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Picture this. You’re in a crowded bus station or subway waiting for that final commute home after a long workday. You’re standing there, antsy pants, with 10 minutes to spare. Chances are you’re burning the time on your mobile device –be it Facebook stalking or Words with Friends’ing.

Well what if you could turn that downtime into productive time. Say, using your phone to grocery shop, right there on the subway station walls. Sound bananas? Well in South Korea, it’s happening.

Over the past five months, Tesco, a British grocery chain, has been opening virtual grocery stores in subway stations and bus stops in Seoul. Commuters use their smartphones to scan and purchase these virtual items, which are then delivered to their homes.

Here’s how it works: The subway station walls look just like the shelves of a typical grocery store – only the items are just photographs and each is tagged with a QR Code. Shoppers launch an app and scan the QR Codes of the items they’d like to purchase. Money is automatically deducted from their bank account, and then voilà – the goods meet you at your doorstep!

According to a Tesco promotional video, during a campaign over 10,000 users used the virtual grocery shop. New registered members rose by 76% and online sales increased by 130%.  Now that’s a whole lot of Chobani and Cheerios!

What a magical way for retailers to turn down time into shopping time. Some may say it’s mobile ordering at its fancy finest. What do you think? Is this just one more way our phones will become our wallets and personal assistants? Would you use a virtual grocery store? Turn your downtime into comment-time and share your thoughts here!

This past weekend, Stan, one of our founders, married his long-time love Stephanie in a beautiful ceremony at Cleveland’s Historic Court House! By his side at the altar were his best men and fellow ONOSYS co-founders, Alex and Oleg. The guys, always representing ONOSYS in style wherever they go, each wore these custom made kippahs – a gift from Stephanie the morning of the wedding! Now that’s some sweet ONOSYS wedding-swag and we couldn’t help but share a picture here on our blog!

Congrats Stan and Stephanie! Mazel Tov!

It’s the start of the New Year, so if you’re like everyone else, you’ve probably dusted off the old tennis shoes and have resolved, once and for all, to get fit. You’ve traded in your breakfast bagel for a banana and that afternoon soda fix for a trip to the water cooler. Phrases like “low-carb,” “low-calorie” and “this sucks” have become your best friends.

And while you may think this requires a painful breakup from your favorite restaurant while you attempt a slim-down, think again. Many chains have made food-related resolutions too, with the health conscious consumer in mind.  Restaurants are kicking off 2012 with new low-calorie menu options and unique promotions, catering to customers hoping to wittle their middle and combat the fat.

• The “Under 550 Calories” dishes at Applebee’s feature full-size meals that “don’t sacrifice flavor” and allow guests to “eat what they want, when they want.” A custom icon highlights each low-calorie dish on the menu, and is also used when viewing the menu and ordering Applebee’s online– making it easy to eat right on the go.

• Corner Bakery Cafe introduced a Facebook campaign in support of their “100 under 600” menu inviting fans to commit to a healthier lifestyle by pledging to “Turn the Corner” in 2012.

• The Cheesecake Factory is holding Twitter contests to support its popular SkinnyLicious Menu

• Fazoli’s is giving away a free 500-calorie-or-less entrée to any customer who brings a workout DVD into the restaurant. And you thought there was no such thing as a free lunch!

It’s no surprise that savvy restaurant marketers are after dieters to promote healthy food items in new ways.  After all, there’s no better time than the New Year. So what are some unique ways you’ve marketed your restaurant’s low-calorie options? What’s your go-to restaurant for a healthy meal? Feel free to share your (calorie-free) food for thought here.

It’s been quite a year at ONOSYS! If we claimed to be blushing orange, that would be creepy and facetious. But thanks to you, our fantastic partners and friends, we’re proud to share what we accomplished with your help in 2011:

• ONOSYS now serves up online ordering for more than 75 restaurant chains such as Panera Bread, Applebee’s, Honey Baked Ham, Papa Murphy’s, CiCi’s Pizza, and Schlotzsky’s.

• More than 2.5 million users across all brands used the ONOSYS platform to process more than $100 million in to-go orders for nearly 4,000 restaurant locations.

• ONOSYS 4.0 goes live! Our system is more flexible and scalable than ever before, and boy does it love mobile. We’ve also doubled our hosting infrastructure to accommodate the rapid growth.

• In July, we announced our first Spark Award Winners, which honored 14 clients that achieved monthly online sales milestones ranging from $100,000 to $1 million.

• September saw the launch of our full-featured Facebook application, which allows customers to place food orders through restaurants’ Facebook pages.

• We hosted the first ONOSYS User Conference (ONO-CON) in our hometown of Cleveland, Ohio where we shared best practices in online ordering and witnessed Ryan Nowlin from Corner Bakery Café wearing a bright orange suit!

• Also this year, we doubled our staff, were named a Weatherhead 100 Upstart, a recognition given to the fastest growing companies in Northeast Ohio, and dubbed a Northcoast 99 winner, which honors the best places to work in the region.

OK, enough said about last year. We’re focused on 2012 and the new features we’re adding to the ONOSYS platform. We’re excited to show you what’s coming next, and we look forward to unveiling those changes as the year unfolds. In the meantime, here’s to another prosperous, healthy and happy New Year!

While food may be plentiful within the restaurant industry, we know that there are less fortunate members of our community that struggle to find a hot meal and the nutrients they need to live a sustaining life. That’s why we decided to volunteer at the Cleveland Foodbank this holiday season. The Cleveland Foodbank distributes more than 100,000 pounds of food per day between Thanksgiving and Christmas and will serve 30 million meals this year! Because of this, ONOSYS team members jumped at the opportunity to help sort and organize donated food that will be distributed throughout the entire region to feed the hungry. We’re proud to support the great work of the Cleveland Foodbank and look forward to growing our ONOSYS Outreach program in 2012!

Check out more photos from our outreach on the ONOSYS Facebook Page!

We sages at ONOSYS want to be the first to dub 2012 the year social media gets serious about business. Specifically, Twitter, Google + and Facebook are hyping new business sites created solely for promoting your restaurant concept—outside of their traditional “share anything and everything” social media platforms.

Good news, right? Lame-free and fee-free outlets designed more for moving dollars than users’ wandering thoughts. But are you ready to take advantage of this change? If you’re using social media successfully, a recent PC World article says there’s a lot to like in these sites if you choose wisely.

“The usefulness of each service depends on your company’s needs,” the article said, “but to help you prioritize your efforts, here’s what each has social network has to offer companies looking to engage with the public.” Here are but a few:

• Twitter: Landing pages are graphically robust, include large headers for better branding and space for embedded videos.
• Facebook: Companies can deploy custom-designed apps, contests and promotions, as well as true e-commerce functionality.
• Google +: Optimized for businesses at the outset, its company pages are simple to create and manage. You can also link your Google Place page to your Plus page for greater visibility. How awesome is that?

Which social media application have you found most useful for your restaurant brand and why? And given the heated competition between these three, which do you believe will win out next year? Share your take here on our blog, or better yet, the ONOSYS Facebook page. We guarantee it, too, are lame free and fee-free.

Convinced daily deals like LivingSocial and Groupon drain more cash than they pour in? Certain that you’re uncertain they generate any measurable customer loyalty at all?

Researchers at Cornell University’s Center for Hospitality Research had heard as much but doubted the veracity of all the spleen venting over such discounting. So it conducted a survey to find whether the daily deal yield was as poor as many restaurateurs claimed, and they found some interesting results.

Long story short is they’re good over the short and long terms. Despite temporarily jacked up food and labor costs, the invasion of coupon vultures and the sinking feeling that discounting damages a brand, the research showed daily deals actually net a positive extended impact from brand and product exposure to new audiences. Ticket averages showed most deal seekers spend as much as they would have without the deal, and regular patrons spend well above the actual deal’s value.

But perhaps most importantly, the research showed daily deals done well generated positive word of mouth, the best advertising of all—the real squeal in the daily deal. Users who were satisfied with their experience, “regardless of their previous customer status … would likely spread the word to others,” the report said.

ONOSYS client East Side Mario’s issued a daily deal earlier this year for online orders only at four restaurants throughout London, Ontario. Not only did they set the selling record for that market with 2,600 purchased within 48 hours, East Side Mario’s has seen fifty percent redeemed within the first three months and consider it a huge win in terms of brand and product awareness.

Have you offered a daily deal in your restaurant? If so, how well did it work? Would you do it again or not?  Feel free to share the real deal here on our blog.

Here’s a bright spot in a somewhat gloomy economy: Research group Forrester reported that Q3 2011 e-commerce sales rose 13 percent to $36 billion—the eighth consecutive quarter of year-over-year sales growth in the industry. Forrester also predicts 2011 e-commerce holiday sales will rise 15 percent to $60 billion. Such news is a nice early present for e-tailers!

While economists still claim consumers aren’t disposing of much of their disposable income, it’s clear that when they do pry some pennies from their paws they’re increasingly doing so over the web—and less so at stores. This SocialVibe survey forecasts the number of consumers shopping in stores and online Black Friday will rise from 52% to 70%, and that 61% of consumers plan to shop on Cyber Monday—slacking when they should be working! But as long as they’re buying meals from you online, we’ll forgive ‘em, right?

So what is your plan to attract the hurried, hungry masses bashing around Black Friday sales? Similarly for Cyber Monday: The tryptophan may be out of their systems, but many will still be too sluggish to make a lunch or go out to eat. So what will you do to make eating easy for them?

If you’ve got an online ordering system, a well-managed database and a sound social media program, offering a convenient meal deal electronically is simple. Sure, they’ll search newspapers for store sales, but you can market to them through email and ads by mobile phone or iPad all day while they’re waiting in store lines.

Surveys say, “tis the season for online ordering!”

Who remembers the Hamburglar? That fictional McDonald’s character determined to get his hands on a tasty meal through less-than-legal methods.  Though that hamburger thieving bandit has long since retired, restaurants still have to keep an eye out for his real life successors.

These characters aren’t boisterously dressed in a cape and tie but their tactics include various forms of fraud to attempt to get their own free dinner.

Here at ONOSYS it’s our priority to defend you from this type of internet fraud. Therefore, we want to share some best practices that will increase your restaurant’s protection and ensure loss prevention.

For restaurants receiving fax orders, occasionally you may receive one that seems strange. No, we did not just revamp our entire order layout, – someone may be trying to pull a fast one on you. Luckily, this tends to be easy to spot and here is how:

• Make sure all employees know what an online order should look like! Most fake orders are obvious if you know what to compare it to because they have too little or too much information.

• When in doubt, ask! If something seems fishy, feel free to give us a call to verify. Our support number is always listed on the bottom of the faxed order but it’s helpful to have it posted in a visible spot in your restaurant as well. This will help ensure the numbers are consistent.

According to ScamBusters credit card fraud has become a problem for many internet merchants, some crooks even creating fictitious credit card numbers based on the same algorithms that produce the authentic numbers. So what can you do?

• Take extra steps to validate each order. ONOSYS ensures all addresses have been verified before orders can be placed, as well as requiring the card security code, but, it is up to restaurant locations to get their hands on the card and make sure it exists.
• Be more wary of orders that are larger than your typical order amount and if you want to ease any suspicions, pick up the phone and contact the customer to confirm.

As you can see, communication is one of the key components, and things are not as easy as chasing these Hamburglars off on your new shiny bike.  Stay protected and if you have questions on how to keep those food bandits at bay, we are always happy to help!

Featured Team Post by Monica Woller, ONOSYS Account Manager

Some love sharing, while others don’t. The kid in the lunchroom who gave you his chocolate cake because you had prunes—that’s a sharer! The other kid with cake and a clear awareness of your choco-lust who just sneered … well, maybe she was just hungry that day. Let’s not judge.

In digital marketing, however, sharing is more objectively researched. A recent survey of 1,500 consumers by MBooth shows those who use websites and social media to buy products (dubbed “social consumers”) and then share opinions about them, influence other others’ purchasing decisions. Some crucial info from the survey:

• Social consumers are divided into two types: High Sharers and Low Sharers.
• High Sharers are 3 times likelier than Low Sharers to recommend products.
• High Sharers commonly recommend “low involvement” products requiring little research for a buying decision.
• When you market to High Sharers through social media channels, you can influence them positively, i.e. to act on your behalf.

Restaurant food is a low involvement product because consumers either like a brand or not, and they commonly buy on impulse or habit. That makes MBooth’s conclusion positive for restaurants: Finding High Sharers—who prefer and recommend your products—and engaging them with sharable content, will set in motion “a virtuous cycle of recommendation, loyalty and purchase.”

Online ordering maximizes opportunities to sell to High Sharers. Your database tells you who’s buying, and your social media channels tell you who your friends are. Want to merge the two effectively? We’ve got a few ideas, and we’d be happy to share.