4 ms·

This Software Tracks Everything You Do at Restaurants and Nightclubs

29 points by SQL2219 10y ago

faitswulff 10y ago
Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), this software isn't as creepy as I had hoped. It doesn't use computer vision to literally track club-goers, it simply allows the doormen to check someone's identity: "...they saw doormen turn away celebrities, billionaires, and in one instance, even the owner of the nightclub....In this game of “who’s who,” a doorman can literally lose his job if he doesn’t know who’s standing in front of him." Seven Rooms, the startup in question, is basically a CRM for doormen with additional tie-ins to the POS to track sales history. The idea is to know someone's celebrity status in order to ingratiate them to the club. Also, a warning: there is auto-playing video in the link.
- mason55 10y ago
  > The idea is to know someone's celebrity status in order to ingratiate them to the club. Restaurants at least don't have a problem with this right now. High-end restaurants will have pre-service meetings where they discuss all the VIPs coming in that day to make sure that both back of house and front of house know exactly who's coming and what they want. The real step forward, which they mentioned in the last sentence of the article, will be when you can treat the random Joe like you can a VIP. Let's I've been to two different properties that you own and spent a total of $300. I walk in to a new restaurant and your sommelier says "I see you like jammy pinot noirs from Oregon at the $50 price point, let me recommend this bottle" then you can make everyone feel like a VIP.
  - greenyoda 10y ago
    I'm not sure that it's a step forward, since someone who I've never met before getting my preferences from a database definitely lacks the human touch. It has about as much charm as getting a recommendation from Amazon based on my purchase history. At the sushi restaurant where I'm a regular, I'm personally recognized and greeted when I walk in. (They can't ID me by my reservation, since I never make reservations.) No amount of computer-driven "VIP treatment" could substitute for that.
joezydeco 10y ago
" For instance, the startup analyzed customer orders of a high-end New York City nightclub, and the findings were eye-opening. Across all vodka orders in the last two years, 50% of customers ordered Grey Goose, 25% ordered Belvedere, and 5% ordered Ketel One." So what's more puzzling is that most bars and clubs use standard restaurant POS systems, and nobody has ever offered any kind of deep analysis like this before? It kind of makes me think that there's an opportunity to do this for some if the larger restaurant chains, if they're not trying it already.
- mason55 10y ago
  My girlfriend works in fine dining in NYC and we were just talking about this. Apparently her restaurant group tried a similar service a couple years ago. The big problems were getting everything integrated (POS, OpenTable, everything else) in a way that wasn't buggy and then providing that information to the servers in a way that made sense. At a high end (multiple Michelin stars) restaurant you can't have the servers walking around with iPads and space is at a premium. They also had trouble tuning the amount of information that the servers were seeing so that it was quickly actionable.
  - joezydeco 10y ago
    I know one group is experimenting with Apple Watches, which still seems very awkward for multiple reasons. I'm wondering if the Airpods with a conversational system is a better way to go. Still not the greatest appearance-wise, but eventually these things are going to slip into an ear canal and be invisible. There's also a downside to deep data-mining, as related in the Target "your daughter is pregnant" story. Things could backfire if you action on too much data (e.g. a diner visiting with his wife instead of his usual mistress)
    - mason55 10y ago
      > e.g. a diner visiting with his wife instead of his usual mistress They do stress to the servers if a VIP who has been in before will be visiting with his wife for the first time. I don't know if anyone's actually made the mistake but for sure it's a possibility they're aware of and talk about.
janci 10y ago
How do they identify the clients across multiple visits? (What unique and always present identifier they use?)
- chiph 10y ago
  Probably just by name. But I could see them wanting to track by the customer's phone emissions (Bluetooth ID, etc) to make that simpler and less annoying (like not asking Leonardo DiCaprio "who are you again?")
- caseysoftware 10y ago
  Credit card is probably a reasonable lookup most of the time. When (most) people open a tab, they'll have to hand one over briefly. While name collisions happen, within a segment this specific, it's probably rare. If you were trying to do it across all Walmart stores, it would be a constant problem.

29 points by SQL2219 10y ago

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), this software isn't as creepy as I had hoped. It doesn't use computer vision to literally track club-goers, it simply allows the doormen to check someone's identity: "...they saw doormen turn away celebrities, billionaires, and in one instance, even the owner of the nightclub....In this game of “who’s who,” a doorman can literally lose his job if he doesn’t know who’s standing in front of him." Seven Rooms, the startup in question, is basically a CRM for doormen with additional tie-ins to the POS to track sales history. The idea is to know someone's celebrity status in order to ingratiate them to the club. Also, a warning: there is auto-playing video in the link.

mason55 10y ago
> The idea is to know someone's celebrity status in order to ingratiate them to the club. Restaurants at least don't have a problem with this right now. High-end restaurants will have pre-service meetings where they discuss all the VIPs coming in that day to make sure that both back of house and front of house know exactly who's coming and what they want. The real step forward, which they mentioned in the last sentence of the article, will be when you can treat the random Joe like you can a VIP. Let's I've been to two different properties that you own and spent a total of $300. I walk in to a new restaurant and your sommelier says "I see you like jammy pinot noirs from Oregon at the $50 price point, let me recommend this bottle" then you can make everyone feel like a VIP.
- greenyoda 10y ago
  I'm not sure that it's a step forward, since someone who I've never met before getting my preferences from a database definitely lacks the human touch. It has about as much charm as getting a recommendation from Amazon based on my purchase history. At the sushi restaurant where I'm a regular, I'm personally recognized and greeted when I walk in. (They can't ID me by my reservation, since I never make reservations.) No amount of computer-driven "VIP treatment" could substitute for that.

joezydeco 10y ago

" For instance, the startup analyzed customer orders of a high-end New York City nightclub, and the findings were eye-opening. Across all vodka orders in the last two years, 50% of customers ordered Grey Goose, 25% ordered Belvedere, and 5% ordered Ketel One." So what's more puzzling is that most bars and clubs use standard restaurant POS systems, and nobody has ever offered any kind of deep analysis like this before? It kind of makes me think that there's an opportunity to do this for some if the larger restaurant chains, if they're not trying it already.

mason55 10y ago
My girlfriend works in fine dining in NYC and we were just talking about this. Apparently her restaurant group tried a similar service a couple years ago. The big problems were getting everything integrated (POS, OpenTable, everything else) in a way that wasn't buggy and then providing that information to the servers in a way that made sense. At a high end (multiple Michelin stars) restaurant you can't have the servers walking around with iPads and space is at a premium. They also had trouble tuning the amount of information that the servers were seeing so that it was quickly actionable.
- joezydeco 10y ago
  I know one group is experimenting with Apple Watches, which still seems very awkward for multiple reasons. I'm wondering if the Airpods with a conversational system is a better way to go. Still not the greatest appearance-wise, but eventually these things are going to slip into an ear canal and be invisible. There's also a downside to deep data-mining, as related in the Target "your daughter is pregnant" story. Things could backfire if you action on too much data (e.g. a diner visiting with his wife instead of his usual mistress)
  - mason55 10y ago
    > e.g. a diner visiting with his wife instead of his usual mistress They do stress to the servers if a VIP who has been in before will be visiting with his wife for the first time. I don't know if anyone's actually made the mistake but for sure it's a possibility they're aware of and talk about.

janci 10y ago

How do they identify the clients across multiple visits? (What unique and always present identifier they use?)

chiph 10y ago
Probably just by name. But I could see them wanting to track by the customer's phone emissions (Bluetooth ID, etc) to make that simpler and less annoying (like not asking Leonardo DiCaprio "who are you again?")
caseysoftware 10y ago
Credit card is probably a reasonable lookup most of the time. When (most) people open a tab, they'll have to hand one over briefly. While name collisions happen, within a segment this specific, it's probably rare. If you were trying to do it across all Walmart stores, it would be a constant problem.