Just ordering your food is so 2011: Use an app

You rouse your iPhone, the home screen instantly brightening. You feel like grabbing takeout on the way home.

Instead of dialing a number, you swipe your finger through pages of apps before landing on the purple Counterless icon, which springs to life when you tap it. You quickly fill out the order form, enter your credit card information and, within seconds, your caprese slider and sweet potato fries are in the queue at Centennial Hills burger joint Slidin' Thru.

Counterless, a Las Vegas-based startup, largely eliminates wait times and personal interaction for people on the go. From the free app, you place an order and pay. The restaurant notifies you when your order is being prepped and again when it is ready.

Founder Chris Shepherd intends for the app to be an online ordering hub for local restaurants, food trucks, bars and nightclubs. Slidin' Thru last week kicked off the app's first official run, but Shepherd already has big plans for his startup.

Counterless was born, as most businesses are, from a real life problem. Shepherd, a 23-year-old University of Nevada, Las Vegas graduate, was talking to a girl at a club and decided to buy drinks for the two. It took 15 minutes for Shepherd to navigate the crush of people at the bar and place his order.

When he finally returned with the cocktails, the mystery girl was gone.

"After that, I was like: 'I wish I could have ordered this on my phone,' " he said.

He gathered a team last November at Startup Weekend and developed the app in three days. After working out the kinks at the weekly /usr/lib Vegas Jelly meetups, helped along by test ordering drinks from The Beat coffee shop downstairs, Shepherd is ready to take Counterless citywide.

"The thing about this technology is, it's changing the process," Shepherd said. "You normally are used to going to the counter, giving your order and your credit card, then waiting for your food. This way, you avoid all those steps."

Counterless this week will expand to Slidin' Thru's food truck, reducing lines at the popular lunchtime stop. Other food trucks are in talks to sign on, which is expected to cut congestion at fests like Vegas StrEATs and First Friday.

"It fits in with our business so perfectly because our business is basically run by Apple products," said Slidin' Thru owner Ric Guerrero.

The restaurant is adopting iOS-based payment software and mobile devices at the counter to streamline operations.

"Having a unique way for our customers to order food on their phone without employee interaction is way cool," Guerrero added. "They can just put the order in through their phone, and we make it. It's super easy; we don't have to worry about payment. It's only a matter of time before (Counterless) blows up."

Major restaurant chains like Chipotle and Five Guys Burgers and Fries already allow ordering from their own apps, but small, local restaurants have less time and resources to develop their own apps.

And while some lament the confluence of apps designed to remove other people from our lives altogether, the rise of app development as a stand-alone industry is good for the local economy, said Nevada's Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology Director Dave Archer.

"Apps are amazing because the market for them is enormous but the cost of producing a successful app is very affordable and well within the reach of entrepreneurs, especially young ones," Archer said. "When you think about starting most businesses, you're talking tens, hundreds, millions of dollars."

Armed with a laptop and talent, a developer can create an app with little funds and use the revenue to finance future projects.

Shepherd has monetized Counterless by taking a cut from the transaction - a cost, he said, that is currently not passed on to the consumer.

Contact reporter Caitlin McGarry at cmcgarry@review journal.com or 702-387-5273.