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Sam Brin, the 26-year old younger brother of the legendary co-founder of Google, in a classic case of déjà vu, has spent the last few months working around the clock with college pal Jon Li to create a startup, which they hope will still leave some space for big brother’s slightly larger search engine.
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/ By Gali Raz /
Having a brother as phenomenally successful as Sam Brin has can be often a reason not to try to emulate him, or on the other hand to try too hard and not succeed. It appears that Sam has settled for some middle ground, at least for his first venture into the world of Internet marketing.
The venture that goes by the title of “Butter Systems” is the format for a digital restaurant application, which will see an end to printed menus and instead see the arrival of rapidly updatable menus not placed in plastic covers but on a tablet.
Sam and Jon’s company, Butter Systems tablets is planned to allow restaurant customers not only to order food and drinks at their favorite restaurant but also to request their check without the need to bother their waiter or waitress. Brin and Li were quick to point out that the thinking behind Butter System’s tablet is not in any way to bring forward the end of the waitress system, but instead to make to make their lives easier. In addition the younger Brin expects that restaurant who adopts their system will feel the effects on their profitability, making the whole procedure of dining out a much more user-friendly experience.
According to Sam Brin, “We want to help the restaurants who use our product to increase their sales through making it easier to order more, whilst maintaining the important human touch.”
Butter Systems were involved in a step by step process which envisaged that as soon as a customer is seated, an Android tablet will immediately be brought to their table. Once it arrives, the restaurant customer is then free to order from the waitress or waiter as they normally would or if they know what they want and would like to speak of the process, and then they can place their order through the tablet, which contains an integral and fully customizable digital menu system.
To prevent any tinkering, the system is operated using a locked-down, Menu-only mode that makes it difficult if not impossible to crack. Butter System’s plan is to provide the tablets to each of your clients, prepared and ready to take orders out of the box.
Once the customer has finished their meal all we need to do to do is press, the prominently displayed “Check Please!” button which will alert the waiter or waitress who will arrive at the table with the bill. For the time being Butter Systems have not introduced the system for paying the bill directly through their application, not because they lack the technical abilities, but more a decision to maintain the familiar human aspects of going to a restaurant to enjoy a meal.
Restaurant owners who adopt the system will be readily able to adjust and update their through a web interface, tweaking prices and adding/removing items or promotions, even on a day-to-day basis.
Anyone interested in how they look at what Butter’s menu looks like, or even a Brin brother would be pleased to know that the system is in the last stages of its testing at the Bumble restaurant in Los Altos, California. A restaurant that Sergey backed as part of his Los Altos project. If all continues to go as smooth as Butter hopes, plans are well under way to expand the service to a number of West Coast locations in the immediate future.
