WHILE some read a book and others catch up on TV, one Ludgershall man has used his train commute to design an app.

Dave Tuplin began designing the Pocket Waiter app in November 2017 after a meal out with his wife, Dawn.

He said: “I was in a restaurant and I was trying to attract the attention of the waiter to get a drink. It was so busy and I think they were understaffed and I said to my wife that there should be an app for this.”

Within weeks Dave had began working on the project on his train commute from the town into London, spending over two hours a day on the code.

“I work in London and I’m sat for around an hour then get off so rather than looking out the window or reading a book I would do this,” said computer programmer Dave.

“I said I could write this in a few months and I started working on it. I knew that Wetherspoons and then Wagamama had similar apps which were coming out.

“I got started and it went from something that was quite simple to then something that was more and more involved in what I had to do.”

The idea behind the app is that when customers are in a restaurant they can order food and drink which is then printed out to staff or displayed on an iPad.

But his work was not confined to the train carriages as he had to approach a patent expert in a bid get the rights to the name from an Australian firm which was no long using the term.

And after that success Dave is now looking at launching the app in America and Canada once the project has become established in the UK.

Dave has already got the backing of his local Indian restaurant, Goa, in Everleigh.

“I went to do a test with the restaurant and they wanted to be involved and to carry out a live test with customers, and they wanted a couple of changes, once these are in place we will launch the app there.”

Dave added: “They want to invite some of their customers that have had issues in the past attracting the wait staff and I would like some other live customers to test the app.”

He has also began looking at offering the app to restaurants in Andover.

“If the testing goes well it would be quite nice to approach different restaurants in Andover.”