The cynic in me can't help wondering why, if there's such a big mainstream demand for ordering at the table with minimal interaction with the waiter, paper menus with tick boxes and kiosks to pay on the way out haven't been the mainstream way of ordering and paying for food for a while.

Maybe I'm going to the wrong restaurants.

It's not the minimal interaction that's the draw. It's the lack of waiting for the waiter to come to you.

You wouldn't be waiting for very long for someone to pick up your pre-filled order sheets if the waiters didn't spend any time chatting with other guests.

My point is more that the interaction with the waiter is actually an integral part of how the sit-down restaurant experience differentiates itself from fast food, as well as an opportunity to persuade guests to take extra side dishes and chef's specials from the point of view of the restauranteur.

(Yes, it's probably partly a cultural thing; I don't even want to order a main course until I've got snacks on the table and a drink in my hand unless it's counter service. But notionally more efficient alternatives to traditional table service have been around for a long time everywhere without restaurant owners feeling the need to replace it en masse)

As a counter point.

I am somewhat of a food snob, but I don't like to cook. Fast food and cheap (aka applebee's) food is off the table, but the traditional wait time at mid to high end restaurants is simply wasted time. Honestly, I find ethnic restaurants often have a great balance as it's often vary good food without the overhead of an 'up scale' restaurant. But, american restaurants rarely mix casual dining with great food.

> notionally more efficient alternatives to traditional table service have been around for a long time everywhere without restaurant owners feeling the need to replace it en masse

I take your point, always important to see if there is a cultural need before just slapping "tech" and "efficiency" on our experiences.

That said, fast casual has been digging into the midrange sit down market for the last decade. Fast casual limits waitstaff interactions and eliminates the need to pay before leaving. That could be read to suggest that the market saw the need, even if established owners didn't.

There's probably not a similar need when you're mostly paying for experience. I don't see tablets replacing staff at most places with a sommelier. The mid to low end of the market though has generally demonstrated demand for ways to enable faster and more fluid exchanges.

Paper sheets with tickboxes can't upsell. Human staff and on-table tablets can. That's why.

The function of human staff go way beyond up-selling. I work as a cashier at a successful restaurant in Portland, Oregon, and while punching info into the computer takes up a good portion of my time, it is less than 25%. Most of my time is spent answering questions, setting expectations, chatting with customers, solving edge-cases and cleaning. We don't really upsell, actually, it's tacky.

The reason why we don't see kiosks for ordering food, IMO, is path dependence. Entering data into a form is work, and people don't want to do it themselves.

Unless it's fun.

Have you used the kiosks at Carls JR? I greatly prefer these to talking to a real cashier. I can customize my burger in all kinds of ways that a human cashier is going to screw up and forget about, and I don't have to feel rude about wasting their time.

Also it'll upsell you on bacon and chocolate cake, which are both pretty awesome add-ons.

In UK pubs you normally order food/drinks at the bar and pay upfront. You get the drink right away and food is brought to your table once it's ready.

This is even better - as you don't have to stand and wait at the bar for your order to be taken.

One thing I would like is the ability to pay at the table. Moving from the UK where the waitstaff brought the card reader to the table for you (to pay with chip-and-pin) to the US where waitstaff I had met for the first time disappeared with my credit card for several minutes was unnerving at first.

Completely agree. I just came back from Istanbul and they use the mobile card readers everywhere. Every bar/restaurant tab was cleared in seconds despite there being 6+ people in our group. This was new to me as an American who had not used them before. I wonder why these aren't being used in the US as they are easier and probably more secure than the current system of signature-matching.

Yeah, that's the biggest advantage for me. Once I'm done eating I generally want to at least go outside to smoke/vape, if not leave right away, but far too often it takes a solid 20 minutes to wait for the bill to arrive, wait for the waiter to return the bill, and then wait for them to return with my card. When I've used one of these systems, we finished eating, I swiped my card, and then we left.

Plus, the one I used had the ability to arbitrarily split the check without having to have the waiter remember the random dollar amounts to put on 4 different cards.

Once you guys are forced to switch to chipcard readers, you'll have wireless readers everywhere. This is how it happened in Canada in recently years.

This will have to happen with chip and pin cards anyway.

This device annoys me. I occasionally go to the Applebee's near me, and I've used it once. They usually are either broken or not on (either way, black screen). Anyone here with experience as a waiter with these things? Are they awesome for the waitstaff?

Doesn't surprise me.

The thing is, with real POS integration (which most companies don't have) -- you could do all of this from the customer's phone rather than a stupid piece of hardware at the table.

It's nice to have a bigger screen so you can see pictures of the food. It makes it more fun to explore your options.

My father taught me to never eat at a restaurant that had photos of the food.

This would be a godsend in Europe, where to American sensibilities it often feels like you have to have a flashing light and sirens to get someone, anyone, to show up and give you the bill after you're done your meal.

To European sensibilities ordering and paying from an iPad would be seen as unbelievably tacky.

I suspect the hurdle here is social not technical, similar to Google Glass.

How would you feel about being presented with the bill, and being able to pay for it from your own device - securely, and with minimal input, and without the credit-card machine dance?

Or being able to call up the bill on your own device, and pay it on the spot?

Yeah, I think that's preferable.

It could look like a regular bill holders but have NFC embedded. You could still leave cash if you want. Or you can tap your Apple Watch use Apple Pay (or similar technology).

It's not much of a dance, he hands the reader across, I type in my pin - receipt prints out, it's pretty quick.

Haha I couldn't agree more!

A better solution I saw in Japan was a button that has the waiters come in a couple of minutes.

Why American restaurants don't implement something like this reminds me why some places in San Jose are cash only.

I saw that kind of button at a Japanese restaurant in LA, and it's a godsend! That made it easy to pay, and easy to do other things like ask questions and order. I don't get why more places don't have that!

Seems like it would work for the reverse case as well: if you want to sit around for a while between courses or at the end of the meal, you can.

I've used one of these systems before, and I gotta say, I really like it.

I enjoyed playing the trivia games on it with a group. I didn't like having to pay $1 to unlock the trivia... but then I figured on a $50-$80 group bill, what's $1.

Liked being able to pay when we were ready to go.

In this day whenever everyone sits and plays on their phone and takes photos of the food, this will turn the tables over a tad faster. Something the restaurants should like.

It's great not having to wait for the check. I would be really happy to have this at most restaurants (maybe not super-fancy date-type places).

I used one and thought it was in the way. It was nice to not have to wait for the check though

What? Just get chip and pin machines like the rest of the world.