Pittsburgh’s AM Mobile has a smartphone app that adds sizzle to restaurant marketing campaigns.
The Monroeville-based start-up has launched a customized iPhone app for restaurants who want to deliver digital coupons and other promotions to their best customers.

"Unlike Urban Spoon, the app is not just a list," says company co-founder Bill Maurizio. "We’re targeting individual businesses with a private, affordable IPhone app." In western Pennsylvania, restaurants including Primanti Brothers, Cafe Euro, Kings, Mario's South Side Saloon and Le Pommier Bistro Francais have asked AM Mobile to develop custom apps, along with one Philadelphia restaurant.

Maurizio says the app does not currently support online ordering, but the firm wants to develop a means for customers to transmit orders directly into a POS system. It will launch a Droid version this spring and one for Blackberry this summer.

Maurizio says smart phone apps "are going the way of web sites ten years ago--everyone’s creating one. It’s a next step to e-mailing or texting." Clients can extend their message to social media, Facebook or Twitter message via the AM Mobile application.
  
Company founders Maurizio, Marc Majors, Chris Gordon, Whitney Bender, and Stephanie Squibb perceived a need in the restaurant niche after creating iPhone apps for children. They debuted the product at the International Restaurant Show at the Las Vegas in early March.

Source: Bill Maurizio, AM Mobile
Writer: Chris O’Toole