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.