Volume 3, Issue 2, February 2013 ISSN: 2277 128X

International Journal of Advanced Research in

Computer Science and Software Engineering
Research Paper
Available online at: www.ijarcsse.com
Automated Food Ordering System with Real-Time
Customer Feedback
Shweta Shashikant Tanpure* Priyanka R. Shidankar Madhura M. Joshi
Department of CSE, Department of CSE, Department of CSE,
J.S.P.Ms B.S.I.O.T.R(W),Pune, J.S.P.Ms B.S.I.O.T.R(W),Pune, J.S.P.Ms B.S.I.O.T.R(W),Pune,
Pune University. Pune University. Pune University.

Abstract - The Rampant growth of wireless technology and Mobile devices in this era is creating a great impact on our
lives. Some early efforts have been made to combine and utilize both of these technologies in advancement of
hospitality industry. This research work aims to automate the food ordering process in restaurant and also improve
the dining experience of customers. In this paper we discuss about the design & implementation of automated food
ordering system with real time customer feedback (AOS-RTF) for restaurants. This system, implements wireless data
access to servers. The android application on users mobile will have all the menu details. The order details from
customers mobile are wirelessly updated in central database and subsequently sent to kitchen and cashier
respectively. The restaurant owner can manage the menu modifications easily. The wireless application on mobile
devices provide a means of convenience, improving efficiency and accuracy for restaurants by saving time, reducing
human errors and real-time customer feedback. This system successfully over comes the drawbacks in earlier PDA
based food ordering system and is less expensive and more effective than the multi-touchable restaurant
management systems.

Keywords Restaurant Automation; Wireless food ordering system; Android Mobile; Android application; WiFi;
I. INTRODUCTION
The advancement in information and communication technology (ITC) has greatly influenced the business
transactions. The adoption of wireless technology & emergence of mobile devices has led to automation in the hospitality
industry. Business in hospitality industry such as restaurants can be improved with the combination of wireless and
mobile technologies. The competition in restaurant business have increased with the advancements in food ordering
techniques [1]. The earlier food ordering system was entirely a manual process which involved waiters, pen and paper.
The waiter had to note down orders from customers, take these orders to kitchen , update them in records and again make
bill. Even though this system is simple it may involve human errors in noting down the orders. To overcome these
limitations in manual system some systems were developed later like PDA based systems and multi-touchable restaurant
management systems to automate food ordering process [2].
PDAs (personal digital assistants) are well known for their portability feature and ability to communicate with
personal computers but they too have some limitations. PDA-based systems lack ubiquitous communication, are exposed
to health hazards ,has lower GPU (graphical processing unit) and hardware support due to which menu customization and
real time communication cannot be done, and increase the restaurant expanses when needed in large quantity [2].
The multi-touchable restaurant management systems also have limitations like: they usually require low resolution
output of the monitor, can produce activation without touching the screen and the cost to produce the special Infrared
bezel for touch screens is very high [3]. The CWOS-RTF [6] was developed as one of the solutions for the PDA based
system. It is a wireless food ordering system which made the use of smart phones to place orders. Taking an idea form
this system we have proposed our system AOS-RTF, which is specially designed for Android Devices.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section II contains review of the existing PDA-based food ordering
system, multi-touchable restaurant management system using high cost touch screens and presents the Android
technology. Section III presents AOS-RTF architecture and system design. Section IV presents the Results & Analysis of
AOS-RTF. Finally, section V presents conclusion and future work.

II. RELATED WORK

A. Need of Automation in Restaurant Sector

The Hospitality industry especially the restaurant sectors are gaining a rising importance worldwide as they have
been supporting the economy for decades. The usual procedure used for food ordering in restaurants is a manual process.
It involves the waiters noting down the menu from customers, transferring the orders to the kitchen, serving the menu,
and finally preparing bills. This process even though looks simple, is prone to human errors while note making & delays
involved. So the customers end-up with an unsatisfactory experience [1].

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In this revolutionized world people are crazy about latest technologies and automating their routine tasks.
Considering this fact and with an aim to improve efficiency & reduce errors in conventional food ordering system, new
technologies and approaches are introduced to automate the conventional food ordering process [1]. The wireless food
ordering systems such as WOS [5], i-menu [4] FIWOS [2], are some them. These all systems are PDA (Personal digital
assistants) based systems. In the PDA based system, the customers or waiters key in ordering process. When order
making completes, these PDAs are to be collected by the waiters to be used by other customers. PDAs are small and
portable devices. With wireless technology, the communication between the server and PDA is feasible [2].
B. Limitations in PDA based Food Ordering Systems
Even though the PDA based system provided a better option to conventional food ordering system they possess
some limitations:
A number of PDAs are to be prepared to serve the number of customers during peak hours. Thus increasing the
restaurant expenditures [2].
PDAs do not provide provision to order from workplace. Thus the customer has to be physically present in restaurant
to place order [6].
It lacks real time feedback between restaurant owner and customers [2].
Pose health problems as the PDAs are to be shared with public customers. If any customer is suffering from
infectious disease like flu, then the other customers using the same PDA are exposed to similar health hazards.
The user interface consist only textual information. UI has become unattractive and uninformative due to lack of
images [6].

C. Proposed Solution to PDA based system

To overcome the limitation in PDA based system we proposed a automated food ordering system for restaurants
with real time customer feedback (AOS-RTF). It is a wireless food ordering system using android devices.
Android smart phones attract both the general and commercial (i.e Business) users. They attract commercial users by
providing productivity tools such as E-mail, Word, Excel, Organizer and they also possess a virtual pop-up QWERTY
keyboard for easy of typing. They also attract the general users with their excellent features like music player, voice
recording, still camera, video camera, games and internet browsing. Hence, considering the promising future of Android
market, it is beneficial and worth to write applications for android that target masses of people.
Android devices (tablets and mobile phones) are extremely popular and have revolutionized the use of mobile
technology in automation of routine task in wireless environment. Android is a Linux based operating system for mobile
devices such as smart-phones and tablets. The programs are primarily written in customized version of java by the
developers, then the apps can be downloaded from online stores such as Google Play (formerly Android Market), the
third-party sites or the app store run by Google.
Android Smart phones have been viewed as essential devices to serve telemedicine services for various health
problems, they are also used for home automation, Design security applications And Geographical applications. Some of
such applications are MLEA, a platform that assists, through tablets and mobile phones, the mobility of users of learning
virtual environments [7], iwander a tool which improves the quality of treatment for dementia patients using mobile
application, it runs on several android based devices with GPS and communication capabilities. This helps the caregivers
to cost effectively monitor their patients remotely [8], LOG LIFE an android based distributed application which is
analogous to a tracker application, it also adds innovative feature of maintaining the log of all places visited and also has
a feature to locate the current position on Google map [9], Location Based services using Android OS [10].
Motivated by the use of Android mobile OS in Health and other applications, we present the use of Android Devices
in Business applications, namely the food ordering system in restaurants. The Objectives of our proposed system are:

To combine Wireless technology and Android Mobile OS to automate food ordering process.
To Eliminate or at-least minimize the flaws in conventional system by automating the Food ordering system in
restaurants.
To implement real-time feed-back between restaurant owner and customer about order status.

III. THE AOS-RTF SYSTEM

A. System Architecture
The system architecture of AOS-RTF depicted in figure 1 covers the three main areas of restaurant: the Serving area,
the Kitchen, and Restaurant-Owners desk (Cashier table). Conceptually the AOS-RTF is built using four main
components:
1. The android application on android mobiles of customers to make orders.
2. The server and web applications on the restaurant-owners laptop to customize menu and keep track of customer
records.
3. The central database for restaurant-owner to store updated menu information and order details.
4. Wireless infrastructure to support networked communication.
The system architecture possesses portability feature. It can accommodate all types of restaurants including those
with and without internet access.

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Figure 1. The system architecture of AOS-RTF without internet access.

The architecture in figure 1 is restricted to restaurant vicinity, whereas Figure 2 shows the system architecture that
provides flexibility to customers to make order prior to arrival at restaurant. This system facilitates customer to order
from their workplace and are notified when their order is prepared, thus saving their waiting time at the restaurants.

Figure 2. The system architecture of AOS-RTF with internet access.

Figure 3 shows the 3-tier architecture of AOS-RTF, it consist of Presentation layer, Business layer and data access layer.

Figure 3. Layered Architecture of AOS-RTF

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 Shweta et al., International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Science and Software Engineering 3(2),
February - 2013, pp. 220-225
B. System Design
In this section we present some of the system diagrams such as context diagram (CD), andwhich will provide a
clear system overview. Figure 4 depicts the CD of the AOS-RTF system. Firstly the restaurant owner will log into the
system and update the menu and advertise the promotion strategies. The customer has to login the system so that the
system can assign identification number to the ordered menu. The customer information and menu choices are sent to the
system over wireless network. The restaurant owner and the kitchen staff will receive the ordered lists from the system.
The restaurant owner can update the order status into the system. The customer can thus view his order status. After
having the food customer can make payment and enter feedback regarding restaurant system and services.

Figure 4. System Context Diagram.

Figure 5 shows the Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) of AOS-RTF. This gives a clear view of the entities and
their corresponding attributes and it also shows the relationship between entities. The ERD shown in figure 4 is self
explanatory.

Figure 5. ERD Of AOS-RTF

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February - 2013, pp. 220-225
IV. RESULTS & ANALYSIS
A. System Specifications
The AOS-RTF system is designed using the JAVA programming language. We have used android technology (a
linux based operating system) to design the user interface. The system administrator will have windows operating system
on his laptop or desktop. The database is designed using MySQL. WiFi (wireless Fidelity) is used to send information to
and retrieve data from AOS-RTF. We have used Android 2.2.3 Gingerbread as the working platform; the system is
compatible with all higher versions of Android OS.
B. Analysis
Fig.6 shows a graph of features Vs rating scale for the 3 major automaton tools in Restaurant sector namely, the
PDA based System [2, 4], Android based system and multi-touchable restaurant system [3]. The user interface of
Android based system is more attractive than the PDA and Multi-touchable systems. Comparing the processing speed of
these three systems we find that speed of Android system and Multi-touchable system is almost the same whereas the
PDA based systems are little slower thanthe other two systems. Android based system is the cheapest automation
solution for the restaurant owners.

7
6
5
4
Rating

Multi-
3
2 touchable
1
0
PDA

Features

Fig. 6. Comparison of Various Automation techniques in

Restaurant sector.

Only the Android system (AOS-RTF) can be remotely accessed i.e the customers can place orders prior to coming in
restaurants. The other two systems lack in this feature. Thus, the analysis shows that AOS-RTF (Android based system)
is the optimal solution for the restaurant owners.

V. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

In this paper, we present an automated food ordering system with-real time customer feedback (AOS-RTF).This
system is convenient, effective and easy thereby improving the performance of restaurants staff. It will also provide
quality of service and customer satisfaction. Overall conclusion is that, this is a fabulous food ordering system for the
restaurant sector, made by combining the Android and Wireless technology.
In next phase, we will be working on providing provisions to accept different types of payments like checks, credit
cards, debit cards, tips, etc. The system can be further extended to register and link multiple restaurants to enhance the
dining experience of customers.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This work is completed under the guidance of Prof. Jayshree Chaudhari and Prof. Jayant Jadhav. We express our
gratitude towards them for their continuous support on this research. We would also like to thank the reviewers for their
suggestions to improve this paper.

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