Apple’s cafetaria menu online (well, was)

So yesterday a friend mentioned that he spotted something pretty neat about Apple and sent a link. I couldn’t write about this earlier due to the print deadline at work so I asked if anyone else at Macworld would pick it up and someone did.

Apple has been known to do neat things from time to time. Early on, they had a limited edition Macintosh that had the signatures of all of the Mac’s development team members. The commissioned a video of animated iMac G4s playing volleyball at the beach for its launch back in 2002. Even the iMac G4’s ad was quite endearing. Who could forget the launch of both the original Mac and the original iMac?

That link I received led to a web app of the menus at Caffè Macs, Apple’s cafeteria for employees at their Infinite Loop, Ridge View, Austin, and Sacramento A and B campuses. In true Apple style, the main page is clean with only the necessary items displayed. It could not be more straightforward.

It has a drop down menu to select the campus you’re on and a list of menu for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Selecting one would lead you to a list of meals complete with description, ingredients and price. They even have daily specials though there was nothing on specials when I checked.

While it was rather neat to have a peek at the things inside Apple, Inc. even if it was just a cafeteria menu, I’m more intrigued at the idea of putting a restaurant’s menu online and formatted for mobile devices. How great would it be to be able to look at your favorite restaurants’ menu on your phone and know beforehand what you would like to order once you get there? Even better would be if said menu can be used to actually place an order for either eat in, take away or delivery, provided the proper measures are in place to prevent prank orders obviously.

I took a couple of screenshots of how the menu looked like on the iPhone, check them out below. Unfortunately, moments before I began composing this entry, I found out that the menu was taken offline. The original link now leads to Apple’s home page.