'IM starving'

When a local pizzeria put Keith Nowak on hold on a busy weekday night two years ago, the Boston University junior instant messaged his friends, made plans to meet up later, and developed a business idea inspired by his growling stomach.

Instead of waiting for the pizza guy to juggle a flood of calls and write down his order, Nowak thought it would be cool if he could add the restaurant to his buddy list and order his food the same way he chatted with his friends via "IM." He deferred law school after graduating from BU last year to found Shadow Enterprises LLC, with a plan to bring electronic commerce to instant messaging.

"We foresee the day when all businesses take a screen name, the same way they have a Web address," said Nowak, 23.

As it has in other industries, changing technology has forced restaurants to try different ways to interact with customers. Foodler.com and Campusfood.com, for example, allow people to order from a restaurant over the Internet. Nowak is banking that IM -- a primary communication channel among teens and twentysomethings who prefer its immediacy to e-mail -- represents a big business opportunity for his company's first offering, IM Dining.

A recent visit to the Angora Cafe in Boston suggested he may be right. Matt Loranger , 24, walked into the restaurant to find his burger waiting for him; he had ordered ahead of time, by chatting with "IM Angora" using AOL Instant Messenger on his phone.

Danielle Cooper , 22, who instant messages her sandwich and salad orders to Angora once a week, has come to rely on the service's convenience.

"You know how it is in restaurants -- 'Hi, it's Angora. Can you wait a minute?' -- it turns into however long," said Cooper, who has added the restaurant to her buddy list.

The IM channel offers more than just a new way to order a late-night calzone; it also gives retailers and restaurants that adopt the service a new presence in their customers' lives.

Jennifer Simpson , an analyst at Yankee Group, said that in the past, "a lot of companies, for traditional advertising and marketing, could go and broadcast their stuff on a popular show and meet their audience." But with many young consumers "turning off the TV or not reading newspapers or not even listening to the radio," businesses are trying out new methods.

Jeep, Coke, and Aquafina are among major brands that have created sites on Myspace.com, and tens of thousands of people have added them to their list of "friends."

A study by market research firm Parks Associates in August surveyed 2,100 Internet users and found that e-mail was for old fogies. Over a third of 13- to 17-year-olds, and 29 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds said that instant messaging was the primary channel they use to communicate with friends, far more than said they depended on e-mail. The trend sharply reversed among older people.

"If this is the network people are now using to communicate, you want to be on that network and allow your customers to talk with you," said John Barrett , director of research at Parks Associates. "We tell all our clients -- you've got to find a way to communicate with customers through IM."

For now, IM Dining is being piloted in four area restaurants, with just a handful of orders everyday. Nowak's company gets 3 percent of the tab on every order as payment. While that has produced little revenue in the early months of the service, Nowak expects that more orders will be placed via IM if he can get national restaurant chains to adopt it.

Angora Cafe typically sees about three orders per night. At Pino's Pizza near Boston College, the orders have also started to trickle in, freeing up some of the five phone lines that often ring off the hook on a busy night. Milton Mendez, owner of Burritos on Fire, said that the laptop in the back of his kitchen has been getting steadily busier over the past few months.

Already, banks and companies like Microsoft offer customer service and technical support through online chat.

Now Nowak's business could open a channel between 40 million AOL Instant Messaging users nationwide and their favorite restaurants or stores.

Nowak has distributed fliers through the participating restaurants and advertised online. When people send their first messages to the restaurant's AOL screen name, they receive an automatic response asking whether they would like pick-up or delivery.

Then, Nowak's service opens a Web link to an interactive menu, allowing customers to tick off entrees or add extras.

People can chat with the restaurant if they have questions or special requests, and a person at the restaurant confirms the order and estimates how long it will take.

Reed Pierce , owner of a Quiznos franchise in Virginia, said he plans to introduce IM Dining soon at two restaurants, where it could help clear phone lines, and free employees to make food rather than take orders.

A Papa John's restaurant near the Rutgers University campus in New Jersey also plans to sign on with IM Dining, and RPOWER Restaurant POS of Scottsdale, Ariz., a company that builds the computer systems that 600 restaurants use to manage their orders, is also incorporating the IM Dining software into their systems.

"Instead of people calling and getting a busy signal...this is just going to offer a different medium through which to reach us," Pierce said. "Different and faster and much more efficient."

Carolyn Y. Johnson can be reached at cjohnson@globe.com.