Making Lunch a Social Networking Game

4food ordering The 4food ordering page allows customers to customize a burger.
4food leader-boardNick Bilton/The New York Times The 4Food leaderboard shows the most-ordered burgers.




Customers start by going to, where they can build a burger. There’s a list of options to choose from, including the type of burger bun,  a beef, turkey, veggie or salmon patty, condiments and more.

This is also why the burgers are shaped like doughnuts: customers are asked to pick a “scoop,” which goes into the middle of the burger, from options like avocado and chili mango, baked beans or mac and cheese.

Once you place your order, you can give it a name and off you go to pick it up. And this is where the game aspect comes in. 4Food has a leaderboard that shows the most-ordered burger. That turns it into a social networking food game.

Here’s how it works: I create a burger, call it “The Bits Burger” and broadcast it to Twitter or Facebook. Each time someone orders my special creation, I get 25 cents credit in the restaurant and my burger rises up the leaderboard. The more customers order my burger, the higher it goes and the more credits I get, until I’m eating free.

It might sound like a lot of work for lunch, but as we’ve seen with the proliferation of online gaming on sites like Facebook, adding a gaming and competitive aspect to an everyday  experience, like  lunch, could incentivize customers to promote 4Food online.

Thursday night’s event, which was sponsored by the technology blog Gizmodo, offered its own competitive prelude to the leaderboard with some predesigned burger creations called Android, BlackBerry and iPhone.

In addition to a connected burger, the space is as plugged-in as you will find: there are more power outlets in 4Food  than I’ve seen in the lighting and electronics aisle at Home Depot. And of course there will be free Wi-Fi too.

One of the store managers told me last night that 4Food also plans a mobile app in the next few months so customers can place orders from anywhere.