Croissant allows you to reserve a seat at coffee shops

Three co-founders from a local deals startup Perqy, Dave Idell, Adam Chew, and Nisha Garigan, met up this weekend at the TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2015 Hackathon to present their project which uses iBeacons installed at local businesses, like coffee shops or co-working spaces, to allow customers to reserve a spot and then be automatically be charged for the exact number of minutes they worked at the venue. Business owners could also view a map of their customers in real-time from an online dashboard. The idea for the hack, explains Idell, was inspired by a recent visit to a coffee shop which offered something similar, but used a more manual system involving checking in on a tablet installed in the store. There, customers would enter in their phone number and seat number to provide the business with their name and location. But with Croissant, checkins would instead happen automatically by way of a consumer-facing mobile app. From this app (which was not complete at the time of the hackathon demo), customers could reserve a seat at the co-working space or even order items from an in-app food and drink menu.