E La Carte Raises $35M to Expand Pay-at-the-Table Technology

Re:E La Carte Raises $35M to Expand Pay-at-the-Table Technology by joezydeco on Wednesday September 24, 2014 @04:11PM (#8363827)

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

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Re:E La Carte Raises $35M to Expand Pay-at-the-Table Technology by seizethecheese on Wednesday September 24, 2014 @06:03PM (#8364426)

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.

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Re:E La Carte Raises $35M to Expand Pay-at-the-Table Technology by tiglionabbit on Wednesday September 24, 2014 @07:26PM (#8364717)

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.

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