It does not make sense that this person is attempting to run a reasonably priced restaurant and has FOH staff.
SF needs to adopt more Japanese style ordering machines. You choose and pay up front. When you are done you just leave. It's beautiful.
SF needs to adopt more Japanese style ordering machines. You choose and pay up front. When you are done you just leave. It's beautiful.
Sure, a few places that have those machines have tables but it's still a different vibe from a restaurant.
The bigger issue with those particular machines is they aren't compatible with western or in particular USA culture. Japanese generally don't ask for exceptions. Westerners often ask for tons of exceptions and substitutions either for medical reasons, religion reasons, personal convictions, or preference.
Go sit down, order from kiosk at table (or from kiosk up front). Panera for instance pretty much does this now.
It seems to work. We Americans can adapt!
SF needs to adopt more Japanese style ordering machines, density, public transit...
I went there last night. Looked like there was one guy working by himself. He poured my drink and gave me a buzzer. When my food was ready, I went back to pick it up.
It looked pretty clear that the owners figured the cost of the pager system was cheaper than having a second person working.
This is at an indoor soccer place, where he could have somebody from the front desk help cover when he needs to use the restroom, etc. Cooking is mostly putting stuff into a deep fryer.
At a different restaurant, the pager system still might mean going from cashier, cook, and runner to just cashier and cook.
I feel like North American restaurants are only willing to implement these with awful touchscreen UX, like the McDonald's touchscreen displays.
I don't know how the economics work out in Japan. I'm sure a large part is cultural and shared knowledge.
Maybe there's an opportunity for vendors of Japanese ticketing machines to jump into the San Francisco market??
It's the supermarket self-checkout UX horrible -> I'm automatically treated as a criminal because I can't checkout the next item before bagging the first. I have two hands darnit!
My annoyances are particularly as compared to Japanese-style ordering machines, which in my experience are simple, reliable, fast, and easy to use. My complaints, off the top of my head:
* Responsiveness to touch feels about a decade behind consumer capacitive touch displays.
* Gratuitous animations are slow.
* For a simple order where you know exactly what you want, there are far too many steps. (IIRC, for a black coffee, the button tapping flow goes something like this: English -> Hot Beverages -> Coffee -> Small -> Add to Cart -> Checkout -> Paying with card -> Paying with Bank card.) And you have to deal with the slow/bad touch response and animations for every one of these screens.
* There's no way to avoid the machine spitting out a BPA-covered thermal paper receipt. (Other than the receipt dispensation being out of order, which happens pretty frequently.)
> It's the supermarket self-checkout UX horrible
Oh, we have our own egregious example of that up in Canada, where the largest grocery chain in the country got rid of most of the text on self-checkouts in favour of just icons: https://www.blogto.com/tech/2018/05/loblaws-self-checkout-sy...
You shouldn't have to waste mental bandwidth on that needless bullshit - the only reasons are price point sleaze.
Personally, I prefer the ticketing/ordering machine. Katz's Deli in NYC famously uses a ticketing system.