Imagine you’re walking down a busy sidewalk to an early meeting when your smartphone dings. A message pops up, noting you haven’t stopped for your usual egg sandwich and latte.

A mobile app tells you the nearest Dunking Donuts is three blocks over. Another app brings a coupon for breakfast at a McDonald’s around the corner. You decide. With a few taps, you order, specify a pick-up time and pay, never breaking stride.

The future of fast food is quickly becoming faster food with mobile applications, one-click order and pay, and smart technology to analyze all the information allowing for a more convenient, faster experience that is sure to follow you from mealtime to mealtime. Today, the future of eating out lies in experiments at Burger King, Domino’s, McDonald’s, Wendy’s and the many other companies in the $707 billion worldwide fast-food market. Restaurant chains want to use technology – theirs and yours – to create an intimate customer experience.Your personal device and the restaurant’s own systems for sensing, analyzing and transacting will exchange data, for your convenience and their profit (Nash). In past years a fast-food restaurant’s menu differentiated if from competitors; for example, Hardee’s and the Monster Thick Burger or Wendy’s and the Baconator.

Now Information Technology is the differentiator. Customers want faster, more accurate ordering, e-coupons and more options for payment such as PayPal or Google Wallet, says Darren Tristano, a consultant at Technomic, a restaurant industry research firm that recently surveyed 500 consumers about technology priorities. Nash) Mobile applications are also playing a major role in how the consumer thinks about ordering from their favorite fast food chain. ZippyYum announced an innovative, new mobile app that significantly improves the experience of ordering fast food online. Developed for SUBWAY, the free application replicates the visual, in-store experience of ordering a sandwich, while giving customers more control over how they make their meal selections, and when and where they receive their meal orders.Available for the iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad and Android devices, the mobile app recreates the in-store experience by presenting every product and ingredient visually so customers can see their sandwiches being built in ‘real-time’ as they select their favorite ingredients.

(Riscalla) Customers can tap, swipe and pinch on images to view products and ingredients, and make their selections, while the app works in the background to retrieve up-to-minute information about the different specials and availability of products for each the 240 participating SUBWAY stores.Because the app was developed for mobile devices from the ground up, images are instantly loaded, ordering information is instantly processed, and participating stores can update their specials and products as needed. (Riscalla) “Consumers are forcing restaurants to move faster than they traditionally have, says Robert Notte, CTO at Jamba Juice, which has nearly 800 stores worldwide, a $226 million chain that makes healthy (and not-so-healthy) smoothies. He says “It’s important to be willing to take risks.

” (Nash) Jamba is piloting mobile and tablet ordering and four electronic payment systems, including PayPal and Google Wallet.They recently released an iPhone app that links to its point of sale system so customers can order smoothies, pay through PayPal and designate a pick-up time, even the next day. When they get to the store, they can bypass the lines. With one tap – rather than using multiple cards and pieces of paper – customers can pay, redeem coupons and collect loyalty points.

“No more Costanza wallet,” laughs Notte, referring to the Seinfeld episode where George’s overstuffed wallet throws out his back and the blows apart in the street. Slideshow) The mobile ordering app for SUBWAY is available for free at Apple’s App Store and Google’s Android MarketPlace. Red Tomato, a pizza place in Dubai, has squeezed the store footprint to an extreme: two inches. Red Tomato gives customers a refrigerator magnet shaped like a pizza box to stick on their refrigerators. A customer configures the magnet with a mobile phone, specifying favorite pizza and toppings, along with payment data to keep on file. Any time he wants pizza, he presses the button of the magnet, which uses Bluetooth to communicate with the phone, which sends a text message to Red Tomato.

The customer gets a text back confirming the order and the pizza arrives soon after. No call, no clicks, no problem. (Slideshow) Slow lines on a busy morning are the bane of any eatery’s existence. Dunkin Brands CIO Jack Clare imagines a day when customer’s sail into their favorite Dunkin Donuts and, in seconds, sail back out with their preferred beverage and sweet treat.

By setting up an account and activating geolocation services on their smart phones, in-restaurant networks could detect a specific customer approaching and alert employees to prepare her favorite order as she opens the door.The restaurant becomes a fulfillment point,” Clare says. (Slideshow) Burgers and fries are fattening. Nevertheless, Wendy’s wants to attract calorie counters. Its mobile app lets users enter a calorie threshold, then add and subtract menu items to create meals to meet it.

Inside the restaurant, digital menu boards can promote items based on inventory and sales levels, capturing customer attention with video and animation. (Slideshow) At Domino’s Pizza, which launched online ordering in late 2007 and its famous pizza tracker in 2008, more than one-third of pizza sales originate online.Now the $1. 5 billion company wants to move more customers to mobile.

Domino’s already has mobile apps and a website optimized for mobile devices. Domino’s is putting Web kiosks on college campuses, military bases and other places packed with hungry people. At Camp Pendleton, Marines with weekends off used to overwhelm the local Domino’s store. With Kiosk on base, Marines place orders, pay by credit card and pick up their pizzas. Domino’s also wants to streamline ordering in general.

In Australia, an iPad app for ordering is popular. In the U. S. customers who use Domino’s website or smartphone application see different menu versions – a shorter one for hurried phone users. Tracking customer habits is important, says CIO Kevin Vasconi.

“They want us to understand what they want to order, how they like to pay and where to deliver without having to tell me every single time”. (Slideshow) This year, Vasconi and CMO Russell Weiner aim to add features such as access to a CRM system that will remember regular orders, addresses and other details without the customer having to type them in every time.Fields will prepopulate and the system will do automatic error checking, which makes the user experience a competitive differentiator, Vasconi says. (Nash) So why do we want fast food? Exactly, because it is FAST, handy and the price is very competitive, especially for those on a tight budget and in a hurry.

For instance, McDonald’s constantly makes changes, offering coupons and inexpensive meals. They now want to change the ordering process. According to an article on techeye. net the president of McDonald’s Europe said that “ordering food had not changed for 30 or 40 years so its restaurants would be looking to modern technology. The Fast Food chaing plans on replacing many of their cashiers with screen terminals in their European restaurants.

This will allow customers to order and pay electronically and increase effifciency as well. (unknown) The new touch screen terminals will not only increase efficiency but also open up a goldmine of data.They will be able to track and store data such as ordering habits, from which McDonald’s will benefit. They also will save millions by cutting down on staff costs. They are also envisioning automated fryer cooks and grill machines for burgers – no burger flipper needed. Carpenter) Overall, many companies have become more competitive due to new technologies and the use of big data.

Companies have been able to increase sales, lower cost, improve processes, and strengthen marketing strategies. Customer-friendly, personalized technologies will make fast food even faster and more convenient. Therefore, convenience is a big part of a consumer’s decision of which fast food store to eat at. Information Technology will now help make that consumer decision based on the ease and convenience of service.