I am waiting for the first restaurant that only has Cooks and Food Runners with no traditional waitstaff...
This will likely coincide with the removal of tipping as a custom in the US. We will move to kiosk ordering, press a button to get drink refills, pay at the table, and leave.
They've had this in Japan since before tablets in the form of vending machine restaurants. You order and pay at a vending machine and get a ticket, you sit down and hand in your ticket, and someone brings the food to your table.
I haven't been in many years, I guess now they have touch screen kiosks instead of old school vending machines.
I 100% prefer pay at table, and would 100% prefer order at table as well, less chance they get my order wrong
Actually, now that I've think of it, I'm not sure I've ever seen the "large-screen credit card terminal with order entry" version in real life.
Just realized this is another problem averted by Chip+PIN for payments. Since you have to physically touch the keypad, there's reason to take you to the PoS terminal, or the terminal to you, and no reason to take the card from you.
Chip+Sign is what we have here. I dont even know what my PIN would be for my Credit Card, Pin's are only really used for Debit cards but I almost never use my Debit card for anything at all.
I still feel that these products are "sold" to restaurants and aren't actually all they're cracked up to be.
A few converted to carry out only, and have not gone back to buffet style.
There are still a few open of course but no where near as many, and the ones that survived seems to be of lesser quality