They've had this in Japan since before tablets in the form of vending machine restaurants. You order and pay at a vending machine and get a ticket, you sit down and hand in your ticket, and someone brings the food to your table.
I haven't been in many years, I guess now they have touch screen kiosks instead of old school vending machines.
I 100% prefer pay at table, and would 100% prefer order at table as well, less chance they get my order wrong
Actually, now that I've think of it, I'm not sure I've ever seen the "large-screen credit card terminal with order entry" version in real life.
Just realized this is another problem averted by Chip+PIN for payments. Since you have to physically touch the keypad, there's reason to take you to the PoS terminal, or the terminal to you, and no reason to take the card from you.
Chip+Sign is what we have here. I dont even know what my PIN would be for my Credit Card, Pin's are only really used for Debit cards but I almost never use my Debit card for anything at all.
I still feel that these products are "sold" to restaurants and aren't actually all they're cracked up to be.
A few converted to carry out only, and have not gone back to buffet style.
There are still a few open of course but no where near as many, and the ones that survived seems to be of lesser quality
I bet you are one of those people that believe wait staff only make $2/hr right?
Even shadier shit happens where the restaurant makes employees repot tips that didn’t happen to keep above the minimum. Then they have to pay taxes off income not earned. Is it illegal? Yeah but it’s difficult to enforce and the people getting screwed are already very vulnerable (not your hipster big city wait staff)
The context of this conversation is around restaurants being able to legally pay less because of tipping, however if they willing to violated the laws that we have now, why would they not also violate the min wage laws.
Around here an average meal at a restaurant would be about $14 lunch and $18 dinner per person.
So to make the often promoted $15/hr wage, the server would need to clear $96 in tips over the base wage of $3/hr. At an average of 18% tips that would mean the ticket revenue would need to be $534 for the shift. @16 avg per person that is about 4 people per hour, or 1 or 2 tables per hour
If the restaurant is that slow, that the server is only serving 1 table per hour, well chances are the server needs to look for another job anyway because that place will not be in business very long.
This is also why alot of servers I know prefer the tipped model over a higher base wage, if a strait 15/hr wage was created with no tips, many servers would make LESS money then under the current system
Most of the people calling for a $15/hr base wage have a delusional belief they will make $15/hr PLUS tips... that is never going to happen
It almost does in Portland. Starting July 1st, it's $14 plus tips. There is no "tipped employee" minimum wage. It's the same for all. I think it will be $13 per hour in the rest of Oregon outside the metro area but there may be a third level for the most rural counties.
Don't mean to be too much of a jerk, but I may adjust my tipping downwards. I typically do closer to 20%.
This whole $2 thing is bullshit that’s carried forward if you’re the average HN reader in a coastal city. My friends who are waiters across a spectrum of restaurants (in a coastal city) probably make $50-60 an hour, and double that at the higher end places, for a job that yes, can be exhausting (but not exceptionally more so than many other low-skill jobs), and requires no specific training or degree.
I am waiting for the first restaurant that only has Cooks and Food Runners with no traditional waitstaff...
This will likely coincide with the removal of tipping as a custom in the US. We will move to kiosk ordering, press a button to get drink refills, pay at the table, and leave.