restaurant replaces menus with ipads

I think thats pretty awesome. I am moving towards using an iPad on the truck for point of sale and inventory control. I even debated using one outside as a self service ordering kiosk but not everyone is tech savvy and I feel that people will still have questions about the menu that the iPad wont answer and some wouldn't even be able to order.

With some I think you would just complicate the process. And it kinda puts servers in a bad position and changes them to food runners. I would imagine tipping is severely reduced since the amount of actual service work is reduced.

and I wonder how much food would get wasted by "accidental" orders tableside

and I wonder how much food would get wasted by "accidental" orders tableside

Or how many iPads will be ruined by table accidents. You can wipe a menu off when someone spills a drink - not so much with a pad.

Stupid way to try and seem 'trendy' to me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQsfI63PBcQ
gotta love it.

Annemarie, you must give over almost as much of your life to aspects of the food biz as Robin. Thank you so much!

There was a place where my wife and I loved to eat named, optimistically, the First Blue Rock Grill in New Albany that operated from about Nov. '97 to about Feb. '99. It was in the space currently occupied by Tuckers. They had two-way speakers on the tables like drive-ins had for people sitting in their cars when we were young, and like Sonic does outside for cars today. This was how they addressed, prior to the iPad era, the issues noted by the proprietor in the YouTube video.

I couldn't tell from the video if they had 25 or 50 tables or what. If in that range wouldn't it be $12,500 - $25,000 to supply iPads for each table or thereabouts? Or did they get a big discount from Apple? Seems like it would cost much less to do what Blue Rock did with far less likelihood of damage to equipment. No flagging a staffer or interruptions in a conversation, we pushed a button and had orders taken and questions answered from a sort of Command/Control or staff sent to talk to, food and drink delivered, water refreshed exactly as it pleased us. If you were good when you died a restaurant in heaven would operate like that. First Blue Rock Grill was the closest thing to customer bliss that we have ever experienced on a service level. It seems like the restaurant in the YouTube video is aspiring to this level.

Instead of the cache of the momentarily hot expensive iPads, why not put in fairly inexpensive intercom systems like Blue Rock / Sonic for indoors?

Good servers can be very knowledgable and a joy to deal with, but having them a button push away is priceless as they never show until or unless you want them. First Blue Rock was possibly ahead of its time. Since most of us a dozen years later live our lives behind screens, keyboards, smartphones, etc., this expectation of push button service will, hopefully, become more and more to be the standard.

I'm just remembering the thread which noted how a restaurant owner went nuts over a missing salt spoon.

[Robin Garr]

I'm just remembering the thread which noted how a restaurant owner went nuts over a missing salt spoon.

We never did get the other side of that story. I'm thinking, though, that an iPad ($500 and up) going missing might definitely inspire a justified tantrum.