Groupon Co-founders invest $4M in fast-growing E la Carte (YC S10) | Hacker News Reader

Groupon Co-founders invest $4M in fast-growing E la Carte (YC S10)

techcrunch.com

70 pointsdyroffk26 comments

I used a spiritually similar system at a sushi shop (try saying that five times fast) last week. It's fifteen flavors of wonderful.

About a year ago, I think I said something to the effect of "A/B tested restaurant menus would print cash." (Edit: here we go: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2046426 ) If they're getting +12% sales just on superior interaction design (versus actually talking to a human -- and I have no difficulty believing that the average interaction with a device measurably beats the average interaction with a human for at least some restaurants on axes both customer and owner care about) I predict very, very, very nice things in their future when they decide to take an engineer or three aside and become a data company in addition to being a devices company.

Sprinkle a little code on a techphobic multi-billion dollar industry, watch wonderful stuff happen.

I love tech, but if I went to a restaurant and they had that, I honestly wouldn't go back.

They gained 10% from those who stuck around and points to them for working the up-sell on side orders, but how many left never to return? To quantify the value of tabletop ordering systems is not as simple as saying "oh look, a 10% gain in average order value" it's much more complex than that. And without the customer numbers and order value variance it's hard to truly analyze the success of the proposition.

> I love tech, but if I went to a restaurant and they had that, I honestly wouldn't go back.

Why?

Personally, I'd love to see this. I particularly liked the bit about filtering and sorting the menu. And I could often use an option to randomly choose between a few options that sound appealing.

> And I could often use an option to randomly choose between a few options that sound appealing.

Really, though? The choice is so difficult that you need a battery powered LCD display tablet to do "rand()" for you?

The opposite: the choice matters so little that having a convenient implementation of rand() readily available produces a better result.

I'm not sure how true this would be for the general public. I like human interaction when I'm out, but I typically only avoid restaurants that have bad food.

depends on the atmosphere. Ambiance matters for many places, and that includes attentive staff that make you feel important. But it you're at a busy lunch spot or happy hour spot, this can be great.

I respect that you may not like this technology. I think you are perhaps overestimating how hard it is to quantitatively or qualitatively judge what customers think of it.

Qualitatively: ask your waitstaff if they keep getting called over by customers saying "I pressed the devil box and it didn't work! I hate this!"

Quantitatively: you get credit card numbers and email addresses. See who comes back. (Bonus points: if they don't come back, ask them why not.)

If they don't come back you can't ask them why not. That's the point. It's a function of the level of competition. If it's a competitive location and you lose that customer, they're practically gone forever.

If they don't come back you can't ask them why not

If you're collecting their email addresses to give them their receipts, this is probably not as problematic as you think.

A random restaurant is not getting my email address, for any reason, ever.

Why not? I barely receive spam at this point, and it's pretty easy to block people that abuse the address.

On the other hand, I'd love it if the places to which I've never returned asked me why, and then changed as a result and invited me to try again.

I think this is pretty gimmicky, although that might be good enough for a certain subset of casual bar food kinds of restaurants.

If you want a more efficient restaurant, this is certainly not the best way to get it. Put the menu up on a big board like McDonalds, Chipotle, Panera, or other already high volume eateries like street vendors. Want to be even faster? Cut down the menu complexity. Fewer menu items means less customer analysis paralysis and a more streamlined kitchen. Anyone in the restaurant business already does at least some data analysis on every sale and have regional and store by store A/B testing. I mean, they have to know what's selling when they do inventory and order more food.

What doesn't make you more efficient (i.e. turn orders and tables faster)? Giving just one menu to a table full of people then include a bunch of games and surveys on it. But if you want to have a table gimmick to keep people around ordering more appetizers and rounds of beer, this might be the ticket.

Groupon's largest shareholder and chairman, Eric Lefkofsky, has a back story investors might want to know.

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/06/10/groupon-eric-lefkofsk...

I was surprised to see the latest E la Carte job ad (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2935090) claim an investment from an unnamed Greplin founder. The company's only 1.5 years old and the founders already have 4.7MM in funding (per CrunchBase) and are doing angel investments. Neat.

I think after founders go through the fundraising process, a lot of them think it'd be fun to do angel investments in other companies. I guess the best reason NOT to do that is because it can dilute your focus from your own company.

One of the Greplin cofounders previously created Zenter: http://techcrunch.com/2007/06/19/google-acquires-zenter-to-f...

Wow, this is a great idea. I have seen this tech before (well similar) in japanese restaurants around my area but the problem is the functionality was very limited and the user interface blowed. This however looks very nice to use. I think the main thing the restaurant owners who adopt this technology need to get a grasp of his how to properly integrate this with their customer service staff.

I would presume there would be some retraining also such as how to handle technical failures during an order (what to say and how to still keep it streamlined through old manual methods) but if all that stuff is sorted this looks great !

I mean playing games when your waiting and nutritional information is great. I do that tim ferris diet and knowing if something has sugar or the forbidden ingredients in them would be good to know. Also it would provide important info to people with allergies to nuts and other similar kinds of foods.

I saw similar interactive menus in Japan, esp. for Yakiniku. Their systems are relatively crude, but more than adequate. Press a button to summon your server, choose items off the menu, etc. I actually think you'd want more durable, and less fussy (and expensive) than a tablet for this application.

Either way, I hope this takes off.

This is not for everyone, but there are times when this is perfect: Happy Hour, Lunch, Dining with "Cheap" friends (splitting the bill).

This would never replace "regular waiter service" but for those who want faster service, with no questions, it's a win-win.

I'm not touching that thing. I hope there is a supplemental app that you can download to your phone instead. Yes, I realize menus would have germs on them too, but this seems like the kind of thing 3-year-olds would be given to salivate on to keep them occupied.

I'm pulling these numbers out of my ass, but I suspect if ONE major restaurant chain were to sign them after a pilot, they'd be making at least 3-4 mil in revenue a year and would have exceeded whatever 15-20M valuation they just received.

This could be seen as an improved Automat[1]

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat

Seems like a risky move for a startup to associate itself with Groupon founders. It would be like pushing a 401k fund managed by Bernie Madoff's son.

I like this but thinking where retail automation is going makes me a little sad.. Store cashier and waitress jobs are the only ones remaining for women with no degree or marketable skills... In 10-20 years i think we will see less of them!

Women?

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