SAN FRANCISCO — After testing its interactive surfaces in restaurants in Cyprus, Dubai and Abu-Dhabi, Ukrainian technology company Interactive Restaurant Technology is set to start working in the United States. The startup, which is a brainchild of another Ukrainian company, Kodisoft, is planning to build three “interactive venues” in San Antonio, Texas, and launch a manufacturing line in Nevada in 2015.
IRT’s product offering is an interactive
surface that can be used in restaurants and other venues in all kinds of form
factors, including tables, points of sale, bar counters, terminals, walls and
even floor. With IRT’s technology, which is similar to Compurants’ E-Table and
Microsoft’s PixelSense, a restaurant table becomes a giant touchscreen that
allows customers to order meals and drinks, watch them being prepared in the
kitchen through CCTV cameras, or book a taxi when the evening is at its end. In
addition to that, the surfaces can interact with customers’ devices, so that
multimedia content from a smartphone or tablet can be streamed to the table.
The first restaurant featuring interactive
surfaces produced by IRT was opened in 2011 in Cyprus. In an interview to AIN.ua in 2013, Kodisoft and IRT
founder Dmytro Kostyk told that Kodisoft spent €460,000 on launching the
establishment, and it took less than six months to “return all investments in
the restaurant and the technology.” Since then, two more venues were opened in
Dubai and Abu-Dhabi.
At the Ukrainian Tech Gem conference in San
Francisco on Sept. 18, Kostyk announced the plan to build a complex consisting
of a restaurant, coffee shop and bar in San Antonio, Texas — all equipped with
IRT’s interactive surfaces. The grand opening is planned for April 2015.
The San Antonio project is being worked on by
Kostyk together with an unnamed local partner.
“A person from San Antonio walked into our
restaurant in Cyprus and liked it, so he found us on the Internet [and offered
a partnership],” Kostyk told the Kyiv Post.
“We tried out [the project] in Asia and Europe
— now it’s time to conquer the US. All the more so, as the food services
market here is very big,” he added.
At the moment, all the manufacturing of IRT’s
products happens in Ukraine, however equipment for the complex in San Antonio
will be produced in the US. The new production line will be launched in Nevada
in 2015, Kostyk said.
Founded by Kostyk in 2002, Kodisoft used to be
an outsourcing software developing company based in a university dorm. In 2006,
however, the decision was made to switch to building own technological
products. The company has since bootstrapped its way to the market without
raising any funding rounds.
“My principled stand is to never raise
external funding, because it makes you feel very relaxed,” Kostyk said in an
earlier interview.
Andrii Degeler is the Kyiv Post’s
information technology reporting fellow. Degeler has been covering the IT
business in Ukraine and internationally since 2009. His fellowship is sponsored
by AVentures Capital, Ciklum, FISON and SoftServe. He can be reached on Twitter (@shlema) or [email protected].
