
What Restaurants Know About You Before You Walk In - lnguyen
https://www.vogue.com/article/restaurants-customer-research-danny-meyer-daniel-humm
======
protomikron
> "We know more about our guests than we ever have before—you cannot have
> enough information. Now we have no excuse not to customize the experience
> [...]"

Maybe some customers do not want a custom experience? There might be
advantages, but I guess that some customers pick places because of "the
atmosphere, the general food and the waiters there" \- so a too targeted
experience could also be harmful.

~~~
coddingtonbear
Your preference for the impression of anonymity has been noted and will be
applied to future dining experiences.

------
justboxing
This is nothing. A Pizza shop in Oslo was busted back in May for using Facial
recognition software on it's customers:

> A crashed advertisement reveals the code of the facial recognition system
> used by a pizza shop in Oslo...

Source:
[https://twitter.com/gamblelee/status/862307447276544000](https://twitter.com/gamblelee/status/862307447276544000)

~~~
phil21
I think people would be incredibly surprised how common this is. Heck, I've
seen random billboards at Chicago bus stops have facial recognition cameras.

I predict this market to basically become more or less pervasive within 5-10
years.

~~~
QR11123
I worked in digital signage advertising (fancy schmancy name for those screens
in malls that show ads). Facial recognition was spreading throughout the
industry when I was involved a few years ago. The cameras count the number of
people in front of the sign, how long they look, and try to guess demographic
info (age, gender, race). Everything we hate about online advertising... yeah
these people want to make it part of physical life too.

Example of what I'm talking about: [https://signbox.tv/digital-signage-
products/digital-signage-...](https://signbox.tv/digital-signage-
products/digital-signage-facial-recognition)

~~~
alsetmusic
I would be interested to know how to spot cameras on devices such as these
(presumably, they aren’t as obvious as a laptop camera). I checked the link,
but didn’t go further than the first page.

~~~
phil21
The one I saw was pretty obvious, more like cell phone camera obvious. Most
people just don't look up or closely.

I imagine as awareness increases you'll see things like remote cameras zoomed
in/etc.

To be fair the one I saw I only knew had a camera - I assumed it was for
facial recognition, but I can't think of any other plausible reason for it.

------
rubatuga
Best way to track customers is to provide free wifi. Log the visits by mac
addresses, and you can collect huge amounts of valuable data.

~~~
Sephr
No need to provide Internet, as most phones broadcast their WiFi MAC addresses
to the world, even with the WiFi UI shown as "off".

~~~
yunyu
Recent Android and iOS versions randomize the MAC when scanning.

~~~
ddeck
True, but in Android's case, the implementation seems to be flawed:

 _In our lab environment we observed that in addition to periodic global MAC
addressed probe requests, we were able to force the transmission of additional
such probes for all Android devices. First, anytime the user simply turned on
the screen, a set of global probe requests were transmitted. An active user,
in effect, renders randomization moot, eliminating the privacy countermeasure
all together._

[https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2017/03/shiel...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2017/03/shielding-mac-addresses-from-stalkers-is-hard-android-is-
failing-miserably/)

~~~
userbinator
_The only model researchers found to do randomization correctly was the Cat
S60_

Amusingly enough, that's probably more because of an oversight by the
manufacturer (who is probably just copying a reference design) --- they don't
bother writing a "fixed MAC" and just leave the NVRAM blank, meaning the
device doesn't actually have a MAC and generates a random one every time you
turn WiFi on and off.

That's how it works on the Mediatek platforms that I'm more familiar with, and
you'll find this is the case for a lot of the cheap Chinese unbranded phones.
It's irritating when you need to connect to networks using MAC filtering, but
I'm almost tempted to respond to all the "my MAC keeps changing" threads on
XDA with "that's a feature, not a bug." ;-)

------
Animats
Right now, it's high-end restaurants in New York City doing this. But they did
that by hand in the past. The "headwaiter who knows everybody" was a big deal
once.

The big change will come when this filters down to chain restaurants. Which
way will Starbucks go on this? They already have an affinity card and know
your WiFi information. "You haven't visited a Starbucks in 72 hours. Are you
OK?"

~~~
zitterbewegung
Starbucks has been pushing gameified star bonuses and events from my
understanding. It effectively does "Hey would you like some stars" on
everyones phone. Also they give bonuses and stars for food you don't eat to
encourage you to try the other food.

~~~
Negative1
It works quite well (at least on me). Responses usually go from "well, I was
already feeling like one of those so might as well get some points" to "why
would I want a Frappachino when it's so cold out"? I assume their algorithms
are under heavy development and are basically random A/B tests at this point,
perhaps primed with some basic data and stars added as an enticement.

In the future, I could see it evolving into something where it sees what the
weather is, looks at what websites I'm visiting (via data brokers), analyzes
historical trends, extrapolates my likely mood and finally uses all of this to
figure out what sugary comfort drink I'm mostly likely to bite at. Perhaps I
should take comfort in how utterly predictable I am and how easily open to
suggestion...

On a similar note, if you haven't seen it;
[https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dy...](https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dystopia_just_to_make_people_click_on_ads)

------
bhauer
> _Just like you’ve studied their Instagram feeds for nightly specials, hidden
> menu items, and the most photogenic cocktail_

I must be massively out of touch with modern culture, because I've never once
done that.

~~~
tritium
No, what’s really going on is the franchise vs. mom & pop version of corporate
espionage.

Normal people with no skin in the game, beyond what’s for lunch, don’t behave
this way.

There’s a small-ish subculture of afficionados and foodies, but I’ve never met
anyone that obsesses over dinner to that degree. Usually it’s a byproduct of a
phase they breifly went through, when they were on a kick about something.

The rare exception being the occassional young romantic couple, obsessing over
the courtship rituals of wooing their hot date. This is less about the food
than the date, and again, it’s yet another small-ish subculture, since 90% of
everyone is undateable. [0,1]

[0]
[http://www.pkmeco.com/seinfeld/wink.htm](http://www.pkmeco.com/seinfeld/wink.htm)

[1] [https://youtu.be/C-a64OwOYqU](https://youtu.be/C-a64OwOYqU)

~~~
nasredin
>since 90% of everyone is undateable. [0,1]

Non-Seinfield non-Youtube citation needed.

\---

I have become one of those "Citation needed" people. Argh.

~~~
tritium
You wanna see what happens when your kind takes things too far???

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drifting_(motorsport)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drifting_\(motorsport\))

    
    
      > CTRL+F
    
      Japan was the birthplace of drifting.
    

(hey, hacker news, fuck your downvotes)

------
im3w1l
This article sounds pretty extreme. "They've read your biography" to
personalize your dining experience? I think very, very few places would bother
with something like that. Maybe if you are such a regular that you know all
the people there by name, or if you go to a very expensive restaurant where
cost is not an issue.

~~~
wutbrodo
This is an important point that the title elides: there's still a good amount
of manual work required here which means that it's only really worth the
effort for fine dining. As the article mentions, they already did things like
this with index cards in the past.

------
forapurpose
Be sue to read though to the last paragraph, where the story becomes a bit
darker (though not unexpected to HN readers):

 _They’ve read your biography . . .

“We have had guests come in and we’ve read their biography and read maybe they
had a really rough last year or maybe they lost someone in their life
recently,” Meyer says. “That may sound extreme, but all of those pieces of
information are going to help us do a better job of customizing the hug when
they come in. ..."_

~~~
xapata
Darker?

------
Endy
Not exactly in-depth reporting here, but I wouldn't expect much more of Vogue.
In all honesty, I'm not surprised that restaurants you have to make
reservations with want to know everything about you before you walk in - our
world's economy is all based on personal information; the "customer" is the
most valuable product. Heck, if I'm to be perfectly honest, I would not be
surprised if there was a restaurant out there that ran reverse image searches
on every guest; with the speed of it now and the huge number of images
indexed, you can find out more than ever before.

However, my takeaway here is pretty simple: avoid booking a reservation over a
website. Doubly so if they want private data, and triply on the same account
from which you booked another table. Then again, I'm a bit of a nut and I like
my private information to stay private.

~~~
dannyw
To be fair, some people may like their experiences to be personalised.

~~~
Endy
That might be true. Their preference for a personalized experience should not
allow the establishment to impact on my privacy. It should be strongly opt-in,
not "avoid and never patronize this restaurant to opt-out".

------
heinrichf
To Survive in Tough Times, Restaurants Turn to Data-Mining (August 2017):
[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/25/dining/restaurant-
softwar...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/25/dining/restaurant-software-
analytics-data-mining.html)

------
nehushtan
It's going to be like eating at L'Idiot in Steve Martin's LA Story. There was
a screen showing tidbits of live data about celebrities as they entered - how
much their last film grossed, their sexual orientation, etc.

"You think with a financial statement like this you can have the duck?!"

------
ethan_harris
I wonder if there could be an interesting ML classifier using information like
this. Crawl a customers social media, track their behavior in the restaurant.
Surely some interesting patterns will emerge.

------
mlosapio
Billboards track cars using the RF of the TPMS sensors on your cars and then
make inference about who the driver statistically would be ....

~~~
servomoto
Holy shit!

(and by the way, I finally figured out what that warning light means, by
googling TPMS! Thanks, Batman!)

------
kardos
It smells like this approach opens up a sort of attack vector. Eg, to wreck
someone's experience by getting some false information injected into a
target's social media streams in order to be picked up by these information
harvesters.

------
gkya
Nice times when customisation and personalisation were things that the user
did. Reading other comments here, I guess we need some ad block software not
only on our browsers, but also on our faces.

------
robinanil
Disclosure: I am the Director of Engineering at Tock. We power the reservation
system at Eleven Madison Park which Will and Daniel own.

The notion of a user's past history with rich data has been something high end
restaurants have been trying to manage either via spreadsheets or via custom
crm implementations. What we have done is to make that easier through product
design and machine intelligence to bring it to more down market restaurants.

It unlocks really great experiences for guests, avoids the need to talk about
your allergies every time you walk into a restaurant and makes sure it is
accurate and upto date.

~~~
chinathrow
To get that right, if you're a restaurant using your services:

a) you spy on your guests

b) you cross reference with other data sets without your guests knowing

c) you do this for improved revenue

I'll make sure I never eat at restaurants using Tock. Good look seting up
proper opt-in once you serve EU guests after May 2018.

~~~
robinanil
a) unequivocally no! I am not sure what I mentioned caused you to believe
that.

b)Yes, enriching the data is a key part of our offering but we are very
transparent in our data practices and take this job very seriously.

[https://www.exploretock.com/terms](https://www.exploretock.com/terms)
[https://www.exploretock.com/privacy](https://www.exploretock.com/privacy)

c) Improved revenue comes with increased visit and spend, that happens only if
the customers get a great experience.

The practice of taking notes is something that every restaurant is doing. What
we make sure is that they capture only the necessary information. Every
customer controls their public information through their profile page and can
choose to remove it if needed.

