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This could really be a cost-saving feature for restaurants, if they needed fewer waiters/waitresses. Although as others have pointed out, it would require some thought to overcome the logistical problems associated with chicken wings and iPads...

Why not let patrons find their own table, place their own orders, pick up the order at a counter after paying on the iPad, eat, and leave. Need some more fries or another beer? Just order the additional items and pick up. All you need is a busboy to clean the table and wipe down the iPad. No tips needed, no waitresses, no hostesses. This is self service. If you want full service, it is available as well. Talk about saving money? Wow.

This could work pretty well until Apple opens up the first iCafe.
 
This could really be a cost-saving feature for restaurants, if they needed fewer waiters/waitresses. Although as others have pointed out, it would require some thought to overcome the logistical problems associated with chicken wings and iPads...

I'm not sure why you would choose to save money by hiring fewer waiters/waitresses. They only make $2-4 per hour
 
What a dumb idea. I thought they were going to say they were going to use the iPads for taking orders, displaying specials or menu items, taking reservations and payments, and perhaps mounting them like mini TVs for viewing.

This is a terrible idea on so many levels:

One: The point of going out to eat with friends and family is to enjoy their company and good food together, not with your nose stuck in an iPad while the guys watch a game. What happened to etiquette of keeping your phone and devices off or at least in your pocket during dinner?

Two: Worse place to choose, imagine as others said how dirty and grimy these iPads will be. I'll bet at least one a day gets damaged.

Three: You'll have every one touching (read breaking) these things throughout the day. You'll get idiots asking questions about the iPad or how to do this and that on it slowing down service.You'll basically give your underpaid staff more reasons to hate their jobs I'm sure.

Follow this: K.I.S.S. = Keep It Simple Stupid and keep iPads off my dining table.

Yeah... fast, convenient ordering and service -- really interferes with the opportunity to enjoy good food and interacting with good company????
 
iPad in restaurants

Hi everyone,

Grease and other jokes aside, the underlying problem with the iPad system is that the designers are programmers, not restauranteurs. You cannot put your restaurant in the control of the customer for multiple reasons.

Imagine for a moment that your restaurant fills up at lunch. Within a one hour span you do crazy volume. Say you fill have your restaurant with 100 people all within a 10 minute window. What are the problems that come out of this?

1. You would need a significant number of iPads to service that many people all at once.
2. Imagine the Kitchen staff dealing with simultaneous orders for 100 people.
3. Imagine the order errors.

By letting the customer have iPads you are putting the quality of service into their hands. It will be chaos and a mess. You lose the personal connection to the server and the restaurant turns into a sterile environment. It is the same reason very few servers even write down your order... It's about focusing on the patron and not the pad of paper.

I have seen these systems many times before at trade shows. They are not well thought out from a logistical point of view.

To have your wine list with info etc is one thing, but to allow your customer to control his experience... that's a mistake.
 
rabbit deer elk squirrel boar frog ect

eat none farm raised meat its better.

say no to the industry standard.

i am sorry if you don't understand. just such a boring way to live out one's life i wonder what those people are like in bed anyone can guess but i imagine it looks like cheap porn video and feels like it too. ha

(wild fish)
 
...and no one actually talking with the friends with whom they've gone out to eat.

So sad....

have you heard of a new game going around. Everyone places their phones on the table in a stack, the first one who reaches for their phone to check Facebook, twitter or the like has to pay the bill. If no one checks their phones the bill gets split evenly.

Sorry, the douche-bag to iPad ratio is still too high.

Heineken + Flat Rimmed Ball Caps + Lucky Jeans != My kind of bar

Don't forget to leave the tags on the hat so it looks like one stole it :p

Seems cool but like others have said, it will be covered in wing sauce.
Now I want some wings! :p
 
This would be a great idea if everyone at B Dubs didn't have their fingers covered in spicy BBQ Asian glaze from the wings they're eating.

There's a sushi restaurant in Tokyo which also uses an iPad to order food..

And sadly there's a huge gulf in cleanliness between the average Japanese person and the average drunk Tapout bro at a BWW and the disgruntled waitresses who work there.

My kingdom! My kingdom for a clean iPad!
 
have you heard of a new game going around. Everyone places their phones on the table in a stack, the first one who reaches for their phone to check Facebook, twitter or the like has to pay the bill. If no one checks their phones the bill gets split evenly.

LOVE IT !!

(Have one friend who cannot let an idle question in conversation go unanswered - out comes the Iphone (or he borrows my husband's Verizon T-Bolt when we're in a "no AT&T signal" area) to look it up. ADHD FTW.).
 
Why not let patrons find their own table, place their own orders, pick up the order at a counter after paying on the iPad, eat, and leave. Need some more fries or another beer? Just order the additional items and pick up. All you need is a busboy to clean the table and wipe down the iPad. No tips needed, no waitresses, no hostesses.

In other words, glorified fast food style service.

I'm not against the idea, I've just got a healthy skepticism about this trend toward "do it yourself". I bet your local grocery store has a self-checkout service... and I bet it's not very fun to use.

I'm glad that the poster from the OP's company has clarified that this service is meant to augment the wait staff, not replace it.
 
The source article on Computer World says that the staff cleans the tablets after each and every table clear. They also said that they are in some type of case that protects the ports and extends the battery life up to 12-15 hours. The cases also include a Credit Card reader and other bells and whistles.

It obviously has been working out well for them since this is an extension of the original test pilot program. I see absolutely nothing wrong with having a little bit of entertainment when going to certain establishments such as this one. Granted I usually have my own iPad or iPhone with me in the first place, but if you can order your own food and it cuts down on the wait times then I'm personally all for it.
 
Or, one better, use your own iPhone to place an order while in the drive thru line at your favorite take out restaurant...

Here's a no-frills app I wrote a few years back to demonstrate it with InN'Out.

Donnie: Those are good burgers.

Walter: Shut the **** up, Donnie.
 
...and no one actually talking with the friends with whom they've gone out to eat.

So sad....

exactly, just what this Country needs more people texting, playing on Facebook, talking on their phones or doing whatever except for paying attention to the people they are out with. rude and annoying.. the days of a stimulating conversation and using ones brain to do things other than post on Facebook or text someone all day are over. Can't people go out to eat and forget about going on Facebook or sending text messages the entire time.
 
iPad is a wrong choice

Why would restaurants use iPads for this? Android tablets seem to be a much better fit: smaller (available) and cheaper. What's the benefit of using iPad in this case?

----------

Good thing they are not using Androids or the food orders would get messed up. :apple:

Is that why the government and US Army selected Android over iOS?
 
I dont see this as a standard thing. Putting Ipad menus in everyones hands in the restaraunt is extremely expensive, cumbersome and probably not the best idea


Could you imagine trying to use an ipad with sauce allover your fingers?
Could you imagine using an ipad that somneone else just used... with sauce allover their fingers.

Could you imagine how many ipads are going to magically "walk out the door" at the end of the night?

How i see Ipad's and tablets assisting in the restaraunt is putting a POS terminal directly in the hands of the waitress. no more botched orders if she's tapping it right in as you say it and the kitchen is getting it before she even walks away from your table.
 
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mbowler said:
I can't wait to touch other peoples' wing sauce and saliva from their fingers. I can't think of a worse restaurant for this.

If there was only a process that could be done between parties eating.

Your logic is odd because you eat on tables, use utensils and dishes others have just used.
 
There's a walk-up cafe (walk up, order, pick up food, sit where you want) near me that gives the option to order by iPad at the entrance. No way - I'm not touching that thing after everyone else has. I'll order from the human behind the cash register, thank you very much.

And yet you never picked up, leafed through and yes TOUCHED a printed menu? Or opened a public door? Used cash money?. /s

I''m just saying. While agree with everyone here about how ridiculous the whole "iPad Menu" thing, you also need to realize that germs are everywhere . . ."
 
Why would restaurants use iPads for this? Android tablets seem to be a much better fit: smaller (available) and cheaper. What's the benefit of using iPad in this case?

Is that why the government and US Army selected Android over iOS?

Really? You are going to go there? The same US govt that let a US drone get hacked and land in Iran? :rolleyes:

"Engineer claims Iran downed drone by using fake signals to confuse it"

The US Army choosing Android only means our country's security just went down another notch. I am sure the engineers in the Mid East are happy with that news.

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/02/03/tech/mobile/government-android-phones/index.html?c=tech

"However, the government chose to work on Android first because Google already allows people to tinker freely with its code, said those working on the project. Federal officials have met with Apple, but they were told they could not have access to the core of the company's mobile operating system, said Angelos Stavrou, an information-security director at George Mason University who is working on the government project as a contractor, in a phone interview."

At least my food order won't get hacked with restaurants using the iPad instead of Android.
 
OMG -- can you imagine the gunk, food and greasy fingerprints that these things have on them at the end of the day?! I believe there are even those that would deliberately try to break the device (pour soup into the head phone jack, etc) -- there are some ridiculous people out there that just want to destroy stuff.

Plus all the folks that don't wash their hands!! And people who are sick, etc. How many folks are going to snap dirty pictures of themselves for other patrons to stumble upon or appear as the Home/Lock screen?!

And the patrons, being in a social atmosphere to begin with, need to use an iPad to connect to Facebook and stay "social"?! LOSERS. And let's see how many people want to fork over their usernames/pws for Facebook and other sites.

This has to be one of the dumbest ideas I've heard of in a long time.
 
In 2009 I did some designs for a company that was doing this type of thing with a much more clunky and cumbersome device that only ran Windows CE. Just a few months ago, I did some more contract work for this same company designing the interface for a popular chain restaurant. It was on the same device which had not been updated since the first time I saw it. The designs had to be just as clunky as the device, in my opinion.

Currently, these devices are around 7" wide, about five times as thick as an iPad, and are installed in stands and left at the table for the customer to make orders and even play games while they wait. They could watch movie trailers or check the weather on some of them. The touch screen is your basic plastic membrane, no glass.

For some reason, this company is still in business with what I feel is a completely outdated tech so the idea seems to work. It is just not as cool or elegant as an iPad.

I can't think of many restaurants I've been to where my fingers got very filthy or the place was really dirty to where I couldn't even use my on iPhone to look up something.

I'd like to think this idea would work and maybe help clear up some errors. Take the order, show the iPad to the customer to confirm, send it in. Simple?

Seems like a good idea.

-F.
 
I see a lot of comments about being disgusted by a dirty iPad... It's a restaurant, they clean up the tables, silverware and plates after the previous customer is done with them. Do you not expect them to do the same thing with the iPads? Health codes anybody?
 
I can't wait for the first customer who does an "Oops I spilled a drink" moment ("Thats alright sweetie, I'll just get ya some napkins and a new menu" says the waitress) and turns it into an "Oops I spilled a drink onto your $900 thinga-majig" moment ("Your lunch comes out to $944.32. Thanks, come again").
 
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