New iPad App for Food and Beverage Professionals Takes Menus from Paper to Fully Digital in Less than an Hour

Uptown Network released F&B Easy Menu, an iPad app that empowers food and beverage professionals to easily transform paper menus to fully digital and then update them across the business in real time. F&B Easy Menu is available now on the App Store, with a 21-day free trial and a $10 a month per iPad fee once live.

F&B Easy Menu provides an effective, affordable solution for digitally transforming menus.  It’s easy to implement and operate for F&B professionals, enabling hospitality brands of all sizes to improve their guest experiences with  iPad menus and reduce paper consumption.

Hospitality brands have rightfully been focusing tremendous attention on sustainability and technology—everything from eliminating plastic straws to engaging the guest experience.  However, an effective solution for eliminating paper menus hasn’t been available outside of enterprise IT solutions, limiting its benefits for restaurants and the environment.

Now, brands of any size can use and benefit from F&B Easy Menu. Larger enterprises can use a combination of Uptown Network’s enterprise solution and F&B Easy Menu.

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F&B Easy Menu is the culmination of almost five years of R&D and collaboration with hospitality industry leaders.  Highlights of the app include:

• Transformation of any paper menu into an iPad interactive menu in about an hour. No coding or software skills are required. As F&B professionals check boxes and upload images, all of their iPad menus change in real time.
• The menu integrates with the restaurant’s web site in real time, so if an item is 86’d it disappears from the restaurant’s web site also.
• An iPhone app is available to 86 items in about 15 seconds, with F&B Easy Menu redrawing the menu on all the iPads and web sites in real time.
• More than 100,000 curated, cloud-based beverage tasting notes on wines, microbrews, waters, cordials, tequilas, cognacs and other items allow for rapid creation of beverage books, with the check of a box.
• The resulting menus actually look like menus, not apps. Guests can use the iPad just like they would a paper menu (without the need for reading glasses or penlights) or choose to use it interactively.
• Menus can easily be translated into any language.

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Other benefits of F&B Easy Menu include staff empowerment, increased revenue, a social media boost, and improved restaurant operations.

Restaurants that use F&B Easy Menu benefit from an integrated sustainability approach that eliminates paper menus that otherwise end up in our landfills and oceans. With an estimated 3 million restaurants in the world—some with 10 menus and some with 200 – it’s estimated that F&B Easy Menu could eliminate 150 million paper menus by using iPads to help our environment (based on an average of 50 menus/restaurant).

An advanced capability that integrates iPad menus live with the restaurant’s web site and viral sharing on smartphones is in open beta testing and is currently being offered for free.

iOS on the tablet, messaging for any smartphone

“We really believe that iOS and iPad give us the best environment to deliver tablet menus to the hospitality industry,” said Jack Serfass, CEO and co-founder of Uptown Network.  “We couldn’t be the company that we are without our Apple Business Solution Partner relationship.  Their support and superior device experiences bring hospitality brands to life. Using messaging technology allows menus to be shared across any smartphone. We are also already engaged in what iOS is ‘bringing to the table’ with augmented reality for F&B.”

Imagine dynamic F&B menus going viral

An example of messaging a menu can be found here.  Click the share button to share with friends. Simply type in a smartphone number and message any food or beverage menu to anyone in the world.  Recipients can message the dynamic menu, once received, to any of their friends or post the link on social media.  Paper menus that once were locked in the confines of a restaurant are now global, and viral.

Changes are effortless

With a click of a button, new items can be added or deleted.  Menu designs can be changed on the fly and colors, fonts and specials can be modified.  Menus can look different for different parts of a venue.  For example, menus in a lounge can look different than menus in the dining room.

Revolutionizing retail

While the launch of F&B Easy Menu is focused on hospitality and restaurants, any retail operation can customize it for their purposes.  This includes spas, clothing stores, auto supply shops, and repair services.

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