Flip camera creator now has taste for restaurant industry

What do you do once you sell your business to Cisco... and Cisco decides to 86 it? Well, if you're Jonathan Kaplan, who sold Cisco his Pure Digital business, maker of the widely popular--and now discontinued--Flip camera, you launch a restaurant chain that keeps technology on the menu.

The Melt

Kaplan, the creator of the Flip camera, is now opening The Melt, which will sell soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.

Kaplan is opening a string of eateries called "The Melt," that will serve soups and, obviously, grilled cheese. Customers will be encouraged to order using mobile apps and pay for them with their mobile phones. He says he has initial plans to open eight of the stores at $500,000 to $1 million each.

He demoed the concepts at the Wall Street Journal's D9 confab, and mentioned that Sequoia, better known for investing in software companies than in companies that use dinnerware, was one of his backers. Why?

Kaplan points out food chain Chipolte Mexican Grill's $9 billion valuation.

Order up!

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