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Tablets at restaurants: Applebee's, Chili's race to eliminate human interaction
- pirateking 13y agoAnd it is only a matter of time until McDonalds is effectively a brick and mortar sized 3D printer of food-like compounds with a Siri interface...
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoVending restaurants are already pervasive in Japan. There might still be a human cook involved, but you order with coins at a machine.
- Larrikin 13y agoPersonally I think its great most of the time. Human interaction should still be an option, especially when it comes to specialty orders. I always felt something like this could work well at places that have a lunch rush in America. A string of machines that don't accept substitutions and only credit cards, along with a line for people who want a human to take their order.
- mcrider 13y agoThis has already happened in countless other industries (airlines, banking to name a couple which have moved most customer interaction to the web). There's no reason it shouldn't happen with the food industry, there is just too much inefficiency in the current process.
- jessaustin 13y agoIt has been a few years, but my impression of the coin-operated stand-up ramen shops I frequented in Tokyo was that the cook and cook's assistant were the only people working there, and they often had no time to spare dealing with money. If labor costs must be reduced, it seems better to cut the cashier than the cook.
- snogglethorpe 13y agoThey probably do reduce the staff workload by some amount (although there doesn't seem to be any obvious difference in staffing levels between Japanese restaurants that use "shokken" and those that don't). I've also sort of assumed that one of the reasons they use them is because they make it a little easier to avoid "trouble": typically you pay first when you use a shokken, and you pay after your meal when you don't...
- judk 13y agoThis was called automat in the USA, popular in the 1970s.
- jrs99 13y agohow about an app and a drone that dips a fry into ketchup and drops it into your mouth.
- jjwiseman 13y agoSoftware matters. Here's a historic record of my attempt to eat at uWink, Nolan Bushnell's touchscreen restaurant: http://lemonodor.com/archives/2008/05/uwink_a_cold_greasy_plate_of_fail.html http://lemonodor.com/archives/2008/05/uwink_a_cold_greasy_pl...
- willidiots 13y agoI ate at the Mtn View uWink a few times before it died; it seemed to suffer from a few procedural issues: * People didn't understand how to use the tablets, so you needed staff to explain things to them. * Certain things (like drink refills) that are high-frequency are easier handled by human intervention, than by calling up the "order refill" option and waiting for someone to appear * Food was expensive (presumably to account for the cost of POS systems plus a full staff) and not great (not really an issue for Applebee's / Chili's as they've made an empire out of mediocre food) * As mentioned above, a fair share of software glitches - so you need IT support in addition to kitchen / service staff. It didn't really seem to solve a problem - you replaced the customer-staff interaction with a customer-staff-computer-staff interaction. I'd like the ability to page my server, but that's about it.
- gallerytungsten 13y agoThese restaurants have already eliminated cooks, so this move isn't all that surprising. In case you didn't know, most "food" at chain restaurants is prepared in advance, sealed in pouches, and re-heated via microwave. In other words, expensive leftovers.
- saraid216 13y agoIs the food prepared by machine, too?
- RickHull 13y agoIndustrial-level automation, yes.
- joezydeco 13y agoThey also employ techniques like sous-vide cooking (temperature-controlled immersion bath) which eliminate a huge amount of health and safety issues in busy kitchens. Almost every restaurant, from Michelin-starred chefs to the lowly Taco Bell to the beloved Chipotle stores use this production method among others. Okay, you don't like the food. But there's nothing wrong with how it's made.
- rbranson 13y agoI know Chipotle uses immersion circulators, but the scale of their use is a far cry from "almost every restaurant." Taco Bell most certainly does not use immersion circulators.
- joezydeco 13y agoSorry, misspoke there. Not recirculators but retherm baths. If you remember Taco Bells from the 1970s, the beef was cooked in large open vats by store employees. Now it's cooked in a central kitchen and shipped refrigerated to stores where it's held at serving temperature in a water bath. Changing to this technique eliminated a huge amount of employee accidents (burns, slips) and boosted their health inspection ratings, not to mention product consistency.
- pwim 13y agoAs these machines gain prevalence in America, maybe it will end the tipping culture. By placing an order through a machine, perhaps patrons won't feel obligated to leave a tip.
- jessaustin 13y agoFor whom would a tip be left?
- mmuro 13y agoA different article I read said that tips actually went up. The system doesn't eliminate human interaction, it just streamlines certain things. Eliminating paper marketing for drinks and desserts could end up saving them a lot of money.
- RickHull 13y agoAnd so on, and so forth, as minimum wage proponents seek to end all opportunity for unskilled workers.
- dualogy 13y agoA tablet costs perhaps $200 a year.. (replace a cheap one every year or a pricier one every 2-3 years) --- really not sure what "wage" you had in mind there..
- optimusclimb 13y agoWould you truly prefer to go to a bank branch/human teller over an ATM for cash?
- meddlepal 13y agoFor cash, no. For any other type of transaction I prefer it.
- yetanotherphd 13y agoI don't think minimum wage is really in important issue. If a person is really worth less than the minimum wage, there are plenty of ways to get around the restriction. Just as raising the minimum wage isn't the silver bullet that it's proponents claim, neither is lowering or eliminating it.
- yk 13y agoQuick back off the envelope: 100 Tablets ~ $10k Guessing that this is roughly the number of seats a waiter can wait, this leaves a few thousand dollars for an automated delivery system per year. ( I hope something that involves a catapult.)
- PeterisP 13y agoA single waiter for a hundred seats ?? Thats an order of magnitude mismatch; a 100 seat venue needs a bunch of waiters, and every "waiter needed" means multiple waiters working in shifts because most waiters don't work 12 hours per day 7 days per week.
- yk 13y agoProbably, I have next to no idea how many waiters are needed. So I took a number where I am quite certain that I overestimate. So with realistic numbers, the situation looks certainly worse for waiters.
- proee 13y agoArby's tried this sort of ordering system back in the 90's. They had a touch screen CRTs at the point of sale. Customers placed orders by choosing from an on-screen menu. The system was setup to where an Arby's employee stood behind the machine, waiting for you to finish the order. There was no communication with this employee and so it made for quite an awkward experience. The system only lasted for a few months and they went back to taking orders using traditional methods. Here's a link to the system Arby's used.. http://www.quirks.com/articles/a1991/19910602.aspx http://www.quirks.com/articles/a1991/19910602.aspx
- sanskritabelt 13y agoI've seen plenty of gas station restaurants use a touch screen to order, it works fine except there's a high risk of eating gas station restaurant food afterwards.
- jchendy 13y agoAirports too. This is at JFK. http://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/jetblue-cibo-express-foodcourt-jamaica?select=du_Oq-SivWzY7dg4h_qYNQ#CM7JglUKiht9j-gYy-ApOw http://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/jetblue-cibo-express-foodcour...
- pkboy 13y agoThey still need people to take the food from the kitchen to the table, or will they make drones for that?
- downer92 13y agoI can't wait until I spend my entire life submerged in a cocoon-like vat of pink translucent goo, permanently sedated, and fed through an umbilical. JUST HOOK IT TO ME VEINNNNNNNNNNNNNSSS!!!
- pbreit 13y agoMy favorite fast food ordering innovation was routing all drive through orders to a call center in Utah or somewhere.
- joseph_cooney 13y agoThere is a Japanese restaurant not far from me that uses a system like this. Your table/booth has an ipad you place orders on. Staff bring out the food to your table. You walk out at the end and pay. It worked really well.
- jgamman 13y agowho would want to dine at a place like this? and i use the word 'dine' vs 'eat' on purpose. if you think of food as fuel then this makes sense. if you enjoy dining out, this is a huge step backwards. bring on the franchise wars - i wonder if taco bell will actually win... (bonus points for naming that mostly bad 80s movie)
- mark-r 13y agoOur local Chili's has had this system for a while now. It hasn't reduced our interactions with the waitron, we still order and pay our bill face to face. If anything it has increased their load as the kids keep badgering them for an extra console or for help when one locks up.
- jcampbell1 13y agoI like this idea. In China, there is a Japanese owned Italian join called "Saizeriya". They have call buttons for the servers who had palm pilots to send the orders to the kitchen. It was insanely efficient, and they passed the savings on to the customers. It was a sit-down a la carte experience with fast food pricing. I'd call it Walmart meets the Olive Garden. I am not sure where tablet ordering makes sense: It would move fast food upscale, and not really increase cost. From a service experience, it is about the same as a diner where you pay on exit. It is a service downgrade for Applebee's / Chili's where it is common to customize orders. I had my first experience with tablet ordering in the US at an airport bar. It was great. Rather than worrying about paying the bill in time, it was pre-pay and I chatted with the bar tender instead of exchanging credit card paperwork.
- nextw33k 13y agoThe order taking part has always been error prone, I would have thought that a fast food chain like McDonalds would have been first for this, their queue-order-collect system seemed more streamlined and ready for a pre-order by mobile system.