just want to experience the ‘tablet’ but do not buy the possibility of making requests or asking for account, for example,” explains Pedro Paixão, computer engineer, adding that the price is regardless of these variables of 12 euros per month for “tablet.”

With a completely configurable, “backoffice” SIMI allows the restaurant to the “upload” of any image (and how “people eat too eyes “, Miguel considers this a” great competitive advantage “) and write any description (” convince people to venture into new flavors or by deciphering pompous names can be easier. “)