Take Menus On The Go With My Takeout Menu
My Takeout Menus ($1.99) by APSquared LLC is a great solution to that stuffed drawer of takeout menus. Instead of bothering about storing and finding paper menus for your favorite restaurants, you can now take all your menus with you on the go.
It’s surprising that after almost four years this is the first app in the App Store dedicated specifically to store takeout menus. My Takeout Menu is not affiliated with any restaurant or chain of restaurants, so the information provided is not biased in any sense. The app gathers its information from a third party company, Single Platform.
My Takeout Menu is completely customized to each individual user. It does not list local restaurants; users must search for and add each restaurant individually. Users search for restaurants using the business’ phone number. This is the only way to search for a restaurant, which is not very convenient. I do not remember restaurants by their phone numbers, nor do most people (I believe); hopefully in future updates there will be options to search by restaurant name or location.
Once users find the restaurant, they can add its menu to their iDevice. If the restaurant is not in the app’s database, users can manually input the restaurant’s information. They can also take several photos of the menu that will be displayed in the restaurant file. Please note that pictures must be taken in portrait mode, the app allows users to take the menu photos in landscape but will not allow them to save these images. Images can also be added to restaurant files that come with menus.
As an added bonus, My Takeout Menu includes a menu shuffle feature which randomly picks a restaurant from the user's menus. In my experience picking a restaurant is often challenging, so this feature is a fun and quick way to decide on a place to eat.
One of the complaints about My Takeout Menu is that the menus are not complete. The app’s menus are indeed missing some of the dishes that appear on the actual menu from the restaurant. Also, some menus do not include prices. This is a crippling problem with My Takeout Menu. However, there is a workaround that allows users to view the complete menus for most restaurants. In each file, if there is a website for the restaurant, a link will appear which users can tap to view the menu using mobile Safari. Many restaurants include a menu on their website, but finding this is an added hassle for users.
Creating an app to organize takeout menus is a great idea. My Takeout Menu is a decent app, but has the potential to be great. For some, the limited menu issue is enough to turn them off to the entire app. I believe that My Takeout Menu has other redeeming qualities that make it worthwhile even with this flaw. How do you feel? Is the menu issue enough to turn you off the app? Or would you still consider this in the hopes of future updates?
