Croissant Makes Cafés A Cakewalk

A group of three co-founders from local deals startup Perqy — Dave Idell, Adam Chew and Nisha Garigan — met up recently at the TechCrunch Disrupt NY Hackathon to present a project called Croissant, which uses iBeacons installed at local businesses, like coffee shops or co-working spaces, to allow customers to reserve a spot and then be automatically charged for the exact number of minutes they worked at the venue. Also, business owners could view a map of their customers in real-time from an online dashboard.

 

The idea for the hack was inspired by a recent visit to a coffee shop that offered something similar, but used a slightly manual system involving checking in on a tablet installed in the store. There, customers would enter their phone and seat numbers to provide the business with their name and location.

 

With Croissant, check-ins will happen automatically by way of a consumer-facing mobile app. Using the app customers could reserve a seat at the co-working space or even order items from an in-app food and drink menu.The app works via Bluetooth to register the customer’s check-in and order, and would then automatically charge their credit card when they left the store.

 

This sort of system makes sense for a coffee shop that wants to offer its customers the ability to reserve a table to use as a workspace for a specific period of time, allowing them to bring in additional income on top of their food and drink sales. Meanwhile, co-working spaces could charge users by the number of minutes they were actually present, rather than having them book time in half-hour or hour-long chunks, as they often do today.

 

However, there’s also the potential for any business that wanted to track its customers’ movements throughout the day, or their overall time spent in the store using iBeacon technology. There are already a number of companies working to develop just this sort of thing today on a larger scale. Croissant’s creators weren’t sure whether or not they’ll explore their hack more after this hackathon wraps, but they’re not discounting the possibility.