
Tablets at restaurants: Applebee's, Chili's race to eliminate human interaction - robg
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/12/03/tablets_at_restaurants_applebee_s_chili_s_race_to_eliminate_human_interaction.html
======
gallerytungsten
These 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.

~~~
joezydeco
They 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
I 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
Sorry, 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.

~~~
loceng
And profits? Probably forget the biggest reason why they did it.

~~~
throwaway092834
Hopefully better product results in greater profit, yes.

~~~
loceng
I doubt it would amount to a better product - a safer product perhaps, sure.
If you think pre-cooked and frozen would make a better product than fresh and
freshly cooked.. then we have different ideas of what better means.

~~~
joezydeco
Par-cooking (preparing food ahead of time, storing it, then reheating it) is a
common cooking technique and if done properly does not change the composition
or quality of the food one bit.

These are not sodium and preservative-laden frozen meals we are talking about.
These are products made in large commercial quantities for quick preparation.

I do indulge in Taco Bell from time to time and, let me tell you, I'd rather
have the food prepared by a quality-controlled system than the stoned kid in
the back that may or may have not remembered to add the seasoning when it was
time.

~~~
loceng
Don't disagree regarding food preparation, though I've tasted a meal that's
pre-cooked chicken vs. fresh chicken, and quite the difference exists in many
characteristics of the chicken. It was a smaller place, and perhaps their
methods weren't the best - though I'm not sure how you prevent the effects of
frozen water damaging the chicken and making it taste different, texture wise
too..

~~~
joezydeco
Read up on vacuum sealing. That's a key step in this kind of food preparation.
A lot of times the par-cooked food doesn't go to frozen, or it's not frozen
for long, so freezer burn is not a factor.

------
pwim
As 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
For whom would a tip be left?

~~~
tjr
The software developers? :-)

------
jjwiseman
Software 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_pl...](http://lemonodor.com/archives/2008/05/uwink_a_cold_greasy_plate_of_fail.html)

~~~
willidiots
I 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.

------
pirateking
And 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
Vending restaurants are already pervasive in Japan. There might still be a
human cook involved, but you order with coins at a machine.

~~~
jessaustin
It 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
They 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...

------
proee
Arby'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
I'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
Airports too. This is at JFK. [http://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/jetblue-cibo-
express-foodcour...](http://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/jetblue-cibo-express-
foodcourt-jamaica?select=du_Oq-SivWzY7dg4h_qYNQ#CM7JglUKiht9j-gYy-ApOw)

------
jcampbell1
I 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.

------
pkboy
They still need people to take the food from the kitchen to the table, or will
they make drones for that?

------
joseph_cooney
There 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
who 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
Our 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.

------
yk
Quick 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
A 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
Probably, 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.

------
nextw33k
The 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.

------
pbreit
My favorite fast food ordering innovation was routing all drive through orders
to a call center in Utah or somewhere.

------
RickHull
And so on, and so forth, as minimum wage proponents seek to end all
opportunity for unskilled workers.

~~~
optimusclimb
Would you truly prefer to go to a bank branch/human teller over an ATM for
cash?

~~~
meddlepal
For cash, no. For any other type of transaction I prefer it.

