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