Most major chains already have apps, at least I Know McDonalds and Burger King both do. The McD's app does have online ordering too, and you can pick it up at the restaurant. Less chance of confusion when dealing with a screen or mobile device if you don't have a standardish order.

But the end price often ends up higher than the fancy restaurant across the street.

One of the main draws of the mobile apps are the discount coupons. At McDonalds you can get many of their sandwiches for $1 using the mobile checkout coupon, including the Fish Filet and Big Mac. I've been using it pretty regularly recently to get a single sandwich, no side, for lunch. Burger King has similar deals, but they are usually oriented around getting two adult meals for $6, etc.

But does this get you any savings? To lure people back to restaurants (which McD's is, barely) there has to be some novel marketing

You can get many of their sandwiches for $1 using the mobile checkout coupon, including the Fish Filet and Big Mac. I've been using it pretty regularly recently.

Opps for franchise cos which grant more local control over menu perhaps?

to c/p an old comment of mine:

Another interesting application of blockchains could be to the yelp/foursquare/tripadvisor/opentable/dining-rewards/loyality space. One protocol to handle menus, reviews, and reward points, instead of a separate incompatible reward app and shitty non mobile website for each damn restaurant. Another, and different component of trust in this ecosystem would be verification of authenticity vs spam.

I don't know that I've seen one of these blockchain ideas that doesn't boil down to "wouldn't it be great if <complicated industry> all used the same database/protocol/interface/ for <complicated process>"

On one hand: of course, yes, that would be awesome! On the other, the coordination problem vastly overwhelms the technical problem i.e. getting a large group of competitive companies aligned around a single standard is impossible, insert link to xkcd 'competing standards' comic here, etc. I get that blockchain 'solves the trust problem' but the problem of distrust between those competitive actors is not related to former.

OTOOH: if the hype around blockchain is what we need to get those gaggles of competitors aligned around something...

im not saying its practical, im saying its ideal.

the world standardized around http/smtp. I dont think a standardized restaurant-menu-trust-loyality-payment chain is impossible. Look how long it took email to take off (and then got replaced by facebook.)

Its much more likely for a yelp/foursquare to gobble up the market, but I'd prefer a decentralized protocol for distributing menus...

And to criticize your criticism, standard menu metadata + loyality + reviews is not a complicated process, its just not an angle thats really been attacked before. I dont know of a menu database that is intended to feed third party clients like yelp/foursquare/allmenus. All the menu hosts want to be the end user client. My idea is more about separating the database from the client, and sharing a database between a couple companies. For something like this to happen, all you would need is yelp and foursquare (tripadvisor, opentable, zagat, urbanspoon, zomato) to create a consortium and invite a couple other big players. Its not about the restaurants self organizing.