“Grumble grumble!” Your stomach begins to make that awful moan. An entire day on the road has left you exhausted and…STARVING! You need food and you need it now! But you don’t know the area, let alone where to find a decent restaurant. What if you could just snap your fingers and magically have your favorite pizza sitting in your hands.
Our world is changing at an incredible rate. Time O’Reilly coined the term Web 2.0 in 2005 and that world has integrated into our own, quickly paving the way for a total revolution in mobile technology. Now our every day lives are becoming enhanced through simplification. Enter: OrderMapper, a Seattle based startup that is completely transforming the way you order goods. Starting up in just 2009, the company has gained incredible traction, selling several hundred thousand downloads with recognition as one of the World’s top 100 innovative apps and seed funding from Twilio. All this for their first mobile application, OrderPizza!
With merely a few clicks, a hungry mobile user can get America’s favorite food–pizza–delivered anytime anywhere within minutes. You first choose a restaurant from a list of pizzerias nearest your GPS location, select your favorite toppings and simply click “order.” Within minutes a delivery man will be at your current address with a fresh pizza already prepaid through your PayPal account. OrderMapper has developed a modified version of their app to some of the largest pizza chains around, including Pizza Hut. Sounds like OrderMapper has helped slow food become “fast food.”
Speed is the last great competitive advantage, and increasing speed with our favorite things or most needful things (like Pizza) is something to pay attention to. We recently caught up with OrderMapper founder and CEO Jim Bricker, who answered some questions via his mobile phone (what else of course?) to see what his vision is for OrderMapper.
FRESH: How did you get the idea for OrderPizza?
JIM: Order Mapper was born on the golf course. My uncle and I were looking for the drink lady and thought how cool it would be to be able to order from your iPhone. We wanted to allow people to order from casino pools, sporting events, and the golf course. Investors we talked to didn’t think it was big enough. So I decided to focus on pizza because it is the most likely item people will purchase on a mobile device.
FRESH: How vital is it for companies to establish a business presence via mobile apps?
JIM: We are seeing 100% ROI within two months of launch. Not having an app is like giving money to your competitors. The restaurant industry is very competitive.
FRESH: Are instantaneous app-based transactions becoming the new standard for retail?
JIM: Location-based mobile ordering is hot. We are working with PayPal to make it easy for users to purchase goods and services within apps.
FRESH: How are you going to use OrderMapper technology in other industries?
JIM: Ordering products and services from mobile apps is a very large market. We are focusing on one industry at a time. The technology that we have created will naturally evolve into other markets.
FRESH: How do you see OrderMapper changing the World in the next 5-10 years?
JIM: The web completely changed the world. We believe that mobile will be even bigger. Mobile provides location relevant data. This is huge for social, retail payments, and ordering technologies. Mobile is like the fourth dimensional web: Web 4D.
FRESH: What’s in store for OrderMapper in 2011?
JIM: We are currently developing our next version of Order Pizza. In addition, we will be opening up our back-end to other developers. I can’t talk too much about it, but our next product Order Wiki should be launching in Q3 [summer of 2011].
Conclusion: At first glace, OrderMapper technology appears to be merely a novel way to order pizza. However, when applied to other markets, OrderMapper reveals itself as a truly revolutionary method for customers and businesses to interact. Now a restaurant can unobtrusively reach its potential customer, while the patron gets exactly what they want with little effort beyond desire. Irritating marketing is avoided, while those with needs are connected to the right supplier, creating a harmonious symbiotic fast relationship between both parties. By simplifying small tasks, OrderMapper will create big changes in our complex economy, which is we why we recognize Jim Bricker as a true Fresh Innovator.
We are in awe at the incredible innovators that surround us so we decided to highlight those hard-working brilliant minds in a blog post series called “Fresh Innovators.” By doing so we hope to not only showcase people who are doing great things but inspire others to do the same.