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Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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 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 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.

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