By VADIM LAVRUSIK

Noah Glass, 28, founder of GoMobo. The company is looking to expand its services to 2,000 restaurants this coming year. (Photo: Vadim Lavrusik)

When Noah Glass worked on Wall Street, he would line up with hundreds of other professionals and wait for what seemed like an eternity to get his morning coffee. Frustrated, he wondered what it would be like to skip the line by ordering in advance.

In fact, he was willing to put off going to Harvard Business School to pursue the idea.

Glass, 28, now runs GoMobo, a company that allows customers of some 500 restaurants to skip the line by ordering through a text message, online or a mobile application. You can even order for delivery from those restaurants.

“The idea really came from my own consumer frustration,” Glass said. “Cutting out the wait in getting your food.”

The site is just one of several popular Web sites such as grubhub.com, seamlessweb.com, delivery.com, that cater to people who want food quickly. GoMobo, however, sets itself apart by offering multiple options to order food for take out or delivery. And after founding GoMobo in 2005, Glass said the company expects the number of restaurants using GoMobo to increase to more than 1,000 by year’s end and a revenue of $10 million for 2010.

That money comes from fees GoMobo charges for its services. For chain restaurants, GoMobo charges a flat daily fee of $2 to $5 per store, depending on whether the restaurant signs up for marketing services. For individual restaurants, GoMobo gets 10 percent of the transaction. So what’s in it for restaurants?

David Fellows, director of product development, at the GoMobo headquarters in SoHo. Fellows has been with the young company for three years. (Photo: Vadim Lavrusik)

A potential increase in customers who might not have ordered from the restaurant during, say, their lunch hour, if it weren’t for the convenience and speed of using GoMobo.

Dallas BBQ tested the service at its Chelsea location in August and received roughly 100 orders through GoMobo, according to Sarah Haman, account executive at SHARPLEFT marketing agency. And in September, that number jumped to 150 orders, Haman said.

They are now rolling out the service to multiple locations and are about to launch a separate Web site that GoMobo customizes for restaurants’ online ordering services. She said the restaurant has a heavy takeout business, which is why she thinks the service has been successful.

“Almost any restaurant that has a successful takeout business will be successful with online ordering,” Haman said. “With so many New Yorkers ordering delivery and takeout, this makes it even easier.”

But the service isn’t gaining traction just in New York. With the exception of the Dakotas, Glass said, the company has restaurants in all of the states. But it is more popular in urban areas, he said.

James Harrington, 56, was dropping into a SUBWAY — one of GoMobo’s clients in the Upper West Side — during his lunch break on Thursday. Harrington said he has never used GoMobo, but often uses other online ordering services, especially with pizza ordering.

Harrington, whose son, Asante Samuels, plays for the Philadelphia Eagles, said, “It’s convenient, especially now that the football season has started. But other times you just want to go to the place because you want to go for a walk.”

Cutting the time spent in waiting isn’t just a boon for the customers.

Noah Glass gives suggestions on GoMobo's Web site redesign to Mike Hirst, creative director. The company is looking to release a fresh look for its site. (Photo: Vadim Lavrusik)

Tahir Siddiqui, general manager of several SUBWAY stores in Manhattan, said they have been able to cut some of the time spent on labor and increase the number of people coming through the store. It makes the process much more efficient, he said. More people per hour means more revenue.

Siddiqui said they get a lot of online orders during the lunch hours on weekdays; people trying to save some time on their breaks.

“I think that people eventually will use this more,” he said.

He also said a majority of the time the service is very accurate in the timing of the order coming in and the customer arriving.

The Web site uses an algorithm to determine what Glass calls the “go time,” or the estimated amount of time it would take to prepare the order at any given time of day. This is based on various factors like how long it would take you to get to the restaurant, how big the order is, number of customers before you, and more. The aim is to get the order ready for you just before you arrive.

Glass said he is aiming to take this one step further. The company is working on incorporating a GPS element so that customers can order on-the-go.

“For now, we’re just trying to focus on developing our current services to more clients,” he said.