Busy NYC Restaurant Solves Major Mystery by Reviewing Old Surveillance
dineability.com
dineability.com
Also, some of the statistic seems unbelievable. 60% of customers asked the waiter to take a group photo? 17% of people bumped into someone while texting?
I need more evidence that this isn't fake.
The only reason might be - this restaurant is focused on "Hipster" community known for heavy usage of their phones.
Also if user stays on his phone for so long I am sure he knows how to set Wifi without taking whole 5 minutes of waiter time.
And finally - 20% people sent their food back for reheating? I am not sure if there is different culture in NYC but from perspective of guest I my see 1% of returns in restaurants I go to.
This post seems like an instruction guide created by some restaurant union/organization to speed up the time and improve profits of restaurants by making people feel bad about using their phones.
I'm a little confused about whether you essentially agree or disagree that the scenario(s) in the post are valid. If this isn't really a problem, as implied by your scepticism in the first few points, then why would there be any concerted effort to solve the problem?
Restaurants want to guide people to not use mobile phones less in NYC restaurants.
People use mobiles less = less time spent on serving them and quicker customer rotation.
Restaurant saves up to 5 minutes per customer which equals to higher profit margins.
Campaign is successful, marketing company responsible for it gets paid huge chunk of money as those few minutes in top restaurants is worth gold.
If this is the case you might notice soon in NYC newspapers/NYC food guides articles about culture in restaurants.
I have been doing "shadow marketing" for 7 years and such a strategy seems like a very good way to actually do this. It dosent seem to be effort of just one restaurant.
I am not saying this sound impossible - I am saying this sound extremely stretched - instead of 40 minutes we are talking about probably 5 minutes top unless they are Hard Rock Cafe which is 100% tourist oriented.
The second one seems a bit high, but could be plausible if there are choke points.
"60% of customers asked the waiter to take a group photo?" If a large percentage of customers come in groups (which makes sense), then that doesn't seem surprising.
"17% of people bumped into someone while texting?" Maybe it's a small restaurant?
All together that might take 30 to 40 seconds with a retake. Imagine actually sitting there for 5 minutes trying to take a group photo, and it's really ridiculous. 5 minutes is an eternity for one waiter to spend in a single visit at one table, and they say this is an average!
It's truthy, in other words.
In my limited anecdotal evidence, I more often see kids being neglected by parents in favor of a smartphone, rather than the other way around.
It's in R&R, if that helps.
Maybe this is a cafe/snack place of some sort
It's a good story and it gets the idea right, but I would like to see this measured further.
It's a restaurant...
Educate yourself.
http://asmp.org/tutorials/property-and-model-releases.html#.... http://www.create-legal.com/867/model-release-forms
1. No reference to the actual restaurant 2. No reason a busy entrepreneur would post this on Craigslist 3. Convenient coincidences (2004 - 2014 is ten years, finding exactly 1 tape, all the evidence lines up PERFECTLY against cell phones, not a single piece of data out of line, etc) 4. No way to cross check whether this is real or made up
I not only don't believe this is a real post, but I do not believe this phenomenon exists.
On the flip side though, friends of mine that work in restaurants in less touristy areas don't seem to experience the same type of customers.
Based on this I think a lot depends on where the restaurant is and the type of customers it attracts. I think when people are on vacation (i.e. tourist) they tend to want to converse more with family/friends and take pictures of every little thing. Some even tend to be more "picky" about simple things such as seating.
To me it is an interesting observation, but I don't think you can draw a general conclusion about all restaurants just based on the experiences of one. It would be neat to look at multiple restaurants in completely different areas over the same period. From a restaurant perspective the "slow" customer is frustrating and costly and if there was a way to speed the process up it may be worth something to a restaurant. We went as far as hanging menus in different parts of the waiting areas so customers would look at them and get ideas before they were seated to help speed the process up for servers.
I don't think anybody at the table had their phone out for more than a minute, and no pictures were taken.
The story seems to be "people use phones and social media more now than in 2004, one restaurant in NYC has failed to keep up with this."
How have they failed to keep up? Customer interactions are taking twice as long and consume significantly more of their staff's time, do we expect them to double their prices to compensate? Charge for Wi-Fi?
I found it to be a fascinating view into how cell phones and the internet have changed our interactions in an every day situation.
I'll probably be at Snopes because I'm replying to a Facebook repost by an older relative, the kind who forwarded pearl-clutching emails before they joined Facebook.
There are more than a few cafes and restaurants that I've seen in Philadelphia that have a sign indicating that as a restaurant, they do not allow the use of laptops or phones, and as best as I can tell, it's had no negative effect on how busy they've been.
A few giveaways: lots of people taking pictures of food. Lots of people taking pictures of each other. Requests for WiFi (international tourists who don't have data plans). Requests to take group pics.
Smells like Times Square :P
At the end of the day, social pressure to put down your damn phone is probably the best solution. But if the restaurant isn't up-scale enough to use social pressure, there are probably other options.
Given that a significant number of customers were requesting wifi access, I wonder if some sort of landing page could be used to encourage the customer to choose something more quickly.
Some other subtle tricks might work as well. E.g waiters might give an explicit time frame ("I'll check back in 3 or 4 minutes") instead of the more common open-ended "in a few minutes"/"in a bit"/"later".
It also seems like the "request to be seated elsewhere" problem would be easy enough to solve by allowing customers, when they arrive, to select a table or ask for the soonest available table. I have a feeling most parties would select the latter. And then there's an implicit agreement -- whether a table is selected or not -- that the person will sit where the waiter take them.
The pictures of food/friends/etc. is annoying and probably not solvable except by social pressure. Except maybe the hostess (or another staff member) could field these sorts of requests so that waiters don't get behind with other tables.
[Of course no in-house photographer need be provided, or a waitperson could be designated, or you could outsource photographs if it proved popular; for a charge of course.]
We were outside, it was sunny but very windy and quite cold. There was also a line for tables. I felt a certain schadenfreude in knowing that their actions, as it delayed others who were waiting, ultimately meant a cold breakfast for them all. I suppose I can't fault those who would rather enjoy the visual sense of eating than the taste.
This is probably one of the most infuriating things in the work culture in Anglo North-America
More seriously, I like lunch meetings. I'd rather get out of work and back to the family an hour earlier than spend it idling with co-workers.
And often times, there's really not a good place to meet. Why drive 10-15 minutes, find parking, etc. at the nearest mall when you can walk down the street to the nearest restaurant in 5 minutes? Plus, I'd never invite a potential client to a mall plaza, esp during the summer...
That's interesting. I'm ready to order in about one minute.
Sounds like recent customers more 'event oriented' as well as having smart phones. Perhaps 2004 customers more utilitarian/eating for need? That could be checked by tallying group sizes.
needless to say the entire restaurant stopped eating and was staring at us/it, and we stayed at least 30 minutes longer than we would have otherwise. pretty sure the waiter was annoyed.
recalling that scene in retrospect is quite telling. also, this was only in 2007! not that long ago. i have pants older than that that still look good.
anyway, about the article... since the restaurant is in NY they should just put up a sign that says "using your phone causes slow service" or just ban them outright.
> 26 out of 45 customers spend an average of 3 minutes taking photos of the food.
It's like instagram and pinterest and all the other feel-good platforms are making us less efficient.
;)