We've seen rumblings of this in a few places across the media - as the economy crawls out of recession, diners are shifting back to the casual dining segment. Nation's Restaurant News cited this in an online article in late May.

According to the article: "Respondents devoted 37.7% of their restaurant spending to limited-service restaurants during the quarter, a decline from 41% - 42.1% during the previous year.  Meanwhile, consumers said they spent about 41.1% of their dining-out dollars on casual dining restaurants, up from 38% - 39.4% seen in 2011."

The market for casual dining is coming back and casual dining is a huge user of online ordering services like NetWaiter.

Also, according to Restaurant Hospitality, 84% of those restaurants that have a stand-alone mobile website see an increase in new business activity.

"We're starting to see the beginnings of a perfect storm for online ordering," said Jared Shimoff, a Sr. Director at NetWaiter.  "The market is shifting more towards the casual dining sector, and at the same time, we are seeing an explosion in the popularity of smartphones."

"All the data we've seen tells us that mobile websites, with the ability to place orders, continue to increase as a major influence on the restaurant market.  Thankfully, we’re able to keep our clients on the forefront of this growing trend."

If you walk into The Pickle Barrel, a sandwich shop in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the first thing you notice is all of the employees wearing T-shirts with QR codes printed on the back.  When they turn around, the front of the T-shirt reads: “Ask Me About Online Ordering.”

“We’ve been using NetWaiter for online ordering since January and we love it,” said owner Jen O’Brien, who opened the sandwich shop seven years ago in this town of 153,000 people.  “We have a lot of fun with it, and it’s convenient for both our customers and us.”

With the arrival of online ordering, O’Brien decided to step up some marketing to build its awareness.  She started placing a sign at a random location in the city, and then dropped daily hints on the restaurant’s Facebook site regarding its location.  Each person that found the sign and posted a picture of it on The Pickle Barrel Facebook page got entered into a drawing at the end of the week for a $25 gift certificate.

“In just a few days we got fifty new friends on our Facebook site and a ton of orders,” said O’Brien.

O’Brien has been using social media to promote the restaurant for a few years.  She readily admits that there is a good deal of experimentation involved.  “Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.  The nice thing about the NetWaiter Management Console is that I can see right away if a promotion resulted in more online sales.  I know what’s working.”