Sunday, April 24, 2011

Your next waiter or waitress may be ... a tablet



"As the mainstream tablet war rages, a similar device battle is heating up in the restaurant industry. Tablets that take orders, entertain guests and accept check payments are coming to a table near you."

"One company that is selling those tablets, E la Carte, announced on Tuesday that it has raised more than $1 million in funding from prominent investors like Y Combinator, Dave McClure and SV Angel. The company will soon be launching tablets in 20 restaurants on the West coast. It also has a partnership with a large restaurant chain in the pipeline that hasn't been announced yet -- but the fact that Applebee's executives participated in the funding round might provide a hint. Why the interest in providing every table with their own touch-screen tablet? For starters, people buy more food when they can do so instantly, without waiting for service. In the six restaurants that ran a pilot scheme, according to CEO Rajat Suri, customers at E la Carte tables spent 10% to 12% more than those at other tables."

"E la Carte tablets allow customers to browse a full menu and communicate their orders directly to the kitchen. They come loaded with social games and a calculator for check splits and tips. They also allow customers to email themselves a receipt or instantly sign up for a loyalty club. In high-end restaurants, the tablet can suggest an appropriate wine pairing for a meal. Eventually, E la Carte might offer restaurants the option to compile data about their customers' preferences as they use the device. Some restaurants have attempted similar functionality by loading their menus onto iPads or asking customers to download an app onto their own devices. The iPad's problem in this situation: its minimum $499 price tag. Restaurants that can afford menus that expensive aren't casual restaurants, like Applebee's, where a digital ordering system seems more appropriate. Asking users to download an app like Storific poses the problem that not everybody carries a smartphone. Even those who do might not want to pause and download an app as they sit down to lunch. A dedicated device, which E la Carte plans to install for a price that is "significantly lower" than the iPad, seems to be a more promising way for the tech world to break into the $6 billion U.S. restaurant industry."

"Other companies are already in this game. Tabletop Media makes a similar tabletop product that it began to deploy in 2008. The company has established customers with chains like Chili's Uno's Chicago Grill, and California Pizza Kitchen and will be in 250 stores by the end of the summer. Both E la Carte and Tabletop Media charge the restaurants a monthly fee to use a network of devices. "It's propelling the restaurant industry into the Internet age," Suri says."

Many may wonder what this has to do with design, but technology involves the interaction of others and learning how they feel about a product, in order to better the design concept of the product. How do feel about restaurant industry moving more in the Internet age?


18 comments:

  1. I was in Downers Grove at Chili's over Spring break and they had something like this. It wasn't quite a tablet, but it was a digital menu and you could order, pay the check, and everything with it.

    At first I thought it was pretty cool, as it allows people to see more photos of what they're ordering (there just isn't space on a regular menu), but we tried to use it to order dessert and the waitress had to stand there and explain how exactly to go about doing it. Then, it turns out they were out of it in the kitchen. There is a lot of improvement needed before these become popular, but I wouldn't mind them in some restaurants.

    Although, as someone who works as a cashier in a restaurant, I worry about devices that will someday replace the minimum-wage jobs that help people pay rent.

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  2. This is cool but it makes me feel uneasy about the whole thing because it will replace the jobs of people and this adds to our changing world into all electronic. Sometimes I like being able to talk to people in person and order from them or ask them how they like a particular dish just to have an opinion.

    With people always communicating through electronic devices makes me feel like things that are human are going to start missing. The way relationships can form from people interacting in person will now be forming over technology even when you order food at a restaurant. For some reason this freaks me out because I think it is important for people to be able to do things in person and communicate this way.

    After saying all of this I am guilty of having social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn, but I do not really want the whole communication thing to expand any further than that.

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  3. I used to work at chili's but this wasn't out yet. However I went in to visit the location I used to work at over the weekend and they had these in the bar seats. I heard mixed reviews from the waitstaff. Apparently the only things that they can do is order coffee, dessert and let you pay your bill without having to have the waitress go and run the card for you.

    There is another place close to my house that have used these little handheld devices, sort of like an ipod touch, that has the restaurant software installed on it. The waitstaff uses them like they would the typical notepad they use to write down orders, but it is connected to the kitchen, thus taking out the extra step of waiting in line to ring up an order at a standard waiter computer station. It was ingenious. I think this second way is better than the new "at the table" ones because it is easy for a customer to make a mistake. Although I guess this may be good for the waitstaff because then they can be blamed if the order comes out wrong!

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  4. I love those things, ever time I go to Chili's I love to play with it. It's so convenient and clever- splits bills, print receipts, gives you movie times and games to play while you wait... if only it could bring me my food. I guess there are multiple versions, some more advanced than others, but this idea is genius. The only problem is it's so large and obnoxious looking on the table, they need a better design or somewhere you can store it under the table or something, besides that I think it could be the norm at restaurants.

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  5. This type of thing is starting to really piss me off. Again, we work to reduce the interaction between people. Ohhh, a flashy new toy to play with and distract ourselves from the awareness of other human beings around us. Are we so desperate to eliminate every aspect of our personal interactions. Sorry, but I cannot agree with going to such extremes and like Katie said. What about people who need these jobs. It's sad that we are becoming a race dead set on making ourselves expendable.

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  6. I agree with Jene and Tony. While I think it's great that restaurants are trying to keep up withe information age, it will put a lot of people out of jobs. Plus, what's the point of going out to eat if you don't want to interact or socialize with others? In my opinion, the best part of eating out is the experience, which in this case is completely lost with the use of the machine.

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  7. I think this is cool, but I share many of the reservations voiced here about how this will put people out of jobs and how it's a sign of how we're really starting to get detached from human interaction in meatspace. I'm a pretty asocial person, but I recognize that I do need IRL people interaction in order to be happy, and that includes being waited on in a restaurant. Even if the experience is shitty, it's at least something. Maybe they could just install machines on a certain number of tables and ask people at the door whether they prefer the tablet or an actual waitperson.

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  8. I have to echo the concerns about job losses here. I understand the appeal, but I wish as a culture we would stand back and ask ourselves "do we need the internet to replace EVERYTHING made pre-21st century?" We're phasing out people in favor of screens in so many ways, and I really think it will be more of a detriment to most of us than anything.

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  9. I really don't like that restaurants are moving in this direction. It seems to impersonal. Not only are you not interacting with a server while out to eat, but families start to not interact at the table. I feel like part of the going out to dinner experience is the time you spend with the people you are sharing a meal with. With the new tabletop technology I have seem families out with their kids while the kids just play games and the parents sit and talk. Eating is such a social event and with technology it makes it almost anti-social. I just don't understand why there is this need to order everything without any social interaction at all. If you don't want to interact with people then you should stay home and order take out online.

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  10. This in my opinion seems like a general waste of time, yes it may be great for more pictures of dishes on the menu but the fact is that if this is incorporated into more and more places the jobs for actual people will decrease.

    Overall, it just seems like it will take more time to program and to fix out problems with this machine than it would for an actual human to take somebody's order.

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  11. i would like to see this in practice. it would streamline the restaurant order process.

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  12. This is an interesting post because going to restaurants like this makes me think about how technology is taking over our generation. People have been losing jobs drastically nowadays due to the progression of technology. It's quite scary!

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  13. I feel that this is gearing towards taking away job security. Like everyone has been saying, it is just another example of how we are obsessed with developing that the progress is so fast. I mean machines are now doing what a human did. That is scary and a sign that we should slow our roll.

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  14. I agree with you Lili, machines may be taking jobs away from people, but they also may be opening up new opportunitues as well

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  15. So,anyone one else think were moving toward a time of the ROBOTS!! Technology can now do most things that people can do,but quicker and more efficient(at times)..Lookout!

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  16. I also think we are way to dependent on tech people usually do the job much better and more efficiently.

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  17. Not only am I concerned with the security with jobs, but also my own personal information being on these things or their servers. Not that I am a paranoid person, but I had my credit card information stolen before and this raises a red flag in that sense as well.

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  18. I have not seen anything like this and would be curious to experience it for myself. I also agree that it may take away jobs of waitresses and waiters and then even more people would be jobless.

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