Startup's app connects diners, servers - Tribune-Review

MIAMI — Where's our waiter? Patrons won't ever have to ask that again if a South Florida tech startup has its way.

Einar Rosenberg, a 15-year veteran of innovation in near field communications, mobile payment and mobile retail technology, has turned his attention to solving an age-old problem: finding an employee to help you. His startup company, Creating Revolutions, is focusing first on the restaurant industry.

Creating Revolutions, founded in 2013, makes mobile hardware and software that increase employee efficiency and enhance customer engagement. With its first product, Service Pager, a restaurant patron can communicate with his or her waiter in one step. In the past few months, the product was extensively tested at the Miami restaurant City Hall, shown at the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago, and picked up by the world's largest restaurant distributor.

Why hadn't technology solved that problem yet? Rosenberg believed that the right technology needed to be invented, and said it took his team around the world two years to develop it.

The technology needed to be a tool for an employee, not a replacement for the employee like other table-top ordering systems, Rosenberg said. Creating Revolutions' Service Pager lets employees access notifications on basically any device. For instance, if a restaurant patron wants another glass of wine or changes her mind about dessert, she can text it then simply tap her phone to a disc affixed on the table to be securely sent to the waiter. "We made it only one step to initiate for both customer and employee, and intuitive, with a near-zero learning curve," said Rosenberg, founder and CEO. "Only telepathy could be easier."

The son of a small-business owner knew he wanted to make the product affordable. "So the little guy gets the technology at a low monthly cost (about $10 per table per month), and average setup time is less than 30 minutes, with minimal technical knowledge. Every year you renew your subscription, your hardware and software get replaced with the latest and greatest," said Rosenberg, who holds dozens of patents in the areas of mobile payment, security, digital signage, medical, vending, retail and restaurant industries. He was a founding partner and is a board member of Narian Technologies.

The product includes three parts, starting with the company's small Touch & Discover disc that sits on a restaurant table and works on 95 percent of smartphones. It doesn't need to be recharged or plugged in and lasts up to 10 years. The waiter can receive the customer's request through a specially designed watch made by Creating Revolutions or on any number of screens at waiter stations or elsewhere, which instantly shows customer requests and can be translated from more than 15 languages. Customers can receive marketing information and offers from the business while they wait, if the business chooses to do that. Through the employee ID system in the technology, management always knows which waiter received requests and how long it took to be serviced.

Earlier this year, Creating Revolutions, now a team of six, began a six-month pilot at Steven Haas' City Hall restaurant in Miami. Each day, Rosenberg checked in with Haas and the restaurant's staff, received feedback and made changes — many times the very next day, said Haas, who said he was happy to be the first "guinea pig."

Creating Revolutions is going to focus sales efforts first on beach and poolside resorts, sports bars and casual dining restaurants, Chief Marketing Officer Rosemary Staltare said. Casual dining and bar, which includes sports bars, in 2014 was a $431 billion market, more than half the $709 billion American restaurant industry.

The Service Pager is the first of eight services Creating Revolutions plans to release during the next year.