- A smaller menu lets the chefs focus on learning to make those dishes at the expected level of quality. These items also usually require more skill and knowledge to just be passable.
- It's not so much that fancy places have small menus, as it is that non-fancy restaurants can have bigger menus. Their kitchens can have an assembly-line style that optimizes simplicity and time, letting them hire cheap cooks. When every dish is "throw each part in the oven/fryer/pot, wait 10 minutes, put on plate," adding 50 dishes doesn't put as much strain on the cooks.
It's about efficiency.
So not to need physical menus, due to Covid.
Had wine and charcuterie: food and separate drink menu on two different QR codes.
It's not perfect, many times the checkout system is haphazard, doesn't make use of Apple Pay or anything built into the phone. Requires user to input their table number into the checkout process.
Or its just a surrogate for normal waiter / server experience and they come up to you eventually (which is fine).
People all seem willing to tolerate the experience, and all the older luddites and technophobes are still in their prepper bunkers or just not in the city.
Interesting how much the last decade of technology and proliferation has prepared us for this. QR codes, mobile phones, highly available high speed internet. Just going back 10 years in many major cities, even San Francisco and New York, this would have been much much worse to adjust to.
Lose the name calling here please.
"a person opposed to new technology or ways of working."
and
"a person who fears, dislikes, or avoids new technology."
which is literally a copy and paste job from the definitions on google.
They are older than the people going out.
edit: ahhh if that one irreconcilable line dilutes my message for people here I don't really care enough about this conversation to placate whoever that got the attention of. I added to the discussion maybe others have a relatable experience. Moving on.
I’m sure someone could create one that is usable, but I haven’t run into one yet.
We've been working with one company that has integrated their web-app with our existing POS, but there's a lot of bugs with some wonky workarounds that we aren't comfortable with. They've been developing new features for us for months at no cost due to their pandemic program, however it's just not up to our CEO's expectations.
Now we're looking into switching to a completely new, modern POS that supposedly has a working order/pay from your device feature. Trouble is, the entire check has to be ordered (drinks, appetizers, entrees, desserts) all at once and paid for before it even gets sent to the kitchen. This is what the other company we've been working with has been trying to set up for us - guest sits down, scans the QR on their phone, orders at their own pace and checks out whenever they're ready - this is how our restaurant has been set up from day 1. We previously had iPads with a custom iOS app that the guests could order from. Our CEO believes this won't be an acceptable system moving forward as shared iPads aren't seen as sanitary as personal phones.
Having spent significant time in the Industry, in both Europe and the US, I honestly think this is exactly what will give Ghost Kitchens the edge over the traditional dine-in places.
(disclaimer: founder) Yes, this is literally what Zerocontact does. Contactless waitlist, menu, order, pay. Hybrid ordering so staff and guests can add items to one check. Fully supports courses. Add dessert at the end of th meal. Still, the customer has one check to pay (apple pay or google pay, or CC). We may even support your legacy POS or you can use ZC in standalone mode. It's a full order-management system for contactless on prem and off prem dining.
We're negotiating with Toast at the moment since the offer the whole deal, hardware included, other than the ability to leave the guests' tab open once their order is started from their own device.