Local foodies and restaurant lovers rejoice. Restaurant Week is here, and yes, there’s an app for that. Available now in the iTunes App Store, Brookline-based Raizlabs has released their latest application, Boston Restaurant Week… and in record time.
Boston Restaurant Week is clean, simple, and likely the most convenient way to find a local spot to dine at during Boston’s Restaurant Week, which runs from March 14-19 & 21-26. The app provides the locations, contact information, and event menus for all 207 participating restaurants. It even features an embedded Google map to show you exactly where each restaurant is located – very handy for those of us always on-the-go.
If you live in the Boston area, have an iPhone, and are considering eating out in the next week or so, I’d absolutely suggest getting this $0.99 app right now. I’m no mathematician, but this puppy will essentially pay for itself by pointing you to some of the top local dining destinations offering mouth-watering dishes at bargain prices. At a fixed price of $30.10, the three-course Skirt Steak dinner at the South End’s Butcher Shop is definitely calling to me. (Insert drool spot here.)
What’s perhaps even more impressive than the app itself is that it was all designed and developed in less than a week – quite a feat considering that many apps require months of effort to complete. In fact, the idea for the app didn’t even exist until just under two weeks ago when Greg Raiz, founder of Raizlabs, and his team were enjoying lunch at a Thai restaurant and chatting about Restaurant Week. Though there is a useful website available for the event, it’s not designed or optimized to be used on a mobile device. Viewing the site while at the table from his iPhone, Raiz found it to be “a somewhat clumsy user experience.” (Insert “Aha!” moment here.)
With a rough idea sketched out, Raiz and his team saw developing this time-critical app not only as a great way to challenge their development skills, but also an opportunity to leverage their proprietary application framework, internally dubbed “RZConnect.” This framework allowed the two-person team assigned to Boston Restaurant Week to focus more of their energy toward gathering content and creating the ideal user experience rather than trotting knee-deep in fresh code. Thanks in part to speedy approval by Apple, the app was available in the App Store just as Restaurant Week was kicking off – Success!
Way More Than Just Restaurant Week
Raizlabs is one of the best known design, development, and strategy companies in the area where great mobile user experiences are concerned. In addition to Boston Restaurant Week, they have over 20 apps in their portfolio, totaling more than half a million combined downloads. (Uh, yeah. That sounds like a lot because it is.) Recently, they’ve been expanding their skill set to include Android app development and they’ve already got two projects underway in preparation for Apple’s new iPad, which will hit stores April 3rd.
Raiz is excited about the abundance of opportunities in the mobile space and is especially interested in how they relate to Boston. As he’s working to position Raizlabs as a leader in mobile strategy, design, and development, he’s also helping Boston develop more of an ecosystem and community around mobile. He’s founded the local mobile development group, DrinksOnTap.org, and also serves as secretary of the Boston-based usability group, UPA Boston. Just as Silicon Valley is know for it’s thriving tech startup scene, “I want to make sure people see Boston as the hub for mobile,” he explains.
Props to Raizlabs for executing leading up to one of BostInno’s favorite fortnights of the year: Restaurant Week. For more on Greg Raiz and his team, check out their site, Raizlabs.com, and while you’re at it, follow them on Twitter @Raizlabs. …Everyone else already seems to!
Tags: Company News, Edu, Raizlabs
