Joann Whitcher

Launched in late 2011, the free Chefs Feed app for iPhone and iPad has quickly become a favorite with chefs and their fans, registering more than 100,000 users in less than a year.

Instead of fighting the growing trend of restaurant customers posting photos of their menu orders, Felipe Donnelly, owner of Cómodo, a four-month old Latin American eatery in Soho, New York, has embraced it, using the photos to create what is being called the first Instagram menu.

It’s not quite an avalanche, but iPad point of sale software is unfurling out into the marketplace at a heightened pace. Touting wireless connectivity, anywhere, anytime access and quick response to menu and room changes, the field is crowded with options, as newcomers to the market, like Lavu and Breadcrumb, join more established POS vendors like Micros, Revel Systems and Aloha.

For chefs, music is often as important as the knives they cart around. While chefs tend to avoid music during restaurant service, prep is another matter.

Some of restaurants’ best marketing opportunities come via smartphone apps. The best of these apps enable chefs and restaurateurs to engage with customers in a low-cost discussion that can greatly boost sales. Or they can allow restaurants to fill tables that would have otherwise gone empty.

The phrase Founding Farmers may conjure up images of colonial America, but the restaurants operating under that name are anything but old-fashioned. One of the tenets of the Farmers Restaurant Group is using the latest technology available to carry out its mission of “operating, serving and living green.”