Just look at the furniture in American restaurants - cheap, plastic, and uncomfortable, even in high priced restaurants.

I empathize with the economic predicament of restauranteurs but I'll continue to frequent establishments with better comfort features especially because the prices are high no matter where you go. Why pay $25 rushed sloppy meal when you could pay $30 for a better meal, in a better setting, and resulting in a better (earned!) tip.

>Just look at the furniture in American restaurants - cheap, plastic, and uncomfortable, even in high priced restaurants.

Seriously, where are you eating? Nothing remotely resembling "high end" anywhere near me uses plastic furniture. It's all well-padded wood. From steak restaurants to ramen to pizza, I can't name a single place I go to that's plastic other than the typical fast food joints.

I agree, I don't recall seeing plastic in any sit-down restaurants.

I guess we need to define sit-down restaurants. Fast-food places with sit-down available typically has plastic seating. I know that the Chick-fil-a and McDonalds in the area do.

Some of the gastropub places near me have bare wooden seating. It's part of their "charm" this thread is swooning about. It's literally just a wooden picnic table, but yeah, that's so worth that extra money.

Do we really need to define it? In America and Britain a sit down restaurant is defined as one where you are seated by a host and order via waitstaff.

I guess we do, because I am not familiar with that specific definition

What about those "sit down" places where you load up a QR code, order from that site, pay from that site, but have a server bring your food? are they still a "sit down" place?

Most would say no I'd guess in the US.

To me "sit down" implies you are seated by a host and waited on.

So a sit-down restaurant was a sit-down restaurant pre-COVID, then became not a sit-down restaurant during COVID just because the style of waiting/serving became different. That's a tilted definition

You seem to be trying to pick at words needlessly. Why does Covid matter now?

Because the same restaurant was considered a sit down joint and then it wasn’t because a QR code was used instead of whatever this requirement of needing a waiter to take your order. Do you not see how ridiculous that is. You came in, ordered food, someone cooked it, they brought it to you, you ate it while sitting down. You might have even ordered drinks too. You might have even done that with friends or family. How is that not a sit down place? Your definition is trivial and not really useful, but sure, it’s me needlessly being picky with words

What are you even going on about? QR codes make no real difference. Though in America I have not seen many great implementations and I would guess many would be fast food or fast casual. It’s the level of service being provided. It implies you are spending time eating with a level of service being provided. Weird

Typically I don’t think we need to define when it’s fairly standard terminology. Kind of like having to define something that’s in a dictionary. Though understandable if you are not from the US. This wiki which was top of google may help you though. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Types_of_restaurant

You may be overthinking this way too hard. It’s simply the level of service being received. There are some definite shades of gray here but throwing qr codes into the mix is pedantic. You could have fast food QR code ordering, fast casual and even sit down experiences. The QR code does not really factor too much into it.

There is an in-between, log cabin themed restaurants that have wooden benches and chairs without padding. They're not fancy in any way, but they're not fast food either. Granted they're not very common.

Fun fact, there's no N in restaurateur: https://www.ciachef.edu/blog/what-happened-to-the-n-in-resta...

>restauranteurs

>Plural form of restauranteur

>noun

>Alternative form of restaurateur.

odd

Ghost restaurants, essentially. Incidentally, I wonder what Travis Kalanick and his company CloudKitchens is up to now that he doesn't run Uber anymore.

Basically it seems after expanding to >30 countries then realizing COVID growth would not continue, rationalizing operations, and figuring out the model of ghost kitchens is limited in growth potential with significant customer and platform backlash TK's been trying to automate the production side using the "former self driving team" of Uber at a Cloud Kitchen subsidiary called Lab37. https://www.lab37.us/ However, the (2023) pictures of their system show they are not very advanced, and news appears to have halted.

Why am I monitoring this? I personally spent 9 years actually doing mechatronic R&D in the food prep, packaging and logistics automation space in China with more aggressive footprint and automation goals and am currently raising for US based go to market on a far higher density platform that sidesteps the last mile delivery providers entirely. Email in profile.

How'd that go in China? Robot-burger flipping always seemed cool. With the level of automation they otherwise employ, why isn't McDonald's doing it yet?

My understanding is that it's basically a cost benefit calculation where it would cost nearly as much or even more than a worker because of the mechanical repair cost over time and a restaurant still wouldn't be able to automate the entire production flow from take burger out of freezer -> package it up, so there isn't much benefit. Also, having all the burger variants McDonalds sells also doesn't make this easy.

Value wise, China for mechatronic R&D is awesome. There's nowhere better on earth. It's the other stuff - legals, regulatory, HR, schools, etc. that's a PITA.

Re. McD's (actually ~15 years ago I used to work with the husband of the head of Europe but never discussed the business) - don't think their risk model has 'operational efficiency' high on the agenda. Mostly risk is outsourced to franchisees. They are so big they can just move really slowly and nobody gets fired. When competitors do something, they copy it and see if it works, recent eg. CosMc's https://www.qsrmagazine.com/story/mcdonalds-unveils-cosmcs-i...

Fundamentally - are we all going to be eating from robots real soon now? Absolutely, yes. But they won't look like 'Flippy' or Creator. They'll just be infrastructure - familiar features of the public environment as common as an electrical socket, garden tap, or street sign. You'll press a button on your own device, and either the results will come to you or you'll take a short walk. Yes, that means they have to be small, highly reliable, and self-managing. Nobody (else) has this yet. We're there.

But the stock tip of this post is - current era last mile players are dead men walking. They have no means to transition to a significant position given pending commercial drone deregulation. The players set to clean up must be vertically integrated and provide both production and delivery (that's us) or have exceptional cycle time confidence and perfect autonomous drone integration with agreed standards to unknown airframes (sketchy proposition).

Eating in American restaurants where there is constant pressure to shovel in the food and leave, is a waste. You feel like you're on an assembly line. What's the point then? On top of that they have the gall to ask for 25% tips. For what? Pressuring me to leave?

I enjoy visiting Eastern Europe(and Europe in general) where a party can sit at a table at 7pm, dine, drink, talk, and relax and remain there until close at 1am if they want. No pressure. Just spending time with people and sharing food together. The table is yours for the evening. No pressure to tip at all yet I tip generously.

America's got it all wrong.

> enjoy visiting Eastern Europe(and Europe in general) where a party can sit at a table at 7pm, dine, drink, talk, and relax and remain there until close at 1am if they want

Would note that this is common at high-end restaurants in America. (Unless they sear at 10 or 11PM, in which case they may want another turn of tables.)

It depends on the restaurant. If there is a line of patrons to be seated they will definitely nudge you toward conclusion. Even if they are not busy the more customers a waiter churns through the more they earn. I find tips deceptive. One is not evaluating service quality. It’s just letting them advertise prices at 75% of actual cost before 20% de facto mandatory tip and 10% sales tax.

Where? NYC? The densest cities in the country? If you get outside the metropolises it's not like that at all. That's just a reflection of demand and population density.

The timing is perfect for drone delivery to make a big impact here. Meals could arrive fast enough to stay hot, so the quality of the food goes up while reducing delivery times too.

I don't get why companies can't figure out how to make this profitable.

Because drones are noisy and irritating in reality and nobody wants them flying around their neighborhood and they don’t scale and they can potentially scare animals and and and…

And they can't press buttons in the elevator. I don't think any delivery service will take off in a city if people have to leave their apartments.

Maybe we will end up with a mix of drones for places where we can reach by air, and robot operators to deliver other packages when human interfaces are what you have to deal with.

Uhhhh, balconies?

Reach out of an open window like a reverse drive-through?

I think you'd have to have nerves of steel as a company to try either of those maneuvers. The wind can be unpredictable so close to a structure, it is a cramped environment filled with objects and materials you can't predict, even a meal for 2 can be kindof bulky (doubly so bc it has to be packed well enough to be airworthy), the load might shift internally, and if you screw up there's a good chance a drone goes plummeting 20 stories down onto a crowded sidewalk.

Alright hear me out, a drone "cannon" that shoots the food onto the balcony. It's perfect for covering that last distance. Works best for food packaged in discrete boxes. ;)

Uber yeets

Oh ha ha ha. Funniest post in weeks.

How are they going to get the right apartment, and even if they do, what if the food gets fumbled in the handover and someone is injured by falling meals?

"We add a $70 surcharge to each delivery for the ballistic parachute system that protects people on the sidewalk from fumbled delivery handovers. This surcharge is refunded when the intact and unused parachute system is returned via the drone from your next delivery."

How do you shoot that used delivery parachute back to the drone upon next delivery?

DJI has those smart docking stations.

Maybe eventually each apartment will have one or it'll be subsidized by delivery platforms.

Food slides? Smart waiters? Hook and cook? And a large orange drink?

Pneumatic tubes

I'm disappointed society hasn't revisited pneumatic tube networks since we got good at packet switching and RFIDs and computing in general.

They're still used pretty heavily in hospitals and they do take advantage of newer technology like RFID for routing.

Separately, there's a very cool startup called Pipedream that does autonomous underground delivery robots that are kind of the next iteration of the concept.

But only for burritos. Pizza's not quite as resilient.

This reminds me of The Fifth Element. The restaurant should fly to my balcony and serve me there.

Chinese delivery robots have been using elevators for years. I believe they wirelessly communicate with the elevator control system.

>I believe they wirelessly communicate with the elevator control system.

That sounds hilariously abusable.

The robots are operated by the building, for what it's worth. The delivery drivers drop the deliveries off to the robots in the lobby, and the robots take it from there to the individual rooms.

That actually sounds a lot better.

You do understand this single fact undermines your previous claim completely?

This explains how elevators can always be hacked remotely by the Impossible Missions Force and other cinematic superteams.

This is very much location/culture dependent. Where I live is customary for the delivery drivers to wait on the sidewalk while you go down to pick the order up.

I can relate with most of what you said, but "drones don't scale", really? If they can scale in war, I can't see why they would not scale for other uses

in war, they do not need to care about collateral damage.

I sure hope that my neighbour's drone delivery doesn't produce collateral damage if it flew near my property. Otherwise, i will have to shoot down the drone.

They don't have to land safely, not cause liabilities or make return trips in war.

I can't tell if this is sarcasm, because it sounds almost exactly like how a horse rider would have described new-fangled automobiles.

Well were their wrong? Car-centric development has been an absolute disaster in dozens of different ways.

those disasters were externalities, which i dont disagree is disheartening, but the personal freedoms and transportation capability given by the personal automobile is worth it. Public transport, even good ones, does not provide this level of comfort and freedom.

Oh god we're going to get a new hellscape of drone noise which we won't be able to get rid of on account of the personal freedom granted by having second rate food delivered five minutes faster.

> hellscape of drone noise

on the other hand, if it removed some traffic noise which is equal or worse than drone noises...

Cities don't work like that. When you have less traffic, people start to squeeze in (real estate is rarely a limiting factor), and you get more people and more traffic. People want to live densely, and they will.

My, if only there was a better way to transport people in a city besides a 2-ton metal box moved my exploding fuel...

Perhaps some two-wheeled contraption, of the pedal-power sort?

Really good public transport does, because you're not constrained by having to return to your personal vehicle at the end of whatever you're doing, you're not constrained by its operational or mechanical limits (think: family members who can't drive for reasons of health or young/old age, large groups who won't fit in your car, drinking or other intoxicants that make you unfit, reading a book/resting your brain on the way to or from a long day, households not wanting or affording to own as many vehicles as there are people in their home).

OK, it's not as private or comfortable as your own vehicle, but I'd rather be in public but able to read/dream/listen than in private but having to concentrate on the road. (This of course requires a public transport system which is safe and not full of crazies, I understand that's a problem in those US cities which have it).

Granted, there's only a few dozen cities in the world that do it that well.

Surely horse-centric was a lot better.

Some people seem to think manure is cleaner than tailpipes.

Reminds me of an Indian ceremony where they believe cow manure is healthy (maybe it is, I have no clue) and they are walking on it on barefeet or something.

Balony express?

Drones were banned from cities already a good while ago, and I don't see that changing. Drone delivery could work on the countryside, but urban areas will be limited to delivery robots on wheels.

I guess you could pack all the meals in a truck, drive it to the edge of the city and then load all the drones and send them out over the burbs

Good luck getting permission to fly drones within X miles of an airport.

On the flip side, many bars and restaurants are throwing lots of attention to entertainment and in-person experiences.

It’s a lot easier to find in person entertainment.

Do you mean like Chuck E. Cheese and Dave and Buster’s?

Before when my children were too young for iPhones, they loved Buffalo Wild Wings because they gave all the kids devices to play with. I am surprised Bill Burr did not address this phenomenon at all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuRSVUWXA0s

This sounds too similar not to be - Fukada?

In India, these are called "cloud kitchens." A single cloud kitchen could be listed on a food delivery app under multiple brands - one brand for chinese cuisine, one for italian, etc.

It's 'ghost kitchen' in the US, but that's not what gp is describing.

Might also be influenced by CloudKitchens, a company founded by the Uber guy. I’ve heard them called both tho.

Interesting.

In many industries there are contract manufacturers that produce products for many different brands.

There are 'cloud kitchens' im California that have 30 to 40 "kitchens" at the same address, different apps. The largest on just has a double stove and cooks meat, side by side as the most kitchy vegitarian meals. The two roast beef sandwiches cost less than the salad, but the delivery driver could not hand us the food on premises. We walked outside and we're handed the meals. ( The vegitarian salad was in a separate bag ).

Dark kitchens in the UK.

I noticed that food became much more standardized and similar at different places, maybe they are taking a page from McDonald's book and using some kind of a centralized model, where cooks at the restaurant just microwave and plate the prepared ingredients.

This is yet another reason to stop supporting chains and go to locally owned independent restaurants. Good food made with usually more passion and care with variety and quality ingredients.

Hmm, did they lower their price correspondingly, at least compared to competition?

Because I don't go to restaurants to just eat, albeit fine food, I go for whole experience, environment. Something clicks in each human brain and we have this bubble of different vibes, for lack of better words. Plus social aspects.

Same reason alcoholics or anybody else still go to bars in droves, despite being able to just buy same alcohol in stores for fraction of the price.

That's why I pay restaurant prices for food that often costs much less in take aways or premade in stores. Michelin * are different but again the ambience is top priority there too, you won't get the star just for stellar food.

>Michelin * are different but again the ambience is top priority there too, you won't get the star just for stellar food.

Au contraire: >A Michelin Star is awarded for the food on the plate – nothing else. The style of a restaurant and its degree of formality or informality have no bearing whatsoever on the award.

https://guide.michelin.com/us/en/article/features/what-is-a-...

Several fast food restaurants in my town tried to keep their dining rooms closed well beyond the health emergency. They were reminded by the town that their business licenses depended on them having dine in service. If they wanted to be drive thru and pick up only, they'd need to convert to a different business license, including a new traffic study and payment of road impact fees. They reopened the dining rooms instead. A couple of Taco Bell locations tried to game this by having dining room hours that they didn't honor. Not sure if someone complained to the town or Taco Bell corporate but one day the dining room hours suddenly expanded and AFAIK, were no longer unreliable.

Reminds me; I have a SERIOUS gripe about restaurants closing before their posted hours end.

I respect the need to have a 'last order' time, and __if they don't list it__ , it isn't unreasonable to assume that's the final time on the door. What if I want to walk in for takeout because I HATE using the drive through? (I do hate that, far less consistent food, no chance to verify it's made right.)

I do respect restaurants that list a separate 'final order' time and 'everyone should be out' time, that's good communication.

Same with my favorite local Thai place. I still order from there ~monthly as it's great; but I miss the lunch option.