Image Source:
All Purpose Light Clips Home Depot
Picture this: You charge coffee. But there’s a band at the adverse and you charge to get to work.
Image Source:
Then addition saunters in, brushes accomplished you and grabs their own coffee, accessible and waiting, from the counter.
Wait, what?
For the adulation of lattes, how?
There’s no abstruse handshake (that I can acquaint you about) or classified countersign (that you’re austere to know).
You aloof charge the app.
“If there’s a line, you get bedraggled looks from bodies who don’t apperceive about this,” said Larry Gilbert Jr., the Sun Journal’s admirers assurance editor and apparently the guy who sauntered accomplished you aftermost anniversary at Dunkin’ Donuts.
Turns out that apps — those little software programs on your buzz — are acceptable for added than arena Candy Crush or accepting active directions.
At brick-and-mortar food and restaurants, they let you skip the line, acquisition discounts, get chargeless stuff, acknowledge the amount of un-tagged items, advice with projects and alike acquaint you whether the affair you appetite is in abundance and breadth you can acquisition it.
They action a host of allowances to anyone in the know.
We’ll get you in the know.
Pizza, doughnuts and boots
Mobile apps accept been about for decades. Rudimentary ones — calculator, calendar, basal amateur — graced early, not-so-smart cellphones and PDAs (raise your duke if you bethink the PalmPilot).
App acceptance exploded in 2008, back Apple launched its App Store. Smartphones were accepting smarter and apps got cleverer appropriate forth with them.
Billions of apps are now downloaded every year by Apple and Android users. According to a address by App Annie — a aggregation whose sole purpose is to acquaint added companies about apps — people use about 10 apps anniversary day.
Go on, calculation how abounding you’ve acclimated today. I’ll wait.
By the way, the Google chase bar counts as one. If you’re annual this on the Sun Journal app, that’s two.
If you logged into Lewiston House of Pizza’s app to adjustment a ham Italian for lunch, that’s three.
You didn’t apperceive Lewiston House of Pizza had an app? Surprise!
“We accept online acclimation and it’s absolutely best up absolutely a bit,” Manager Mindy Souza said. “It doesn’t booty that abundant longer, and if our phones are active . . . I mean, best of the time we’re appealing busy.”
That app, accessible both for Android and Apple, lets barter abode an adjustment now or abode an adjustment advanced for after — alike after the abutting day, alike for commitment — and pay with a debit or acclaim card. The perk: Barter can abstain both the arresting active arresting and the delay in line, about absence advanced of anybody else.
Image Source:
Actually, that’s the best advantage for a lot of restaurant apps.
Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts let you app-order, too, and they automatically add your acquirement to your adherence rewards account.
Panera Bread’s app does all of that too. In fact, you can use Panera’s chargeless wi-fi to adjustment and pay through the app, again skip the band absolutely by acrimonious up your adjustment at the “rapid pickup” shelf. (I apperceive this because I’ve ordered from the app while, literally, continuing at the end of an out-the-door line.)
Krispy Kreme — One is advancing to Auburn. At some point. Apparently soon! — has a scattering of apps. However, the one you want, unless you alive in the UK or Indonesia, has an amount of a anesthetized doughnut with a heart-shaped hole. That one tells you back beginning doughnuts are done. It additionally sends a apprehension to your buzz back the “Hot Light” is on. You know, the important advice you charge for life.
If you like bistro at home added than bistro out, both Shaw’s and Hannaford accept their own apps now, too. Among the perks, the Shaw’s app lets you blow agenda coupons and add items to your arcade account anon from accomplished receipts. The Hannaford app offers “just for you” coupons and rewards.
Need winter boots/car oil/cat litter? Brick-and-mortar retailers are added in the app game, too.
L.L. Bean launched its Apple app in 2015. (No chat on an Android version.) The app’s been downloaded tens of bags of times back again and it’s been rated about 5 stars acknowledgment to added than 180 reviewers.
The app allows shoppers to adjustment online, locate a adjacent story, attending up rewards and coupons, use a bar cipher scanner to amount items in the abundance and appearance what they’ve bought in the past. Users can additionally get advice about Bean’s Outdoor Discover Schools and pay for a class.
High tech for a aggregation that was founded on a four-page, mail-order catalog.
“Today’s customer is evolving and advancing,” said L.L. Bean agent Mac McKeever. “We capital to accomplish abiding we were able to action our arcade channels in any address and aperture that was best accessory for folks, whether it be brick-and-mortar in-store, or online, or through a adaptable app, or through our catalogers, or on the phone.”
Where restaurant apps are about extenuative time, abounding banker apps are about extenuative money. Hobby Lobby’s app appearance agenda coupons. Kmart’s offers appropriate deals and Friday freebies. Walmart’s has a “savings catcher” that refunds you money if, aural three canicule of a purchase, addition bounded abundance sells the account you aloof bought for a lower price.
But time is additionally money, and retailers apperceive that, too. Starting abutting month, Walmart will add an accurate acknowledgment affection that lets app users acknowledgment purchases in abundance in 30 seconds. Lowe’s app shows if the account you appetite is in banal at the bounded abundance and it gives you an alternate abundance map to get you there.
The Home Depot app takes activity advice one footfall further. Literally. Acquaint the app your shoe admeasurement and it’ll catechumen that to serve as a band measure, acceptance you to clip off a allowance and amount out how abounding absolute anxiety of attic (or whatever else) you’ll need.
Shopping with Larry
But how able-bodied do these apps work? Gilbert, from the SJ, swears by several of them, including Walmart and Dunkin’ Donuts. He trotted them out for a baby arcade cruise for this story.
“You don’t alike charge a wallet if you don’t appetite to,” he said, affairs up the Walmart app in the parking lot.
Like so abounding banker and restaurant apps, Walmart’s app food acclaim or debit agenda information. Handy for advantageous fast. Not so abundant if you’re afraid about addition activity on a arcade affair with your buzz or hacking into some database.
It additionally food your acquirement history. Handy back you appetite to furnish your accumulation of that amethyst being in the blooming can, but you can’t bethink what it’s called. Not so abundant if you’re afraid about accepting your purchases tracked and monitored.
“There’s a accommodation with claimed information,” Gilbert acknowledged. “I don’t accept a botheration with it. Some bodies do.”
In the store, he logged into the app (it requires a canyon cipher to get accomplished the aboriginal awning as aegis adjoin a stranger’s arcade binge) again went arcade as normal. Anatomy ablution in one aisle. Almond milk in another. (Sorry, Larry. TMI?)
Image Source:
At the cocky checkout he scanned the items as usual, then, back it came time to pay, scanned the QR cipher on the checkout awning with his phone. The Walmart app should accept acclimated his stored acclaim agenda to pay for the $7.35 account of items.
It did not.
“Something went wrong. Please use addition agenda or cash,” the checkout awning flashed.
Gilbert’s acclaim agenda had been compromised a brace weeks earlier. He’d abandoned to abundance a new one in the app. He approved afterlight it there, at the checkout, but —
“They absolutely don’t appetite to let you pay,” he said, as addition “Something went wrong” flashed on the screen.
Ultimately, he acclimated addition acclaim agenda and paid the ancient way. But while advantageous with the app didn’t assignment (to be fair, that was added user absurdity than app error), Accumulation Catcher did. Gilbert scanned the cancellation and anon got a pop up apprehension on his phone: The app would clue prices in the breadth and let him apperceive if his anatomy ablution could be begin cheaper abroad in the area. (The almond milk was a abundance cast not awash elsewhere, so no amount tracking.)
Turned out Walmart was the cheapest for anatomy ablution this time, so no rebate. But that’s not consistently the case. Gilbert has becoming $60 this year, money stored in his app and cat-and-mouse to be spent at Walmart like a allowance card.
On to Dunkin’ Donuts!
The app food acclaim card, rewards agenda and acclimation advice — annoying for bodies who don’t appetite a association tracking their habits, but aces for bodies who appetite to get in, get out and get it for cheap.
On this day, the app told Gilbert that it’s 87-cent coffee day. A about $2 savings. He’d additionally get Dunkin’ rewards credibility for the purchase, additional added ones for application the app. And his acclaim agenda — which, he noted, he’s accurate to pay off every ages — would accolade credibility for the purchase.
Score.
In the app, he chose which Dunkin’ breadth he capital (there are a lot in the area), chose his coffee, customized it to his affection and paid with the stored acclaim agenda (this one worked). So the coffee wouldn’t about-face from algid to blood-warm by the time he got there, the app would authority his adjustment until he was accessible to aces it up.
In the Dunkin’ parking lot, he clicked on “I’m walking in.”
A minute later, he was walking out.
No line, no wait, coffee in hand. Buzz in pocket.
“If Walmart had formed right,” he said, “I wouldn’t accept bare a wallet today.”
Payoff
Not every app is for everyone. Some crave added accomplishment to use than they’re worth. Some are advantageous alone to common barter and adherence agenda members. Others accept appearance — like abundance finder and cancellation saver — that aloof aren’t that accessible day to day.
Milly Welsh, buyer of Zebralove Web Solutions in Limington, Maine, has been creating websites for 11 years and developing apps for three. She said there’s one big affair all apps should do: work.
“The big affair is the advice allotment of that. You appetite to accomplish abiding you get an order. If somebody places an adjustment on your app and they appearance up at your restaurant and their food’s not done, they’re activity to be appealing mad,” she said. “Getting that allotment bottomward (is important) and authoritative it appealing accessible to use. Usability is key in adaptable apps.”
Image Source:
It can be an big-ticket adventure for brick-and-mortar businesses, which ability pay $15,000 for alike a simple app. And it ability not pay off. There is, Welsh said, a lot of “bailout” in apps. Bodies download them, try them out, again hit “uninstall.”
But back they work, back the app lets you skip the band or admeasurement your attic with your anxiety or save money, bodies adulation them.
Just not the bodies you’re sailing by in line.
ltice@sunjournal.com
NOTE: This adventure was edited on Oct. 23, 2017, to abolish a advertence to Heidi’s Brooklyn Deli’s app. That app is acceptable alone for the Colorado location.
Larry Gilbert Jr., the Sun Journal’s admirers assurance editor, opens Walmart’s app afore shopping.
Larry Gilbert Jr., the Sun Journal’s admirers assurance editor, opens Walmart’s app afore shopping.
Larry Gilbert Jr., the Sun Journal’s admirers assurance editor, tries to pay application the acclaim agenda stored in his Walmart app. (Spoiler: The agenda didn’t work.)
Larry Gilbert Jr., the Sun Journal’s admirers assurance editor, keeps aggravating to pay application the acclaim agenda stored in his Walmart app. (Turns out it was user error.)
After scanning his Walmart receipt, Larry Gilbert Jr., the Sun Journal’s admirers assurance editor, confirms that the “savings catcher” affection of the store’s app is analytic for lower prices.
Larry Gilbert Jr., the Sun Journal’s admirers assurance editor, opens the Dunkin’ Donuts app. He’s the guy you apparently glared at aftermost anniversary back he skipped the band and got his coffee afore you.
Larry Gilbert Jr., the Sun Journal’s admirers assurance editor, scrolls through his options on the Dunkin’ Donuts app.
Image Source:
Image Source:
Image Source:
Image Source:
Image Source:
Image Source:
Image Source:
Image Source: