Grilled cheese with a tech twist in San Francisco
Jonathan Kaplan made it easy for consumers to shoot cheesy home movies when he founded the company behind the Flip Video camcorder. Now, he’s hoping to popularize something cheesier — and gooier — by starting a chain of grilled cheese restaurants that combine fast food with high tech.
Kaplan’s latest creation, The Melt, opens its first location Tuesday in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood. Plans are in the works for two more restaurants in San Francisco and one in nearby Palo Alto by Thanksgiving. With financial backing from a venture-capital heavyweight, Sequoia Capital, Kaplan hopes to open 25 to 50 restaurants within the next year and about 500 across the country within five years.
As mentioned before, this is a rather unique restaurant project because of the technology that is being used. Here is an example from the article.
With a small group of advisers — including chef and restaurateur Michael Mina — Kaplan approached Swedish home appliance maker Electrolux about making a special contraption that would create uniform grilled cheese sandwiches. They came up with a machine that combines two induction burners, a microwave and non-stick pads, which allow the bread to toast while the cheese melts — without squishing the sandwich as a panini press might do.
Not surprisingly, given Kaplan’s background, technology also comes into play in the way visitors can order their meals. If you don’t want to wait in line, you can order on a smartphone using The Melt’s website. After placing an order, you receive a QR code — a cousin to the traditional bar code, but with more data encoded in a smaller space. You bring that to a code reader in the restaurant for scanning, and an employee then gathers up your order.
When The Melt has more locations up and running, customers will be able to choose where to redeem their codes, Kaplan says.
He believes the technology in use at The Melt will improve the customer experience, “rather than technology that is just there for marketing reasons or technology for technology’s sake.”
I may have to stop by and check The Melt out. Reading all of this is making me crave a grilled cheese sandwich…
Jonathan Kaplan samples the Italian Job sandwich from his new restaurant