E la Carte: Table-Top Computers Bring Restaurants To The Future | Hacker News Reader

E la Carte: Table-Top Computers Bring Restaurants To The Future

techcrunch.com

63 pointserohead42 comments

Am I the only one who thinks this is a terrible idea? The entire notion of going out to eat with someone is now being co-opted by having to get "entertained" via another device, interfering with conversation, and reducing human interaction. I love the fact that going out to a restaurant means interacting with someone face to face, avoiding email, texting, and phone conversations.

Yes, you can get the hell off my lawn, too. :)

The device on the table does not control your life. Ignore it and have a conversation if you want. Or, look into the future and imagine this device with live webcams of your food being prepared, perhaps showing you a short article or video describing the culinary history of the meal you are about to eat. Or perhaps you could use it to settle healthy debates with your friends / SO rather than use your phone - this is slightly more communal / social (assuming you have a smartphone; if you don't have a smartphone, then this opens up the world of debate-settling completely).

Use and imagine technology for what it can be. Don't be mad at it if you can't control your insatiable appetite for technology.

All what you described are the niche applications of a very little interest to the general restaurant going crowd.

They may be of very little interest now, but never assume that peoples' tastes are static (yes, even the masses).

For people with kids who'd otherwise be playing their own games (not an uncommon case, from what I've seen) this would actually increase human interactions, because these are collaborative games.

You must be new to the parenthood :)

There are two types of games - those that kids can figure out on their own and those that need to be explained by their parents. Former get boring quickly (in a matter of minutes) and latter will interfere with the dining. Varies by a child of course, but the rule of thumb is to stick to the games kids are already familiar with if you want to keep them occupied.

(edit) But on a more general note - are these devices just to keep kids entertained? Might not be a bad idea, but it needs to be positioned as such.

But on a more general note - are these devices just to keep kids entertained? Might not be a bad idea, but it needs to be positioned as such.

My guess is that the game portion of the device will be mostly used by kids. Adults will probably try it once out of curiosity.

The games are social which enhances the dining experience of most people who use E la Carte tablets. And like with any technology, you have the freedom to not use it, or use just a subset of the available features. Some people are happy to split bills, pay for their meals (without having to wait or hand their credit cards to waiters) and have their receipts emailed to them, even if they didn't order through the device.

A number of restaurants have successfully integrated games into meals. The example that comes most readily to mind is Buffalo Wild Wings in which you can play trivia games against other people in the restaurant. Granted I don't it would be wise to do this on your anniversary or something but in many situations it improves the social interaction rather, look at the popularity of pub trivia.

However the features of these devices that I'm most interested in is how they allow you to order food and pay for it right there. Having to split checks is a problem (admittedly I do feel kind of like a pussy complaining about it) that this device should completely eliminate.

If i get it right, E La Carte is more about augmenting the dining experience, rather than replacing the current one. It can open the door for "Dining Personalization" since eventually you may have a digital dining record of your own, or even your friends. Reviews, recommendations, or even keeping track of your calorie intake couldn't be much easier. Although E La Carte seems not supporting these yet, but without E La Carte these features weren't even possible.

Well said, guest recognition/personalization is where it's at -- with a consistent profile across restaurants that have E la Carte installed, people stand to gain from those features and more e.g realtime data on popular menu items ("likes"), dietary information etc. How many times have your browsed through the ginormous menus at cheesecake and didn't know what to order? With E la Carte, I can see myself trying a menu item recommended by a friend who's been to the restaurant before.

I was actually in the process of building a service like this, but the kicker on this model is of course the hardware. No matter who keeps the hardware on their inventory, it's not a negligible cost, especially when you account for maintenance, replacement, all of that.

I started working on this project because I work as a waiter. And because of that background, I think that this concept a little risky. There are too many old-school types who won't dig this. But there are a TON of young folks who love to interact with anything touchscreen-y.

But the real value in this system is of course the data. This could be a huge "Voice of the Customer" platform because it can do what other VoC vendors cannot do: provide a high response rate for customer feedback attempts. Receipt surveys, e-mail surveys and all the rest are terrible at getting an accurate readout of customer sentiment.

If this company is smart about the kind of database it keeps (creating a customer profile across different restaurants/ retail locations) it could be a tremendously powerful. These devices could be used in so many other locations for feedback. Restaurants are just the gateway.

Oh, and if anyone from E la Carte is reading, I'm available for a summer internship. :-)

Not a bad idea. Not for every restaurant of course, but informal places could benefit. Though...

And he says that waiters actually want customers to pay using the devices, because they tend to get more tips since it’s so easy to tap that 20% button.

If I go to a restaurant where the waiter doesn't take my order or handle payment or do anything except courier my food the twenty feet from the kitchen to my table then the waiters better not be expecting any tip, let alone 20%. And if the restaurant can get by with one third the former waitstaff then they can damn well pay 'em enough not to need my tips.

Restaurant owners will never pay waiters enough. They're too disposable. The only reason to want to keep one on the job long-termish/for better pay is that the waiter is well-known or is well-trained and knows a lot about how the restaurant operates. But they tend to float away anyways...

Well, I don't care how much the waiter is paid, just as long as he's there and he doesn't mind the fact that I'm not gonna pay him ten bucks for the forty seconds he spends bringing my food out from the kitchen.

I see someone has never waited tables.

In most restaurants, the busboys and dishwashers get a cut of the waiters' tips every night. Some restaurants extend that to the hostesses. Plus, waiters' hourly base pay is really low. And you have to put up with ungrateful customers who don't know how a restaurant works.

I actually used one of these at a restaurant in Boston and was fairly impressed with how well they streamlined ordering. The games on them wouldn't win any awards, but were up to the job of amusing two people while our food was prepared.

We have had similar ones in sushi shops for years in Japan: http://www.garbagenews.net/archives/1511123.html

And some of them can be used with Nintendo DS: http://www.garbagenews.net/archives/1406127.html

As far as I observed, one of the problems with these devices is they give the restaurant a bit of cheap look. That's partly due to their poor make, but most probably, the guests feel embarrassed similarly to when one takes out his cell phone just in the middle of dinner.

I don't have a problem with this. I think it can and will be useful. Although, I really believe innovators are missing a huge market for this kind of product (one that is trying to ease a physical buying experience).

And that's the retail/shopping market. If I had it my way, there would be large screens in department stores that displayed ratings and reviews of products congregated from a number of websites.

For instance, take the Nordstrom shoe department. Instead of having shoe displays against the wall, I really think they should have scrolling reviews displayed on sizable screens.

When I walk into a store, I rarely know what's worth my money. And who really thinks a salesperson is the right person to be helping you make a decision (or talking you into a decision...)? And yeah, I could search my phone for product reviews, but that's a hassle.

I just threw these images together, so you can get rough idea of what I mean. BEFORE - http://www.dropmocks.com/mUKVS and AFTER - http://www.dropmocks.com/mUJoj

Sorry to get a little off track here. Best of luck to the E la Carte people!

Why isn't this built as an app on the iphone/droid/ipad? e.g. App with say 4 modes of customer, waiter, kitchen & restaurant.

Customer mode:: order =before= you get to the restaurant, book a table, pre-assigned seating, bill split, rate your food, rate your waiter, etc.

Waiter mode:: When a customer doesn't have their own smartphone/ipad. Plug in with the 'square' for payments.

Kitchen mode:: Customer is 5 minutes away (gps), start cooking! (order added to queue). Just stepped in (bluetooth/wifi?discovery), queue the drinks, ready to plate!

Restaurant mode::seating arrangements, waiter assignments, VIP customer tracking (CRM for restaurant customers! we can track them now.), stats, etc.

Biggest business plan benefit - Instantly scalable, global immediately (it's an app!), lower hardware costs, tie in to upsell restaurants on services, etc etc etc.

ps. I'ld love to have something like that on my phone. And yes, opentable should have really done something like this years ago.

a) Not everybody has a smartphone

b) Most people don't want to download another damn app just to be able to eat at your restaurant.

c) Being able to order before you arrive usually isn't really a big advantage -- otherwise places would have done it long ago by phone.

Might be useful for take-out food during the lunchtime rush, though -- order and pay for your lunch from the office, and then stroll down to collect it. But some places already have an web-based system for this, with no need for a separate app. Still, I guess the app-based idea might make life slightly easier -- just show the screen of your phone to pick up your order.

Is it substantially different from uWink (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UWink), or just better executed (http://lemonodor.com/archives/2008/05/uwink_a_cold_greasy_pl...)?

It's more like a copy of (http://www.tabletopmedia.com).

In the way Google was a copy of Lycos, maybe.

No bias there. =) Shouldn't have said "copy", maybe just "another company doing the same idea". Best of luck to your investment.

Used a similar system at a conveyor-belt sushi restaurant in Japan. It's absolutely ideal for situations like that, and possibly for many restaurants as well, and the ease of ordering will probably encourage people to grab a dessert - there's no need to flag someone down.

It is not, of course, the best for every restaurant. But I doubt that's their goal.

Best of luck to them, hopefully they make something nicer to use than the POS terminals have!

This sounds like a promising idea that executed well can be very successful. I wish them great success.

Now that I got that out of the way, I hope I never go to a restaurant that has this. Let me explain why...

Reread the first paragraph. If you don't feel like back-clicking, here's the gist of it:

... the restaurant song-and-dance routine ... wait ... wait ... wait ... wait ... “Check, please?” ... hand gesture ... furrow our brows ... mental math ... and, finally, get up to leave ... Whew.

Guess how many times I go to a restaurant with this kind of experience? Once. I won't go back.

In other words, the restaurants that can most benefit from this kind of service are exactly the ones I don't want to eat at...

We both work hard and eat most meals at home. So when we go out, we want to be pampered. In fact, we insist on it. And I make it clear to my server every time we sit down with something like, "We've had a tough day and came here to relax with great food and service. OK?" In decent restaurants, most good servers see that as a challange and rise to the occasion.

I don't want to ever wait for anything. I want a drink as soon as I sit down. I want to discuss the menu with someone knowledgable. I want time to eat my salad without the main course coming too soon. I want my food to be delivered by my server, not some runner I've never seen before. I don't want to be interrupted mid-sentence. I want my server to be aware of my needs without being in my face. If a restaurant does this, we will return over and over and tip much more than the standard 20%. If they don't, we'd rather just eat at home.

I understand that the great masses of people don't feel this way and that's why E la Carte has so much potential.

But as for me, I've been looking at a screen all day long, so the last thing I want to do is order by terminal at Applebee's. I rather pay $100 for one nice dinner per week than $25 for 4 lousy ones.

In general I agree with you, but one feature to me would be worth the price of admission. Instant check payment and leave. Typically with kids, when we're done eating, we're done NOW. We need to leave pronto. Not in two minutes... now.

So the ability to simply say, "OK, dinner's over". Hit a button and head out the door in five seconds would be great. Probably not something you put in a five-star restaurant, but for family friendly restaurants its the type of thing that would make the difference on where we decide to go on a Wednesday night.

Also, I generally don't like waiters taking my credit card to process. Could pay cash, but generally don't carry cash.

I rather pay $100 for one nice dinner per week than $25 for 4 lousy ones.

Well bully for you, but you do realise that for the average wage-earner a $100 meal once a week would be an insane extravagance, right? That's well over ten percent of most folks' take-home pay.

So are the E la Carte devices given to the table and picked up after finishing sorta like menus? Don't they get in the way while eating? Really interesting novel idea. If it reduces the hassle for waiters, I'm all for it. Looks like a pretty win-win situation.

Which POS-es does it integrate with?

How's the security model; can some derps come in and try to pwn one while eating by setting up a wireless sniffer which picks up all transactions from all devices in the establishment?

Also, isn't the name and domain name really uncomfortably close to http://www.e-lacarte.com/about-elacarte/index.cfm ?

Great to see YC get into the food business, only good things can come from this.

They're just left on the tables all day, and didn't end up getting in the way for us any more than a salt and pepper set would.

Sounds fun. Here in LA, a couple of restaurant entrepreneurs are building on the success of The Counter, an upscale custom burger quick-serve, with an iPad-based concept restaurant. The first one opens next month.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2011-02-16-ipa...

Bones steakhouse in Atlanta (a landmark) gives every table an iPad instead of a printed wine list. Very cool, and it actually increased their sales immediately.

http://whatnowatlanta.com/2010/09/14/bones-steakhouse-uses-i...

There is no doubt that his device has a great potential! This device brings extra customer experience and income boost for restaurants. Great idea! It will be a big success.

This reminds me of those kiosks they have at airports begging you to play games while you wait. I never see people on them but have always wondered how much they made.

Perfect project!!! Whether it is possible to take part in this matter?

I'd be surprised if this hasn't been done before, but I hope they get the execution right! Does anyone know how previous attempts have fared?

Sounds great for casual casual dining .... and I would kill for a simple way to split the bill at the end of a meal with 10 people!!

So wait... Who am I tipping? It seems to me this device replaced the waiter with a busser... Or am I missing something?

Amazing concept. I'd love to give it a try in person.

We need it in Russia

In Poland too!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com