 |
| POWER TO THE PEOPLE: Jack Baum with the new device he helped develop that lets customers pay on demand. photography by Kevin Hunter Marple |
Jack Baum, the 51-year-old chairman and ceo of Food, Friends, and Co., has been in the food and restaurant business for three decades. After starting Landlock Seafood in 1978, he spent most of his career opening or improving a steady stream of restaurants across the country. Among them: Newport’s, Cozymel’s Mexican Grill and, most recently, Woodlands Grill at Watters Creek in Allen.
Now Baum has a fresh idea to bring to the dining table.
His latest venture, Tabletop Media, has created a pay-on-demand system that could change the way customers dine in most casual restaurants. Baum and partner Morton H. Meyerson of 2M Companies Inc.—along with three students from Baum’s MBA course at Southern Methodist University—started Tabletop Media about 18 months ago.
Their pay-on-demand system allows customers to pay at their table at any time by swiping their credit card through an interactive machine, which is installed at each table. “I wanted our product to relate to the customer,” Baum explains. “Our real customer is the guest at the table, and I want to give those guests the gift of time.”
Tabletop’s device, which has nine patents pending, is considered two years ahead of competing pay-on-demand systems. But to entice potential buyers, the Tabletop team had to figure out a way to hold down its costs. That’s when they got creative. The water-resistant, wireless device, which has a touch-screen and more than 18 hours of battery life, can host ads, play DVD-quality movie trailers, connect to the Internet for movie times and tickets, and ask survey questions to retrieve customer feedback.
Restaurants that install the units don’t buy Tabletop Media hardware or software, but rather pay between 15 and 20 cents per seat per shift.
Tabletop Media, which has grown to 38 employees, finished its third-generation pay-on-demand product on July 15. Its first large commercial installation was scheduled to take place last month at a local TGIFriday’s.
