Dining and Restaurant Tech: Most Haven’t Seen It, Some Love It

September 8, 2024 by
Dining and Restaurant Tech: Most Haven’t Seen It, Some Love It

Image credit: Liz West

Just recently, I was at an Olive Garden settling into a plate of chicken cacciatore with cheese manicotti, and in the midst of that reasonably tasty dinner, I noticed an odd mounted tablet-like structure at my table.

It was one of those Ziosk tablets, designed to provide a way to order meals as well as pay bills right from the table, along with access to some games and trivia. While I didn’t put it to use myself that night—I didn’t really have much chance as wait staff kept things moving along briskly enough to almost make me think they wanted me out of there—it was there, and it posed an interesting idea. How many places are putting this kind of thing to use, and do diners want this sort of thing around?

A new study from OpenTable, an app that handles dining reservations, suggests that the answers are “not many” and “yes indeed” in that order. Most of the respondents in the study had run into an on-table touchscreen to place orders, and most liked it.

The reports suggested that 53 percent of users surveyed had run into such things, and 22.6 percent of that group had an active distaste for it.

However, a substantial portion of those diners surveyed were more than ready for mobile payment services being added to such tabletop tech, and mobile devices are frequent dining companions.

Not only did 25 percent of users turn to a smartphone to research a dish before ordering it—likely looking for some product review to let said diner know about taste issues beforehand—and 23 percent took photos of the meal, a development occasionally seen on social media.

Basically, while not many diners have actually seen this technology in place at restaurants, most diners have at least some interest in the technology arriving. Why? Simple; such technology can take a lot of the inefficiency out of a meal. While some inefficiency is certain desirable—when you’re on that important date, for example, most would rather the check take a little longer to get back—but when you’re on your own and you want a quick lunch or dinner so you can get back to the rest of your day out, that inefficiency just ruins a day.

Being able to pay for a meal at the table prevents the need for wait staff to come to the table, bring a check, repeat the process to pick up the money, and then repeat the process yet again to bring change. That’s a lot of steps that really don’t need to be involved, and removing them from the equation saves everyone time and saves the restaurant money.

That same waiter or waitress can handle more work when the customer handles his or her own fetching of change at the end of the meal. Plus, the customer is more satisfied as there’s less time wasted in the exchange.

While it’s easy to see where that wasted time could be used for other purposes instead—like talking to friends, loved ones, or that special someone—there are plenty of times you just want to, as Ed Debevic’s so pithily put it: Eat and Get Out.

That’s when having the option to order and pay from a tabletop console can be handy; in fact, there may well ultimately be another section to the smoking/nonsmoking section, lingering or non-lingering. Those in a hurry can be seated in a special section with all the hardware to allow faster turnover.

There are plenty of possibilities with this kind of technology, and it only remains to be seen just which will actually be put to use. Still, the restaurant dining experience as we know it might be set to change fairly soon.

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