Estonia, Good for Business, Markets and Companies, Technology, Telecomunications

International Internet Magazine. Baltic States news & analytics Saturday, 13.12.2025, 22:49

Estonian Mobile waiter Ordimo looking for innovative restaurants

Juhan Tere, BC, Tallinn, 17.02.2011.Print version
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, LETA/The Test Market reports.

The entrepreneurs behind the Ordimo want to offer a new concept of saving time on considering the menu, ordering and paying receipt at canteens by means of performing all the above-mentioned operations via a laptop or up-to-date cell phone. It is a kind of mobile waiters' service where a client simply browses the list of dishes or drinks available on the list in a particular cafe or a restaurant, chooses some items according to his or her appetite or liking, orders meals, later sends a request for the receipt to the cashier's desk and transfers money – everything is done personally via a smartphone or a portative computer.

 

Using the barcode reader, a person loads the menu information to the phone and goes 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.

 

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's development was assisted by the well-known start-upper Jüri Kaljundi. According to Sarv, Ordino is in a busy development phase.

 

He is also looking for some more forward-thinking restaurant or bar where the system could be piloted.

 

"I would like to test out the system in some outdoor cafe 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.

 

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 point out at the little sense of the innovation as people come to restaurants partly because they want attractive, polite, human service.

 

Sarv is thinking up new add-ons for Ordimo: to use it for booking tables or ordering food ahead of time.






Search site