The development of information technology is currently increasing rapidly which could influence the mindset and behavior of a company. Due to the development of new technologies adopted in such mobile communication as smartphone application technology, the growth of smartphone users is increasing in term of lifestyle and its role in supporting daily activity. Many businesses took it as the opportunity for them by making and developing smartphone apps for their business since it has great potential to develop, market, differentiate, compete and make them become accessable for the customers.
This research is conducted in order to analyze the impact smartphone apps technology in food ordering. It is expected to become innovation and unique value-added for restaurant business when ordering can be done through smartphone apps particularly for delivery and take-away services. This is meant to analyze what are the opportunity, obstacles, chances, and aspects that an entrepreneur must consider if this typical technology would be applied. This research took place in Bandung, where there are already two smartphone apps that exist for food ordering-foodpanda and pesanaja, and Bandung also has a nickname “food-heaven” where many kind of restaurants and foods that established and available in Bandung.
The type of this research is exploratory qualitative method, because there is not much information known regarding smartphone apps in restaurant business and it conducted to clarify ambiguous situations or discover idea that may be potential business opportunities. Primary data are gathered through interviewing four respondents, the first one Manager of Bebek Garang, the second one Manager of Pecel Lele Lela, Marketing of Pesan Aja and last Mobile Application Developer.. This research is comparative study between two objects of study with the business that has adopted smarphone and the one that has not adopted.
The result shows that the smartphone apps would be adding more value for business, it could help service improvement; faster accessable, reduce error that waiters might make and bcome interactive marketing. And it could also become opportunity for business to sustain and compete by realizing the trend. Nevertheless, there are several aspects that must be considered to apply smartphone apps in the restaurant; those are organizational readiness, customer behavior, and other aspects such as product and service quality.
Keywords: Smartphone Application, restaurant, information technology, innovation, value-added, culinary business