What started out as a B on a project grade has now won $15,000 in competition winnings and grant money.
DineTouch, LLC has designed an application for any device with a web browser. The applicaiton allows restaurantgoers to order directly from their table, specify their desired food delivery and pay at the table.
“The Idea behind it is, you’ll be able to sit down at a restaurant, order and pay for your meal right at the table,” Joey Natour, CEO and cofounder of DineTouch, said. “For the restaurant, it makes you more lean and more efficient. It streamlines the whole process. You still have server interaction but only when the customer wants it.”
The idea came about when Natour was taking an entrepreneurship class taught by professor Thomas Graves.
Natour made a business plan for DineTouch and submitted it as his final project.
“I got a decent grade, not a great grade,” Natour said. “I think it was an 85. I called the teacher, and I told him that this was one of the hardest ideas and one of the best innovations and I got one of the lower grades in the class. Professor Graves said there was a lot of stuff wrong with it, but he wanted me to enter the competition. I said, that’s great I got a bad grade, and you want me to enter a competition.”
Natour asked co-founder and current CTO of DineTouch, Seth Elliott, his roommate from freshman year, to help him with the project.
The two co-founders entered UT’s Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation 2011 business startup competition.
“We got to the top 10 by being really motivated, pulling all-nighters and working hard.” Natour said. “By winning the competition, we won $5,000 and 20 free hours of certified paid accountant assistance.”
The latest achievement for DineTouch has been receiving the inaugural Boyd Venture Fund grant.
“They told us to win the grant, the board would strictly judge your company’s potential to grow and if you are actually going to do what you say you’re going to do,” Elliott said. “We went before the committee and hadn’t done much preparation at all. We had just spent our time since the last competition doing what we said we were going to do, so we just went in and told them that. We presented all the facts we had, interviews of people that had used our software and got a lot of great feedback.”
The committee liked the fact that the duo was able to take an idea and within a month, have a product developed.
“With the grant, we received $10,000 and a mentor,” Elliott said.
The money received by the duo has to go toward business expenses for DineTouch.
The application began use at Café 4 in Market Square a month ago.
In addition to Elliott and Natour, John Morris, Chris Miller and Lynn Young also played a part in helping DineTouch get to where it is now.
Although it is only being used at one restaurant now, Natour and Elliott are hopeful that this application will create a buzz and spread quickly.
“Knoxville has turned out to be quite a blessing,” Elliott said. “This is one of the restaurant capitals of the world. So many restaurant chains are based out of Knoxville. Our ultimate goal is to talk to these chains and ask them to invest in us.”
