The document describes a proposed new system called À La Carte for helping users find restaurants based on their preferences and location. It would allow restaurant owners to publish information and menus, and users to search, view results including reviews and prices, and provide their own reviews. The system would use semantic search and database structure to surface relevant recommendations. It outlines stakeholders, the ecosystem, basic functionality, and potential future extensions and business models.

1. finding the food you want, Colony style
Luís Martinho
June 2010

2. Finding restaurants
The problem
we get easily
. Always eating in the same place bored
. No knowledge about neighboring restaurants
. No knowledge about prices not willing to
spend more than
. No knowledge about restaurant styles
8 eur
. No knowledge about restaurant menus
we love italian

3. Finding restaurants
The current solutions
. Google
. Google maps
. yelp.com
. Other things like:
try searching for food
usdiner.com
instead of restaurant name
restaurants.com
zagat.com
. Traditional restaurant guide books
if you have
plenty of time to kill

4. The fails...

5. not really a
restaurant
good shot!
but a bit
expensive

6. Great! no results...
Coimbra?
yet another
recipe!

7. Great! no results again...
But we forgive you!

8. *
penne all arrabiata in coimbra for 8 euro Search
The new way to discover a place to eat
*

9. À La Carte
Usage
Restaurant
Vs
. Restaurant comparison
Restaurant
. City restaurant tour
. Business intelligence backed clustering
recommendation engine
based on your
. Healthy food recommendations history
. Random restaurant selection
. Restaurant and dish comment
and reviewing system feeling lycky?

10. À La Carte
The stakeholders
The restaurant owner
. Publishes information about his restaurant
. Updates daily menu feed
. Publishes chef's and other recommendations
The end user
. Finds a place to eat
. Reviews the place he visited
. Updates the geographic information for that place

11. À La Carte
The ecosystem
5
1
Restaurant owner 4 The user finds the
publishes information restaurant, the
2 3 food and rates it
or even complements
the info!
The system processes
and publishes the information

12. À La Carte
Basics
Search engine
+
Database
. Semantic based . Lots of restaurant information
. Human proof . Structured
. Just works . Open
Everything else is built on top of these simple concepts

13. À La Carte
The brain
1. The query:
random francesinha in porto
3. Semantic parse
dish : francesinha
location: porto
random : true
4. The results
Restaurants, prices and reviews

14. À La Carte
Where it fits
Plugin Manager
REST Manager
Main Plugin
Web MVC Plugin
Web MVC app plugins

15. À La Carte
Web MVC
Entity
Manager
Template
Engine
Manager
Web MVC Plugin
Web MVC
Utils Plugin

16. À La Carte
Future Extensions
Authentication plugins Geolocation plugins

17. À La Carte
The business model
. Fremium based:
Free basic services and paid premium services
. Free profile creation and menu streaming
. Paid statistics and business intelligence about audience
. Paid booking
. Paid advertising
Contextual
recommendations
The restaurants pay the bill

18. À La Carte
The future
. Social experience
. Legacy system integration
. Loyalty driven system
. Restaurant tops, benchmarking.
More ideas to come !

19. Q&A
“there is no such thing
as a dumb question”
Luís Martinho
lmartinho@hive.pt