People are still coming up with ways to make iBeacons and similar technologies useful, but a new app known as Croissant may be the best one yet. The idea is that people love to use coffee shops as a temporary place to study or work, and through the app, these people will be able to reserve a seat at places like coffee shops or co-working spaces so long as the business has iBeacons installed.
Three co-founders from a local deals startup Perqy, Dave Idell, Adam Chew, and Nisha Garigan, met up this weekend at the TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2015 Hackathon to present their project which uses iBeacons installed at local businesses, like coffee shops or co-working spaces, to allow customers to reserve a spot and then be automatically be charged for the exact number of minutes they worked at the venue. Business owners could also view a map of their customers in real-time from an online dashboard. The idea for the hack, explains Idell, was inspired by a recent visit to a coffee shop which offered something similar, but used a more manual system involving checking in on a tablet installed in the store. There, customers would enter in their phone number and seat number to provide the business with their name and location. But with Croissant, checkins would instead happen automatically by way of a consumer-facing mobile app. From this app (which was not complete at the time of the hackathon demo), customers could reserve a seat at the co-working space or even order items from an in-app food and drink menu.