Like many restaurants last Sunday, Bukhara Indian Bistro in Jamaica Plain was slammed. It was Mother’s Day, which the National Restaurant Association considers the industry’s busiest day of the year.
A combined 425 diners cycled through the Bistro that day for lunch and dinner, sampling fragrant dishes like spiced tandoori duck, curried swordfish, and vegan tofu saag, the manager, Vijay Dsouza, said.
But not so on the weekdays following. Patronage on a day-to-day basis fluctuates at Bukhara Indian Bistro, posing challenges unique to the food service industry.
That’s one reason Dsouza’s restaurant — owned by One World Cuisine, a restaurant group that owns 12 Indian-styled eateries in Greater Boston — has signed on to use a new food app called GoPapaya, which launched here on Monday.
Founded by a self-identified “foodie’’ and former director of engineering at EMC Corp. (soon to be Dell Technologies), GoPapaya aims to give restaurants a way to fill empty tables by enticing would-be diners with discounts.
“It’s a nice thing to be drawing in customers. At least you have something in your hands that you control. I can say: ‘We want to give a 20 percent discount on this Tuesday night,’ ’’ Dsouza said, or “any time when we need to pull in the crowd.’’
Bukhara Indian Bistro is one of more than 40 restaurants in Greater Boston now registered with GoPapaya. The app’s founder and chief executive, Marik Marshak, said GoPapaya was inspired by a very basic economic tenet: supply and demand.
Marshak said that unlike other businesses, restaurants often don’t have the tools to respond to changing demand. While retail stores can drum up sales with blowout deals or promotions, the process can be more complicated for restaurants, whose “merchandise’’ is prepared food that must be thrown out after a particularly slow day or two.
“Restaurants need a good way to create demand for those empty tables,’’ Marshak said.
So he created a platform where participating restaurants can post what amounts to a real-time coupon for some percentage off their meal. This, Marshak said he hopes, will be enough to lure frugal diners through the door.
Marshak admits that he’s entering a crowded market for food and restaurant tech. But unlike some of the most popular consumer apps for the food industry, including app-delivery titans GrubHub Inc. and its subsidiary Seamless, GoPapaya doesn’t cater to hungry home-dwellers.
Rather, the app targets users looking to eat out and save some money. Restaurants set their own discounts, between 10 and 75 percent, which Marshak said applies to the entire meal, excluding drinks, in accordance with Massachusetts’ law governing drink specials.
Users download the free app and log on with their e-mail or Facebook credentials to see, in real time, all the restaurants offering discounts near them. Users claim a deal and reserve a table by tapping a bar at the bottom of the screen, then race to the restaurant. Reservations expire after 30 minutes, but Marshak said users can log on and repeat the booking process — assuming the restaurant hasn’t ended the promotion.
“We are talking about immediate seating,’’ said Marshak, who emphasized that GoPapaya shows what’s available in real time. “If today’s a Monday and you want to make a specific reservation on Tuesday, don’t go to this app.’’
Marshak’s self-funded GoPapaya is limited to those 40-plus eateries in Greater Boston, for now. He said he expects by the end of the year to expand to New York and San Francisco, with the backing of investors.
Amanda Burke can be reached at amanda.burke@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @charlie_acb.
