They can be aware and not care. This is tinfoil hat.

What do you gain from calling normal people interested in their privacy with the grave name of "tinfoil hat"?

A false sense of superiority and a big red flag.

Then you're using "tinfoil hat" with a much different definition than the usage I've generally seen. I tend to see the term applied in cases where somebody is mistaken about matters of fact, not merely differences in value judgments about the facts. It's the difference between "Is there meat in this dish? I'm vegan." and "Is there meat in this dish? All meat dishes are made from dolphins.". The former is reaching a different conclusion based on the same facts, whereas the latter is reaching a different conclusion based on erroneous understanding of the world. Only the latter is "tinfoil hat".

By calling a difference in value judgment "tinfoil hat", you are stating that they are wrong about the facts, not merely that they care where you don't.

Or realistic. In literally all the restaurants I’ve been to in the last years, the QR code is nothing more than a link to a PDF version of the menu. Everywhere.

There’s no way they’d risk their reputation by serving a different menu to people depending, say, on the OS. Also it’s probably 100% illegal where I live.

I don't know where you live, but I would be very, very surprised if your country happened to have "mobile OS" enshrined in law as a forbidden avenue of price discrimination.

I don't know where you live but I would be very surprised if a restaurant had a high enough operational surplus to pay for any of this. Most resurants, even fancy ones are continuously a couple particular bad services away from bankruptcy.

This appears to be trying to suggest that low-margin businesses are somehow inherently immune to the idea of increasing their margins by any means necessary?

Come on, do you see absolutely no way a law preventing price discrimination could be formulated without referring to "mobile OS"? I know American laws are sometimes weirdly specific but still.

From a quick check on my government's website:

- prices must be displayed outside and inside the restaurant

- the prices can't be different depending on where they're displayed

- the displayed price must include taxes and service fees

That's enough to guarantee there's no possibly legal price discrimination. Not a single mention of "mobile OS".

Hmm… is a restaurant allowed to offer a kids menu?

Can they refuse to allow an adult to order from it?

https://youtu.be/Q7FxpK_yC0U

Didn’t know this show, it kinda reminds me of Louie. Thanks!

Actually children menus are sometimes marked as < 12 years old now that I think of it. Not sure if it’s legal, but I don’t think it would be enforced.

It's a reference to the concept in US law of protected class - discrimination is entirely legal against certain kinds of people. It's only protected classes that it is illegal to discriminate against. Specifically the law prohibits discrimination based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, or disability. But if your restaurant wanted to charge people named Thomas or left-handed people $2 extra, that would be totally legal.

Ignore the legality of it for a second and just think what would happen when you have a dinner party that shows up where some people have different phones. The groups would immediately see the price differences.

Also, the QR menus I’ve seen don’t connect to the actual ordering process. Waitstaff come over to get the order, then they punch it into the POS device that tallies the bill. So maybe they could have dynamic pricing day to day, but not from customer to customer

It’s not business. It’s restaurants. If there’s one thing restaurants are awful are, it’s technology. They have no time, interest or margin for anything sophisticated.

And that’s why they get ripped off by ubereats and other delivery services. They will outsource their whole ordering process and lose almost 30% of their margin because they can’t be bothered to have their own app or a proper website.

Restaurants are just not tech savvy. It’s just a common industry trend. Sure you’ll find exceptions and may be someone will track you with a QR code. The reality is that they won’t.

They’d get a lot more info from you if they had a free wifi anyway.

Plenty of restaurants would like very much to have you order through their own website. But they are less (not not) tech savvy than the people that run the various large aggregators, who will stop at absolutely nothing to muscle their way in.

It started off with 25 cents per lead and it ends with 27% of your margin because the counterparty engages in unfair business practices, not because the restaurant isn't tech savvy. Blame the perp, not the victim.

I dunno. One of the best SEO people I know runs a Thai restaurant and on a good day controls the whole first page when searching for Thai restaurants in his town.

That would be the exception that proves the rule then. If he's able to SEO the whole first page for Thai restaurants, that would seem to say the rest of them are terrible at the web.

His main tactic is that he grabs all the "internet real estate" that he can, that is he has a landing page for his restaurant in absolutely every place a restaurant could have a landing page.

> And that’s why they get ripped off by ubereats and other delivery services. They will outsource their whole ordering process and lose almost 30% of their margin because they can’t be bothered to have their own app or a proper website.

I don't think this makes sense. For anything but the largest chains (McD's etc), few are going to install an app just to order from you. And food aggregators have the same advantage that restaurant streets or mall food courts do: people who would like to eat but are not sure what have a place to start looking at options. Pair that with a nice unified payment and uniform no-call ordering interface, and you have a virtually unbeatable advantage compared to any restaurant handling their own orders, tech-savvy or not.

The parent doesn't have a smartphone, which immediately puts them in a small minority (depending on their country and age, say 5%). Do companies use smartphones to track people? Yes, of course. But rejecting technology and returning to monke is definitely not a mainstream choice, though admittedly not as extreme as literal tinfoil hats. I think you could argue it qualifies for a figurative one, though.