Porter App: Better Restaurant Management & Patron Experience

Have you ever taken the family to a food hall and spent the first 20 minutes standing in separate lines because, naturally, everyone wanted something different? Or wished that you could order another round without packing up all of your stuff and crossing your fingers that no one would snag your table in your absence? Us, too. So, we decided to solve those problems.

Porter was dreamt up after Drawn helped design and launch three restaurants/pubs in Eugene, Oregon. From the challenges of patrons and business owners alike, we designed Porter to be a single, cohesive problem-solving platform with solutions to customer experience challenges along with back-of-house problems including excessive staff hours tied up in inventory, menu updates, and POS headaches. With a platform that can integrate with restaurants’ existing POS systems to track inventory, automatically update menus (and display them using a cool projector), generate pricing, and more, we’ve designed Porter to be something that is highly coveted in the foodservice industry — “a quiet set of helping hands,” and that’s the meaning behind its name.

We initially only recognized Porter’s potential with counter-service pubs, but quickly realized its potential use for dine-in theaters, room service at boutique hotels, bowling alleys, pizza joints, stadiums, and many others who serve customers in this digital age. It can provide access to better data and more efficient processes, allowing to sell more and manage less, so that they can enjoy the businesses about which they’re passionate. Patrons get to skip standing in lines and, instead, spend more time with those they came to be with, creating more analog time together through the use of a digital app.

During the COVID-19 pandemic Porter turned into a way for us to help support Main Street businesses. We sped up its national launch because we thought its quick set up time and ability to offer take-out/delivery could help many businesses to quickly pivot while their doors were shut.

Porter is designed to save hours of menial back-of-house work while generating more profits and making customers happier. Cheers to that!