Cover App: An Easy Payment Solution for Restaurant Meals

The app Cover is revolutionizing the way customers pay for restaurant meals. “What Cover is focused on — removing payments from the table altogether — I really do think that is fundamentally transformational,” according to Denee Carrington, a mobile commerce senior analyst at Forrester Research. “The part of your dining experience that you want to care about or want to remember is not how you paid. The more that can disappear, the better.”

Paying for meals at restaurants can be vexing. The process of getting the server’s attention for the check, waiting for the check, figuring out the appropriate tip and splitting the bill in multiple ways depending on the party size, can be time-consuming and leaves room for errors. Cover allows diners to notify the server at the beginning of the meal that they’ll be paying with the app, and as soon as they’ve finished eating, they are free to leave. Cover handles the bill accordingly with a pre-determined tip percentage the app user has applied. The app also automatically splits the bill amongst all the diners. 

Cover is mutually beneficial for restaurant owners; the fees are lower than those of credit cards. Cover also offers following-day deposits in contrast to three to five business days for the average credit card. Circumventing the check process entirely turns tables faster as well.

Several casual restaurants in New York are already using Cover, including Parm, Empellon Cocina and Charlie Bird, to name a few. You can view the full restaurant list here.

Caring for Customers in the Cold

Popular restaurants that often have a loyal, albeit freezing, fan base waiting in line outside, are taking extra measures to ensure guest satisfaction. Dominique Ansel, Shake Shack, Tom’s Restaurant in Brooklyn, and the West Village outpost of Magnolia Bakery are a few retailers that give special treatment to guests waiting in the cold.

Mr. Ansel offers “Winter Pass” tickets, similar to a “Fast Pass” ticket at theme parks like Disney World, that grant customers who arrive from 7-8am the option to pick up a ticket, arrive two hours later, cut the line and receive their Cronut. It’s not uncommon for lines to wrap around the block as early as 5am at Dominique Ansel. As soon as staff arrives to open the trendy SoHo bakery, they begin passing out hot chocolate and madeleine samples to patient customers braving the cold. Mr. Ansel even considered installing heat lamps outside but later vetoed that idea for logistics reasons.

Shake Shack hands out hot chocolate to guests outside each time it snows, and heat lamps are situated in the vicinity of outdoor seating areas. Tom’s Restaurant offers a melange of samples including cookies, coffees, pieces of pancakes, waffles and French toast, which never fails to alleviate the vexation of queuing outside. Magnolia Bakery delivers samples year-round, including their famous banana pudding.

Retailers can take note of these examples of winter generosity. Sometimes all it takes is a few hot chocolate samples to prevent customers from second-guessing their decision to wait on line outside.