Last week we gave ...
Foursquare Confirms Restaurant Dashboard Alpha Testing
In a new article in trade magazine Nation’s Restaurant News, Foursquare’s Tristan Walker (at right, who is making business development waves with deals with Zagat, Bravo and others) reveals a few very interesting tidbits about how Foursquare is working to cater to restaurant owners (excuse the pun).
Restaurant Analytics Dashboard Testing
The most revealing statement is a confirmation that 30 hand-picked restaurants are alpha-testing, “an analytics dashboard for Foursquare, where [restaurant] owners can pay to create custom offers and badges.” Walker goes on to say, “All of them [restaurant owners] care about two things: retention and acquisition. We help with acquisition by letting you see who comes in where, when, and where they go before and after they stop in.”
How Foursquare looks at Restaurant Chains
Another interesting part of the article is about how Foursquare looks at restaurant chains. When the report asks Walker, “Does this give independents a leg up on chain competitors?”, Walker answers:
“It all comes down to how you use the platform. It’s not meant to be just another tool for ad distribution. If all our venue owners crush it…it allows them to have a voice comparable to a chain with a big advertising budget. Some venues treat it as an extension of couponing, and it can be, but Tasti D-Lite is doing it at the POS system and they’re running their business in a compelling way. Even if national chains want to do this, all parties will benefit, and it won’t come at the expense of anybody else.”
Future plans
Walker goes on to list a number of other very interesting thoughts on how Foursquare plans to go after the restaurant sector, including saying, “Right now, restaurants don’t pay anything. In the future we’ll find a product we can charge for,” and, “if I’m a frozen-yogurt place, and most people coming to my location come from a certain gym down the street, there’s an effective opportunity to cross-promote.”
Obviously, with the Zagat partnership and emerging food-oriented location apps such as Foodspotting gaining popularity (not to mention Yelp and OpenTable which have huge mindshare in the restaurant industry), Foursquare is very keen to attack this market, and they seem to have big plans to do so.
Discussion - 10 Comments/Pingbacks RSS feed for comments on this post
-
Location Based Mobile Apps – Why “Where Are You Doing It?” Trumps “What Are You Doing?” « Verge New Media
[...] testing analytics dashboard for restaurants. Details appeared in The Next Web after surfacing in restaurant trade publication Nation’s Restaurant News. Next Web US [...]
-
Foursquare Checks Out Of The iTunes App Store
[...] However, its disappearance couldn’t come at a worse time for Foursquare, which has just announced its new Restaurant Dashboard trial. [...]
-
Location Based Mobile Apps – Why “Where Are You Doing It?” Trumps “What Are You Doing?” | b-roll.net
[...] testing analytics dashboard for restaurants. Details appeared in The Next Web after surfacing in restaurant trade publication Nation’s Restaurant News. Next Web US [...]
-
Foursquare Checks Out Of The iTunes App Store | Yooxe
[...] The app’s disappearance couldn’t come at a worse time for Foursquare, which has just announced its new Restaurant Dashboard trial. [...]
-
Foursquare Dennis Crowley Talks Revenue, API, Brands, and “Beyond the Badge”
[...] display ads, but it “just didn’t feel right.” They are very excited about their small business dashboard, which allows merchants to see exactly how many people have checked in at their business, and do [...]
-
Location Based Mobile Apps – Why “Where Are You Doing It?” Trumps “What Are You Doing?” | Don Hecker Lawyer Announcement
[...] testing analytics dashboard for restaurants. Details appeared in The Next Web after surfacing in restaurant trade publication Nation’s Restaurant News. Next Web US [...]
Hurray! This is the potential of Foursquare that has always excited me. As a Foursquare user, I consider my use an investment of sorts to be rewarded by special offers, loyalty programs by the small and large businesses I frequent most.
If I owned a small business, I would create my own Foursquare awareness programs to get customers on the platform and competitions specific for my business' customer experience, loyalty, refer-a-friend and sales objectives.
So many small businesses have a blind spot here and are missing establishing an early lead in the Foursquare movement.
foursquare, at last count, doesn't even have half a million users yet, so how could anybody have “missed out” on it (it hasn't even started yet, think Twitter in '07
foursquare's penetration of the total population may still be low, but between it, yelp and gowalla geolocation apps are building critical mass in major metros. early entrants can experiment at a low cost and identify best practices in the channel.
I completely believe in what Foursquare is doing. There is tremendous potential here. But, you can't get in touch with them if you want to reach out to them…or can you?