Syosset eatery's wine list comes to diners via iPad

Instead of a bulky paper menu, waiters at a Syosset steak and sushi restaurant will soon present iPads to diners to let them flick and swipe through the 700 wine selections.

By the end of the month, the restaurant, Rare650, will be the first on Long Island to carry the electronic SmartCellar wine lists on iPads. Dozens of restaurants, including SD26 and South Gate in Manhattan, have introduced the technology on other handheld gadgets since last year. They began switching to iPads as soon as the device came out this spring.

Right now, the program is customized specifically for hotels and restaurants.

The interactive, wireless wine list "will enhance our guest experience and help me to try to get people to try new things," said sommelier Richard Dorney. Customers can learn more about wines or limit selections by price range, he added. Inventory will be adjusted in real time, he noted, so if the restaurant sells its last bottle of a certain wine, it will disappear from the list.

The creator of the software behind the wine list is a Plainview-based firm called Incentient, which develops customer-friendly programs for the hospitality industry.

Patrick Martucci, chairman and chief executive, founded the company two years ago with his wife, Jennifer, who is senior vice president of marketing and product development.

The business idea came from a bad experience the couple had as hotel guests, a classic "telephone game gone bad," said Patrick Martucci. "I couldn't get room service right for my wife to save my life," he said. "We said, Why don't we take technology to where it needs to be and let's get touch screens in hotel rooms and let the client have direct access to the applications."

The company designed a program used on a freestanding glass, 19-inch touch-screen panel that hotel guests can use in their rooms to ask for more towels, order room service or request a taxi without using the phone.

In the hotel industry, Incentient faces competition from firms providing guest services through websites, smart phones or the TV, Martucci said. For instance, Omni Hotels & Resorts, based in Irving, Texas, is expanding an online ordering system launched in three hotels in 2007 to six more by next year. The system is made by GBCblue, based in Vancouver, Wash.

Restaurateurs from Southern California to Florida, meanwhile, are also experimenting with iPad wine list apps. Jack Serfass, co-owner of Naples Tomato, a Mediterranean restaurant in Naples, Fla., said he is testing an iPad wine list that includes sommeliers' recommendations. Diners will have a choice of the regular printed wine list or a restaurant iPad.

Incentient's products are being used in about 40 restaurants and hotels in North America, London and Hong Kong, Martucci said. The company has 16 employees and is hiring software and web developers.

Both founders have experience as entrepreneurs: Martucci founded tech services firm United Asset Coverage Inc., based in Naperville, Ill., in 1997. Jennifer Martucci founded GPSTracks, which monitors pets through GPS chips, in Dallas in 2000.

A few years ago they sold their companies and launched Incentient, investing millions, just as the economy was tanking. But Martucci said he grew his previous firm to 2,700 employees despite the dot-com bust. "We have the same expectations here," he said, adding they hope to turn a profit by next year.