For separate checks, this app’s a snap

Much as your waitstaffers may dislike separate checks, it turns out some restaurant customers may dislike them even more—especially if they’re young and tend to place orders as a group. That’s why two University of Virginia students have come up with Foodio, a free smartphone ordering app that makes check-splitting a breeze for those who pay with plastic.

First, a few disclaimers. The problem Foodio addresses may not exist at your operation. And if you do have this problem, Foodio may not be the best way to address it. We’re talking about an Android app that is still in beta testing; right now, it only works at four restaurants in Charlottesville, VA.

But you have to like the way founders Rory Stolzenberg and Nabil Ahmed think—especially if your restaurant is frequented by college kids and/or twentysomethings who run their whole lives through their smartphones.

Here’s the basic rap from Foodio:

“Food ordering is stuck firmly in the twentieth century. Waiting in line just to place orders. Awkward cash transactions just to order pizza with friends. Foodio's mission is to revolutionize the industry with our innovative smartphone app, with features like credit card splitting, group ordering, and Order Ahead. We aim to make ordering with friends frictionless, and for customers to never have to wait in line again.”

Charlottesville independent newspaper The Hook describes the foodie ordering process this way: “With the Foodio app, everyone just enters their food selection and card number on their own phone, syncs up their order with everyone else (for example, by bumping phones against each other or entering a pass code), and then a single order is made.”

We know what restaurant operators are wondering at this point. Do Foodio orders mean multiple credit card swipes on multiple small orders? No, says Stolzenberg.

“Restaurants pay only one swipe fee no matter how many cards are used,” he tells RH. “Customers pay a small additional fee ($.79) for any extra cards beyond the first one. We (Foodio) process all the transactions, and then remit the money to the restaurants. Besides the credit card splitting fee, customers don’t pay anything; we charge the restaurant a small percentage.”

Interested? You can check it out at www.getfoodio.com.

As we said, this app is still in its early beta phase. We don’t know if it will become a regional or national scale ever scale up to critical mass. But Foodio is working in real-world restaurant situations right now, the company has a juicy target market and its revenue scheme seems realistic. If your restaurant gets slammed with a big lunch rush or late-night surge of hungry smartphone users, you may be hoping Foodio makes it into wide distribution soon.