agreed. it's become frustrating. I shouldn't have to make an account with some 3rd party to view specials. Also shouldn't have to look at 2002 style desktop publishing to try to find a menu either.
some have been well done. but not nearly enough.
As a side note, you don't customarily tip in restaurants in China, so a non high-end place with good food will typically have rushed and curt wait staff. Ordering through the phone will give you a better experience!
When I was in China I enjoyed using their mobile menus. A common layout I saw was a narrow vertical bar on the left with categories(appetizers, main, drinks, etc) and cards with photos + details on the right.
https://www.smartshanghai.com/uploads/articles/2019/06/63615...
Perfect example of a solution looking for a problem
This isn't a given. Places could design better instead of designing for paper and then just putting that online. But I still strongly prefer not to have to take out phone when with people.
The ideal situation is isn't the China situation people are describing of scanning with their phone and opening an app or custom made site, it's the situation in Japan with a small tablet on the table everyone just puts their orders into and food is delivered as the orders are received when combined with a call bell for refills or asking questions. I don't have to install anything or worry about tracking.
I know how a menu works. I read the food, see the price, and order. Personally I want to relax at a restaurant and not troubleshoot for myself and others, all while increasing my stress levels.
One way to fix this might be to encode the full text of the menu within the QR code, instead of a link?
QR codes are handy for easing people into eating out again... but wow; it can be pretty frustrating. Something I find myself thinking about more, is how Technology really needs to be more reliable, and how we really need to consider all the edge cases, before we can begin to replace the simple items such as a menu, let along more complex systems....Rant: I want something that will work 100% of the time.
Many bars (that now call themselves "tap houses") have beer menus that are either only online, or printed in a 20pt font on a 54" LCD TV behind the bar.
It is super annoying to have to get up for each beer because the server doesn't know what #32 out of 70 is let alone which number is a lager, and then not be able to read the menu (because my eyes suck) until I'm leaning over the bar.
Super, super annoying.
I've read that the Android camera app is supposed to recognize QR codes, but it doesn't seem to on my phone.
Why not?
Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s not actually better for some people and some situations.
This is obviously a decent use case for QR code’s; your comments seem just like you don’t like it, and you’re not interested in even considering any other option.
For private free money transfer, the US and many other places have similar if not better methods.
Or one could have "surge pricing" — not desirable as a customer, but certainly for a dining establishment. And one could also collect more information on customers.
I'm still inclined toward tangible menus. For the one positive point (adaptability), I am reminded of one of the best restaurant meals that I ever had. The beer menu was a small laminated card, but the brief food menu was just written on a chalk board each day. When I arrived a few items were already struck with a line through them. One really can't beat that kind of simplicity, with no reliance on digital devices unless for payment, if desired.
(kelnos pointed out that I missed something in the article; edited to address that point.)
Allergies? Substitutions? This stuff just gets slightly harder/annoying, albeit not horribly difficult ofc. I find myself agreeing most with the authors on this, though:
> I despise spending the first 10 minutes of a social engagement on my phone.
This just sucks and I'm tired of it.
If you're touching your phone right before eating you DEFINITELY want to wash your hands. Think about where your phone usually sits, tightly pressed against your body absorbing all the sweat and detritus and bacteria on your person. Think of the last time you actually washed or sanitized your phone too...
I do wonder if having the menu on your phone could actually be more engaging to these kind of diners (or at least prevent them from doing anything else), so that the whole ordering food process is sped up?
On my phone, I have to open up the Google app and click on the icon after the microphone on the search bar to open up Google Lens. Once I am in it, clicking on the three dots icon gives an option to add Lens to home screen.
For example, there used to be a cafe around here with a designated 'no laptops, no work' area and some board games (R.I.P. Longfellow's). There's a local chain that doesn't even provide WiFi. Contrast that to the hyper-sterile Blue Bottle Coffee less than a mile away -- I actually do like their coffee, but I don't go there to socialize. It's a space optimized to cycle people in-and-out ASAP.
Pre-COVID I actually ran a small mailing list for people to hang out at rotating local cafes, so I get what you mean to some extent. Even then, you're probably right that doesn't seem as dire to me because I grew up post-2000.
I called a restaurant to get some takeout on Valentine's Day (one that I'd been to for dine-in previously, and had great food), and they told me that they didn't do phone orders, only online orders. I placed my food order, and was immediately also hit with a pending charge of <$1 for a utility provider in a difference province where I've never lived. (I get email notifications of credit card transactions.) Called bank and they cancelled card, so it didn't progress any further.
I'm not inclined to eat at that restaurant again, or to ever order food online again.
First of all it takes a shitton of steps to scan a QR code if you don't have WeChat. On a default Android device you have to click 7 or 8 times to get into the QR scanner thingy inside Google Lens. I carry a 2nd phone with WeChat and I can scan things in 0 seconds flat, but most people don't have it around here in the US.
And then many restaurants' QR menus just redirect you to their website with a terrible experience, and sometimes no pictures.
And then it's annoying as hell to try to read a phone screen in daylight outdoors.
If you can print a QR menu just print the damn menu also. Put the QR code on the menu cover for people who really want that.
These days I often just ask wait staff what they have because I don't want to look at my phone.
The ordering also makes it more useful. Most restaurants in US just have a horrible HTML 1.0 menu with no ordering system, no pictures, and sometimes even goddamn frames.
With default Android it's like Home -> swipe -> camera -> 模式 -> 智慧鏡頭 and then point at the QR code while trying to tap the link that pops up as a tiny tooltip on the screen at the same time without making it go out of focus at the same time. It's awful.
Horrible experience.
It should just open the web page with zero taps if I point at a QR code in ANY camera mode, even portrait or panorama or movie or whatever the last mode I was on. I shouldn't have to tell it "I'm going to scan a QR code", it should always be looking for one, because it's computationally very, very cheap.
> On a default Android device you have to click 7 or 8 times to get into the QR scanner thingy inside Google Lens.
Perhaps, on stock Android with no manufacturer special apps. But the Samsung, Google, and LG Camera apps, at least, have “point at a QR code and the camera reads it”, so it takes as many clicks as opening the Camera app.
The menu is probably going to insist on using lower case letters, and the "Binary/byte" encoding will be interpreted as something between 7-bit ASCII and UTF-8 depending on the client. With the ECC payload 2,953 bytes sounds like quite a lot, THEN you look at the giant art linked in the article for even small examples. The size (version) 40 takes 177×177 width of decodable, clearly visible pixels.
At that point the QR code is in the ballpark of a printed 8.5x11 or A4 sheet of paper, and is far less useful to humans than a laser printed page with multiple sizes of lettering, super high contrast, and no requirement for a computer to decode.
There's certainly benefits to both, and offering both makes sense to me. As with all things, a few options tends to be good.
https://i.imgur.com/kjFEwiR.jpg
Then again, starting about 5 weeks ago it also stopped responding to "OK Google" and 3 weeks ago it stopped announcing turn-by-turn directions during GPS navigation so I guess this is the state of tech in 2021 :-/
(Definitely don't want an Apple device though, massive privacy issue for me to use a closed source kernel and that I can't easily introspect and MITM SSL requests on to see what data is being sent about me, I do like Android for the fact that I can more or less much hook into any part of the OS and execute custom code to monitor what the hell apps are doing behind the curtain, and even give them fake-but-realistic sensor data to even further protect my privacy.)
That doesn't sound like a cafe (or a workplace)
You can (a) decompile the app, mod it, recompile it, sign it, and then execute it (b) modify the OS to not care about app signatures (c) bypass it with Xposed hooks, ... lots of ways.
In most cases, the file is called "menu.pdf", so after downloading the PDF you then have to figure out if menu(12).pdf is the cocktail menu or the food menu.
A good menu generator, with competent web layout, readable, zoomable, searchable. Results may be hosted or sent as a bunch of static files.
The menu SPA page collects patrons' choices and forms a nice order for the waiter, as a text and as a QR code.
Flat monthly rate for up to 200 menu updates a day, effectively unlimited but preventing abuse. A small flat fee for serving the menus online and generation of the QR code. One-time fee for each piece of personalization / branding work beyond the standard templates.
Looks like a perfect side project for a couple of weekends, and then incessant low-intensity marketing efforts.
Whereas with people I know, it's not because / people have kids|partners they check in with / people sometimes just don't have the energy for constant peopling and the phone is a brief respite / people are sysadmins|on-call and get occasional blip warnings / people are checking on something to answer a question / etc.
http://api.qrserver.com/v1/create-qr-code/?color=000000&bgco...
I think if people had an awareness of their surroundings in these spaces, the spaces wouldn't have turned into sterilized off-campus work sites. But that may be asking too much from people who've never experienced it. I think this is what some of the 90s/00s startups were trying to replicate with their play rooms, but that's a far cry from sitting with a local dev and a taxi driver and a drunk musician spitting out ideas To me that's what the cafe is for.
(edit) I don't mean this to come off as the rant of an old gen X-er... it sounds to me like you had a real appreciation for the counterculture of ideas that could bubble up from having some limits and creativity in those spaces. You woulda loved the 90s. But maybe if enough people get sick of Blue Bottle Coffee and Starbucks, we can claw some humanity back. As it is, the less work-centric and more friends-and-family-centric parts if the world mostly reject the cafe as workplace model. They didn't used to find it so rude but they do now. I hope we have a backlash in the States if only because people really need that space to be verbal, interacting humans with each other. Especially on a lunch break.
> So... this is something i am really glad that it has not washed at our shores... at least not yet
How can you know if you haven't eaten in a restaurant since early 2020? Here in France, i had absolutely never seen it before the pandemic, but now it's ubiquitous even if roughly half the places also have a paper menu they can give/give anyways.
I wish they would just take orders from the site, but pay with a card machine which 107% of people are used to.
I like qr codes anyway: I don't like dead tree printing or touching stuff that is not mine but had a million hands on it (I had that before covid).
That said the last time we used it was a bit of a fiasco as the web app was out of date with the actual menu. So we ordered and paid then the waiter had to come out and swap a bunch of stuff around. I have no idea why they didn't just take the QR codes down until they fixed things but there you go.
but I do love paying with Apple Pay, I always hated how wait staff doesn't carry around Point of Sale systems in the US and that it takes multiple steps to 1) wait to get their attention again to get the bill 2) wait to get their attention again to pay for the bill 3) wait for them to return with your payment method and hope they don't get sidetracked. Now its down to just 1) in places with QR codes on receipts.
The other week, I went for dinner at a place that had a online ordering system. My experience was as follows...
Arrive at the table, scan the QR code
No phone signal in the restaurant, so I need to connect to the wifi.
Connect to the wifi, get a captive portal
Need to put my phone number in to connect to the wifi; there is no signal, so I need to go outside, to receieve the confirmation code.
Connected to the wifi, scan the code again, choose my food.
Go to pay, need to register an account
Put my email address in, I already have an account on this food ordering service!?
Do a password reset
Put in my credit card details (why not use apple pay?).
This whole time, we're sat at a table, in theory to meet friends, but we've spent the first 15 minutes all glued to our phones!
I also suspect you are out of touch. QR code menus and payments were not a thing in the US before the beginning of 2020 either. It was a very quick adaptation because the infrastructure was already there.
I always thought this perspective was funny because it always assumed what the people on their phones were doing. The assumption is that they are disengaged with each other when it's just as likely that they are talking with each other in a group chat alongside a few other non-present participants in the same group chat, and all trying to share photos with each other that they just took from the outting beforehand, or setting up a way to split costs in advance, or something else equally or more interactive than a conversation you can eavesdrop on.
Usually it's just shitty UX slowing them down.
Your observation is correct: Many germans like to stay in an restaurant es an event, not just to eat something quick ... for this purpose there are tons of Pommesbuden, bakerys or Dönerläden.
Maybe the author can ask for the paper menu instead of writing manufactured outrage articles.
Same with paying. You don't accept cash or credit cards? Goodbye. You only accept apple pay or some other nonsense payment system? Goodbye. And you'd better advertise your accepted payment methods outside if you want to avoid unpleasant surprises.
There are plenty of restaurants/bars out there. I'm not spending money in any place that clearly doesn't want me there.
And if you really insist on a silly QR menu, then at least include a human readable version of the URL. Seriously. It's not that hard.
Also, as others have pointed out, with Firefox you can scan and open a QR core in two taps, so no need to go to the camera app at all.
In-flight magazines and newspapers are not spreading Covid-19, neither does cash. But unvaccinated people do and people which doesn't use soap and water spread literally anything.
I do not miss 400 options(!) nor the icky stick menus that sticks together like a 80's playboy magazine. Its good to see digital revolution embrace restaurants. I'd much rather struggle with my phone and my own grime than fiddling with the menu.
It is almost certainly better to address the actual problem (in this case: a disagreement about priorities and service speed) than to implement a technical measure that one party thinks will fix a problem that the other party considers a feature. By failing to actually address the problem, it could cause some people to feel threatened and result in other problems.
To me, that's just as bad. Spend time with the people you're with while you're with them. Text the others later. But different strokes!
> Need to put my phone number in to connect to the wifi; there is no signal, so I need to go outside, to receieve the confirmation code.
Somewhere around these steps is where I would leave. It’s the equivalent of sitting at a table for 15 minutes waiting for the waiter to give my group menus[1] - they don’t want me as their guest.
[1] It happened, both the waiting and the leaving before ever getting menus. That restaurant taught me that if the service is bad before even ordering the food one shouldn’t be afraid to leave.
Sitting down at some kind of place to eat is remarkably one of the only places where there is organic down time to synchronize media.
I do have enough self awareness to joke with my friends that out of touch people think we are probably just disengaged with each other on our phones.
It's amazing how some can re-invent the simplest of ideas simply for the sake of getting tech rammed into the stream.
Funny, slightly dark story about Avignon. I became friendly with a guy there who was a good musician but turned out to be a bit of a...right wing type. National Front. There was a cafe on the square that was a gay club at night, and my girlfriend and I used to have coffee there in the day. One day this guy walked by and said "don't you know what this bar is where you're sitting?" I said, "come on, chill out, sit down." He took some convincing. So finally he sat down and I said, "I know you like Le Pen. How do you feel about sitting in front of a gay bar with an Filipina/Mexican and Jew/Argentine? Are you angry we're in your country?" He said, "as long as you're here because you're interested in France, I'm okay." Later, walking through town, he saw a kid urinating on the front step of an apartment. He shouted at the kid and the kid pulled a knife out. This guy tackled him. Still later we took a bus to the station through the banlieu and saw the desolation - she said, "what have they done to their country?"
Eh. I shouldn't tell these stories on HN. I guess it taught me that life is complicated and to bring it full circle to the cafe question, your view of the world is very relative to where you grew up, in what time period, and what you expect people to behave like.
Is that something that very much depends on the region, or a personal obligation? I've eaten in restaurants in Hamburg, Berlin and Munich during pandemic (summertime last year until about November, and since June this year). Eating this year has been limited to outdoors, but that's fine.
(None have had this crazy QR code link menu idea. I have always received a traditional menu and ordered by asking the staff what I want at the appropriate time.)
A web-based menu that just opens the browser and lets me pay with Apple Pay is acceptable given the current circumstances.
I dislike having several single-use apps for random pubs and restaurants cluttering my phone.
Its a personal obligation: My wife and i, we life in the same building as my older parents (in a big old half-timbered farmhouse)... so, until now (both parents are vaccinated, my wife got her second shot yesterday and i will get it soon) we were careful...
The only point is that you don't know what others are actually doing and it doesn't matter what the explanation is.
Even amongst this crowd, disengaging with someone at dinner is rude. The device used to disengage has little to do with that.
So in some sense table service is an improvement. But I'm with the author on QR codes and mobile ordering. I'm sick to the back teeth of it. Every other restaurant or pub has their own flawed and busted-ass interpretation of how an ordering app should work, and payment is an inconsistent mess. Some places have an app, some have a website. None of it works the same bloody way, and it can all go and do one in the ninth circle of Hades as far as I'm concerned.
These are all first world problems, but they're still problems. And I'd take standing at the bar and ordering drinks over any of them, with possible exceptions for the busier scenarios I specifically picked out in my first paragraph.
(Don't overinterpret me: I don't mind sticking to the rules for the time being, but when restrictions relax and I don't have to do any of these annoying things any more I will literally skip for joy.)
Till I learnt about that, I used a simple QR code scanner from F-Droid (since Playstore is completely untrustworthy for generic utilities).
OK, here is the URL: > http://customer0931.incompetentagency.com/?location=2k12kx&i...
Have fun :)
The reason these QR codes would last is because of the telemetry and tracking they will enable.
For restaurant owners: ease of updating the menu (pricing, dishes, suggestions,...), (perceived) lower cost of maintaining paper menu's (whether disposable or reusable).
For patrons: you can bookmark the menu if it's a webpage on the restaurant's website, there's (perceived) accessibility (e.g. font zooming) but that's offset with the higher bar of scanning a QR code.
Maybe there's a niche market to be spotted for BI / data acquisition? It would be quite a tenuous proposition, since consulting a menu isn't the sames as capturing orders. Not to mention the hairy privacy issues associated here.
Here's an alternate business case where the perceived benefits of QR codes are greatly diminished pending the specific context: museums and galleries. The success of using QR codes works pending on the type of audience, the type of collection, the vision on the specific user experience a museum wants to achieve, the ability to spend time / resources on providing and keeping digital content up to date, time spend helping people out,... It's not as easy as "slap QR codes on a wall, and they will be scanned."
In the same vain, QR codes may work well in some venues, and they won't work at all in others. Context matters. A lot. For instance, if you operate a bar or restaurant in a cozy, 19th century, cottage setting and you want to foster that specific atmosphere / experience towards your patrons, sticking QR codes to the old wood would immediately detract from that. I don't see QR codes work greatly either if your into a gastronomic / gourmet niche for instance. Opposite of the spectrum, there's fast food chains and loads of small businesses who just want to get food out of the door and not much more: to them, a menu is just a business expense and a QR code is a good solution to cut costs.
I don't really mind QR codes. When I go to a run-of-the-mill place for take out, I don't mind scanning a code. My expectations will change, however, if I'm going to spend time and money hoping to get a specific experience out of it.
I've been using that reader for about 10 years, it still works great despite seeing few updates: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.google.zxing.client.android
There may be quicker, prettier or more featureful apps, but this one serves my needs. I use zbarcam on my PC.
I'd lived in North America for a long time by then (left Germany when I was 13) and initially this seemed a bit strange, but you get used to it. Eating as a social occasion where you might even meet interesting people.
All before COVID of course.
Where did you encounter such a restaurant?
I'd estimate that 99.9% of restaurants accept credit in the US based on the anecdote that I've only had to pay 1 restaurant in cash over the last decade.
How would a restaurant refuse both credit and cash? Do they make you pay before eating?
other reasons I would have my phone with me would be for the uber/shared ride to and from the location, to potentially pay for the meal or incidentals, to potentially take photos, to share my location with someone looking for me usually in that group that hasn't arrived yet, or continue sharing my location to people I always do. I hear this last part is taboo, but maybe even text message someone.
“yeah I'll get right on that”
Previously I would often try to find the menu on the website instead, but the QR codes are way more convenient. A direct link to the menu on the google maps listing is also pretty good.
Most importantly it has normalized my previously "weird" behaviour socially.
I saw http://www.ourcompany.com/sub/registration.aspx on printed on a glass door the other day - looked like etching at first, but may have something else? This was at a local theater/event space, IIRC.
"ourcompany.com/register" is infinitely more understandable, and unsure why no one in the chain of command for that decision didn't press for something simpler. But they often don't (still). I remember seeing an email printed on a service truck back... 2002? 2003? "Email us as www.myservicename@yahoo.com". I never tried it - perhaps they actually had that email, but I suspect people were still in the habit of saying "www dot" before anything that had to do with "internet".
Might have been at a Czech place. ;)
Additionally, if you are going to use a QR code and web page as opposed to a physical menu, there's no shame in just statically hosting a PDF of your menu.
It's so frustrating that some bars/restaurants use some third party App that wants me to store my email address and credit card. Also janky UI that's totally unnecessary, considering a static page totally suffices.
However, that still doesn't address the issue of having to communicate! I guess I also found QR Code menus to generally have more pics than printed ones, so it covered off both of those issues.
I should add that the QR codes were not just the menu, but also your table so when you placed an order through Wechat it knew what table you were at so they'd literally just bring it over when it's ready.
They do need to be properly implemented however. That is maybe more a business opportunity than an inconvenience.
People forget that restaurants are a really modern invention. They were first introduced in France at the turn of the 19th century to provide more than just a way to order one type of food. The main reason they exist is the service, ambiance, and menu. Until "nice" restaurants came about, there were pretty much just taverns and inns, which were not renowned for their dining experience, and in most locales there was just one or maybe two, and the food selection wasn't great.
(It's open source so you can take a look at the source and then compile it yourself if you don't trust this page.)
I think this is the crux of the difference of opinions. Dining at a restaurant is different things to different people at different times. I love the 'luxury' dining experience with all that it entails, will happily pay a lot of money to experience it, and I cannot wait to do that again. And in those cases, yes I expect that all aspects of the dining experience live up to that. But just as often I'm just hungry and want a halfway decent burger and beer served to me as quickly and efficiently as possible.
For most people and in most situations, dining at a restaurant isn't a luxury experience, it's just a way to get food.
“Acceptable”? To whom? This is why you sound entitled. The alternative is not dining out. You make it sound like restaurants are letting you down or should try harder. The word “acceptable” has no place in this conversation.
It’s fine that you don’t want to go out to restaurants right now. But you’re complaining about how inconvenient it is for you like there is no underlying reason for things to be in this state. Businesses ate also victims of this pandemic.
All of this makes me upset because it sounds extremely insensitive. The world is mourning millions of dead and you’re grumpy about your restaurant experience being ruined. Might be just your wording but one would expect a bit more empathy.
This is only the case because restaurants had to hurriedly find a solution to a bazillion problems at once, on a strained budget. Corners get cut.
We have a product directly related to this which we're always keen to improve - https://www.pomelopay.com/features/table-ordering
In a non-personal QR code setup, on the other hand, responsibility is shifted to some bureaucratic process which is nothing but frustrating.
As noted in the article, most/many people do not go out for diner to quickly buy and consume a meal, but to spend nice time with people. 15 minutes waiting time spent chatting with a waiter or with each other even has the potential to contribute to a positive experience, whereas 15 minutes setting up your smartphone definitely does not.
That aside, what's the point? There's no practical threat model where https makes what you're doing more secure. If you have neither a domain name that can use a real TLS cert nor your own CA added to the mobile device, it would be trivial for someone to MITM you. Just configure your Fedora dashboard to use http if you don't care about security
Personally I find any hard requirement of a phone extremely _inconvenient_, since it means I must have my phone with me. A card/cash takes up much less space than a phone.
And if we want to talk history, having food made for you by other rather than making it yourself is not a new thing. Having a servant or a wife/mother/grandmother making you dinner was far more common in the past than it is now. I'd probably guess that more people know how to cook and cook their own food today, than at just about any other time in history
Thank you for sharing that story, it's thanks to people like you that bring some new perspective I started to love my country for what it is.
- Build an app that injects malware but also shows the restaurant's menu. Give it the same name as the restaurant.
- Go to the restaurant, overlay your QR code sticker on top of the restaurant's.
- When someone scans the code they are asked to install "[Restaurant's name] menu", obviously they are going to do it.
- They open the app -> malware is activated, menu is shown. Profit.
https://gothamist.com/food/restaurant-finds-phone-zombies-sl...
A less-polite phrasing of your theory: Fed-up restaurant owners are trying to claw back as much as they can from the overhead and miseries of dealing with phone-addicted customers.
Some at least did have regular menus too and the barcodes mostly served as a quicker alternative until said menu was brought.
As soon as the first customer, who gets charged $20 or whatever, reports that they didn’t get their meal it would be checked.
And then it would be pretty easy to find out when the QR codes were replaced. Then camera footage of that person would be sent to the police and they would be up for fraud. Great exploit.
It left me wondering whether the bosses if the company just don't care or if they were told by the web design company they hired for their site that it'd add thousands to the website cost and decided against it.
When I eat with people we use our phones to order and then put them away when they’re no longer necessary. It doesn’t change the dining experience at all and people still talk to each other.
Trips in the last year to various cities left me with the impression that QR codes are pretty ubiquitous in most restaurants fancier than your corner kebab shop but below La Tour d'Argent and co.
Unfortunately the food is pretty good there.
Since we both work from home, my fiancée and I spend the vast majority of our day together. Sometimes everything we have to talk about has already been talked about during the day, and we just want to relax over some nice food. There's nothing wrong with us reading stuff on our phones while we wait for the meal to arrive.
What I will not do is make accounts, or fill in an online order form. And I will not give out any personal information, including my email, without very good reason.
Last year here in Germany the government started to require restaurants to take down the name, address, phone number of every customer, so they could contact trace if there was an outbreak. Fine by me, in these special circumstances. But one restaurant we visited actually had a waiter show up with a tablet showing some online form I was supposed to fill out. I told her "No thanks, please get me a piece of paper and I will write it down". The owner then came with pen and paper, and we had a nice and friendly chat. He explained that he wanted to make it easy and "cool" with tech. It also turned out that his "tech-wiz" nephew had coded up that online form for him last minute (very cliché :p). I explained to him that while understandable, it's actually harder for a lot of people to type on these things (including me to a degree) than use a pen and paper - the owner thought for a few moments and admitted that he too finds it easier to use a real pen "at his age" - and that storing this kind of information in digital form is just one mishap away from really angry (former) customers and GDPR penalties, and how managing this kind of data is actually harder to get right in digital form than collecting some pieces of paper and running them through the shredder some 4 weeks later. We visited the same place about a month later, and they had switched to pen and paper entirely. I like to think our talk helped them with that decision.
I cannot really fault that owner. He was trying to do the best in a suddenly changed and shitty situation, and in his line of business he didn't really have to deal with privacy issues and the associated dangers and regulations before, other than cashless payments where the payment processor does most of the heavy lifting and compliance anyway.
(Feel free to put up a URL and a QR code for the menu online in addition to paper menus though.)
The base opinion is: I haven't gone to such places since Covid began because the experience is less enjoyable and more stressful.
But it is said with contempt for the businesses and regulations, which the businesses cannot do much about. Even where it is open, they have to think about their employees and the risk they put them in. Not only that, but folks have been dining in tents and under wooden awnings - in booths even - enjoyably for decades. Where I am at, before covid hit they had heating and blankets outdoors so the restaurants could extend the outdoor seating season. The poster acts like it something horrible thrust upon them, when the fact is that they simply aren't a fan.
Native app clip / instant app is a also a good use case for this if you really want to develop more than just a good mobile site. Add the ability for the owner to quickly make changes to the menu (dish of the day?) and it should be better than what we have right now.
Of course only if you have decent internet coverage at the place.
I think we've been depending on others for food prep for a very, very long time.
I’ve yet to be forced to use a QR code menu. I have sometimes had the alternative be looking at a large menu board over having a menu card in my hands, but even many restaurants will happily hand you a menu card on request. That said, given the circumstances I haven’t left a 50 mile radius of my house, so it’s possible it’s different elsewhere.
I haven't been out eating since the pandemic, but if this makes uncomplicated WiFi hotspots in restaurants more common I am ok with it I guess.
Cultural difference. If you don't want to spend time with your friends then don't accept invitations of going to a restaurant.
Any time a business claims to do something in the name of health or environmentalism, they are actually just using those as an excuse to cut corners.
Any efficiencies you are seeing will be refactored and stretched out as any business cannot afford to carry fat if they want maximum profit and competitive edge (price).
This whole inconvenience of a friend going to the bathroom is an incredibly weak argument for foregoing the tradition and ceremony of interacting with a person who will provide you with a meal. If you want to live in a McWorld where every step of your dining experience is as sterile, efficient, and touch free as possible then I am sad for you. That's not what a meal with friends and family means to me, it's not just about eating for sustenance.
Why do you draw the line at taking payment?
Personally I'd rather have a paper menu, but digital ones can definitely be more accessible for low vision.
I say can because half of the digital ones are godawful UX disasters.
- "Have you tried rotating the camera?"
- "Try zooming in and out"
- "Why don't you download a QR code app!?"
These questions / remarks were placed by him while showing him it really didn't work.
When I told him I didn't want to download a QR scanner application due to privacy reasons he left with an even more puzzled face as before, to walk inside and finally bring me a paper menu.
These f*cking QR-codes _made_ me an annoying customer.
Similarly, calling someone a “low value comment” and then taking the least charitable view of their comment is directly against hn community guidelines.
The reason they get tips is because they are waitstaff, it has zero to do with how hard they work, it's simply custom to tip waitstaff, even lazy waitstaff.
Most employees work just as hard without getting tips (like the people who are actually cooking the food).
This should be a default feature.
That said, if you want a privacy-friendly QR Code reader app on Android, Binary Eye is my recommendation.
GitHub: https://github.com/markusfisch/BinaryEye
Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.markusfisch...
F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/packages/de.markusfisch.android.binaryey...
> Most people work just as hard without getting tips (like the people who are actually cooking thr food)
Most people get paid a real wage which isn't backfilled with charity from their customers.
At many good restaurants tips are distributed to the kitchen staff too. Obviously I have no control over that, and the world isn't fair either. None of this changes my argument.
I handle QR codes by taking a picture and decoding on the command line using zbarimg. If the decoded output is a URL and looks safe I might visit the site. No way I'm letting an insecure device (basically all smartphones) follow random links blindly like that. And no way I'm giving up my data points for free if I can avoid it (remember how market researchers used to pay people to participate in focus group interviews?)
Google really does its users a disservice by not simply providing a decent barcode scanner with AOSP. The lack of such a basic utility makes it so easy for users to install spyware in frustration just trying to accomplish the task (sort of like the early "flashlight apps").
I've long wondered why they decided to make this task so hard - it reminds me of their omission of video output on the Pixel phones, but in that case their motivations are clear (they want to force people to use Cast instead) - I seriously can't understand what their rationale is for making QR scanning difficult!
[0] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.google.zxing.client.andr...
I tend to not jump to malicious that can be attributed to virtue signaling and/or incompetence.
Absolutely. In this case however, there were multiple waiters refusing eye contact while passing right by our table and there were also other tables right by ours that got there after us and was being taken care of. It was as if we weren’t there.
A decade ago. This should have been a default feature a decade ago. Feature phones had QR code readers in the first half of the 00s. QR codes had a worldwide resurgence in the early 10s and now again in the early 20s.
How this is not a default feature is absolutely crazy.
Its infurating, they have no way to modify an order or to have your waiter actually know what the fuck you're ordering.
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.
Those are things happen with good management, they have little to do with how hard an individual employee is working at a given time.
Besides the claim wasn't waitstaff gets "extra" tips for working hard, the claim was that waitstaff is tipped because they work hard. Don't move the goalposts.
>I honestly don't understand how you can say tips are not proportional to level of service and how level of service is entirely detached from working hard.
I tip the same if my service is shitty, I am not going to put an individual employee in a position of taking a pay cut when I can't know the exact reason something went wrong. I don't know enough about their operations to be punishing individual employees. Even if I could tell if it were an individual employee's fault, most places pool tips, so I'd be punishing the other employees working at the same time. So everyone gets the same tip from me.
I also simply just don't enjoy LARPing as a lord of my personal fiefdom.
Again, you get good service with good management, simple as that.
I.e Not have a captive portal if your only going to the menu, have the captive portal if you want full access to the internet
Clearly they cheaped out on hiring a network company that setup their wifi wrong
If I have jump through a bunch of hurtles to view your menu I am out
> you’re complaining
> All of this makes me upset because it sounds extremely insensitive.
> The world is mourning millions of dead
> a bit more empathy.
You're attacking a person for their honest opinion while knowing almost nothing about them, their life etc. In fact you sound angry and insensitive, please keep your emotions under control
Around here in door dining was only closed for a couple of weeks maybe a month or so. Then it was 50% capacity for a few months, then 75%, and we have been fully open for in door dinning for several months now
It's at the point where I just find paper menus antiquated and aggravating. Heck, many places just pass out tablets now, for the same reason. It's literally easier to pass out cheap tablets with the menu already loaded as a PDF, than it is to deal with paper.
China is really bad at exceptions. Many of those restaurants have gotten rid of their paper menus (which didn’t have English anyways, so they aren’t worried about foreigners). It’s like the train station kiosks that can’t deal with you if you don’t have a Chinese ID card.
So with the paper pad waitress experience:
1. Responsive, zero latency interactions. 2. Accepts free form text entry. 3. No multi step UI control lookups. 4. Allows entry of customer modifications and requests to items. 5. Allows custom abbreviations.
Etc. etc.
This is changing since now people are refusing to work those jobs. And yes, the entire industry is dumb and corrupt for having this practice in the first place, but it is what it is.
If you're just unusually fastidious, I guess that's your right. But when you're claiming (or at least implying) that everyone must conform to those same levels to avoid covid-19 transmission - which is what we're still seeing quite a bit of - then that's hygiene theater.
As with most tech things the QR menus work well when they’re implemented well and poorly when they’re implanted poorly. Multi-language support (without having to print menus in lots of languages that might not get used) is something I’ve seen in a few places. There is also the opportunity to make them a more accessible option if done right. It allows restaurants to make updates to menu items more frequently and more when something isn’t available.
It may seem a bit ridiculous to appeal to VAT - there are fairly 'ordinary' goods that are nevertheless deemed inessential and taxable after all - but I just wanted a way to say that I think GP's use of 'luxury' is being misinterpreted as a desire for fine dining; as I read it, I agree, it's discretional expenditure which has my discretion when I think I'll enjoy it. If I don't, why should I?
I don't think that's any more entitled than the converse view here that we have some sort of moral obligation to personally (and not through taxes) support restaurateurs through limited opening.
Perhaps you are unaware, but:
(1) US federal tipped minimum cash wage is $2.13, not $2.83, but also
(2) Most US states and territories have a tipped minimum wage above the federal tipped minimum (and also, though by a smaller margin, most have a tipped minimum above $2.83, which is PA’s tipped minimum.)
Looked at gsmarena now and indeed most models have dual-sim versions (as well as single sim). But when I look at a local store, it seems that roughly 1/2 has dual sims (that's including eSIM).
All tips are 'extra' that's the whole concept. It's money on top of what I am obliged to pay.
> you get good service with good management
Good management would pay a good wage and negate the need for tipping.
> I also simply just don't enjoy LARPing as a lord of my personal fiefdom.
Low blow. You are implying that I am less than you because I have some kind of financial control over waitstaff that I enjoy. A rather bad faith position to be in given how pious and understanding you are striving to come across as.
> most places pool tips
So now you agree kitchen staff get tipped too
> I tip the same if my service is shitty
Good for you. I don't think many people operate like this, so I'd say you are an edge case.
> it has zero to do with how hard they work, it's simply custom to tip waitstaff, even lazy waitstaff
Again, this is how you operate. Wikipedia lays out the common perception of tipping
"The customary amount of a tip can be a specific range of monetary amounts or a certain percentage of the bill based on the perceived quality of the service given."
I've experienced living in the UK without tipping, and in N.America with tipping. All I can say is it's night and day. Very few make a career out of working as waitstaff in the UK, plenty of people have a career in the service industry in N.America. Working hard for large tips can give you a living wage. In the UK because everyone is treated the same, waitstaff do the minimum for the minimum wage (there are exceptions, of course) and then find a better job. Since I left the UK this has begun to change, it's now reasonably common to tip in nicer restaurants, and guess what? The service is better and the waitstaff I assume are happier with more money in their pockets for their effort.
Isn’t this true everywhere, just not effectively enforced?
You are generally supposed to provide ID and a street address to the phone company when your number is activated. Some places treat that as just a formality and will take any number and address in the right format, but at least in the EU it’s the law and they have to “require” it.
Are straight-up burner phones a la “The Wire” still a thing in the US?
Does this reduce the need for waitstaff at most places? Yes. Is that bad for waitstaff. Yes. Is that a reason to want a person to physically write down my order and type it into a machine in the back? Eh.
I've been to a restaurant where they raised the prices of drinks to accomodate for using biodegradable plastic cups (sit-in restaurant!)... this is not enviromentalism, this is charging 20c for a 5c cup, instead of using glasses like a normal restaurant.
Also, the reusable cotton bags are just an excuse to charge more, because you'd have to reuse a cotton bag 7100 times, to make it as friendly as using plastic bags ( https://theconversation.com/heres-how-many-times-you-actuall... ). ...of course, paper is rarely an option.
We went out recently to a place where we ordered with our phones and had a great time. It was simple and painless, orders were served quickly and it didn’t matter that the only thing I ever said to staff was ”thanks” - I focused on my people instead.
Here in Belgium the government asked a lot of mostly useless measures out of our bars and restaurants. You think they're happy paying hundreds, sometimes thousands of euros having Plexiglas screens installed all over the place, inconveniencing customers and staff alike?
If I lived in a post-facemask NFC-aware country I’d totally use Apple Pay
Apple pay is, for the poster, a stand in for NFC pay of some sort. Which indeed requires a device, which indeed is its own class of requirement, but also, cash works even if less practical.
Like all things in life, when its implemented well it works and when it does not it is terrible. I still think there is room for this to be the future though. I say this as a westerner but perhaps the west is not ready for it yet but I really enjoyed the experience of using QR codes in China. Go to a restaurant I just get shown where to sit and don't need to waste time with the host/server giving me menus or telling me anything. If I have questions they are there to answer the but I can also just sit down, scan the QR code, menu opens up and I can order food. Food just shows up minutes later. When I am done I go to the front and pay with Alipay.
The benefits to me of not having physical menus is huge. From the business perspective there is less interaction time necessary to serve a diner. Sure if this is an upscale high touch experience physical menu is where it stays BUT the majority of dining experiences are not like this. The menu is up to date and easy to modify. Possible to include multiple pictures and information about the food.
I might be wild but I really like the experience and wish more places would adopt it. Like all things I think here in the west its still too new so we have a mixed bag of good and bad implementations. Give it a few years and I think it will be narrowed down to the POS providers who offer it as a feature.
I still feel that these products are "sold" to restaurants and aren't actually all they're cracked up to be.
Thank God somebody had the spine to say it. QR code implementation is a mess. I’ve had a terrible time when a phone is out of battery, poor reception, or buggy.
I hate relying on my phone for something as simple as a meal out. All seemed rather dystopian.
Even shadier shit happens where the restaurant makes employees repot tips that didn’t happen to keep above the minimum. Then they have to pay taxes off income not earned. Is it illegal? Yeah but it’s difficult to enforce and the people getting screwed are already very vulnerable (not your hipster big city wait staff)
I hold at 15% standard. Yet, many apps have defaults for 18%, 20%, 22%... all way up to 30% from what I've seen. And, they allow me to "Custom Tip" which I do once I find it (it's usually small and text instead of a button like the presets). However, once you select custom I'm back into dollars instead of percents so I have to do the math myself (and I don't even remember what the total was by this screen). At this point, I'm feeling like "okay you just don't want my money then because I'm not a whale of a tipper" so I have as some act of defiance started just skipping it altogether. I know it's not fair for that server but it's what little I can do to voice my dissent of the system.
I also believe that current iPhones sold in China support two physical SIM cards and no esim.
Meanwhile since I, speaking the local language and not having special dietary needs, want to look at a paper menu while my fone stays in my pocket.
I don't think anyone is actually arguing against having the QR/online menu. That's a great thing. What we're complaining about here is that restaurants have taken away the IRL menu.
You can literally have both physical and digital menu's and cater to everyone's needs. No harm done.
People who loathe the idea can carry on, people that love the idea can carry on.
This does not change my point in the slightest, which is that wait staff need tips to survive because the tipped minimum wage is unlivable basically everywhere.
No it isn’t, GP was recounting historical norms. Get off your high horse.
Flashlight mode doesn't last very long, though.
That's on you and your location. I've been eating back at restaurants just fine for about a year now without a mask (for while it was mask on unless at a table, which is a bit of a joke to act like that helps anything). It was nice being able to walk in anywhere without RSVP but that's going away too as more and more people are back to work and social activities.
Also, because of the QR code trend, more restaurants now have updated menus on their websites.
When I invite friends to dinner, I text them all links to the menu so they don't have to deal with the on-site awkwardness.
I have nothing against printed menus, but I think there's some real potential with dynamic menus that are immediately accessible to everyone even before they arrive.
Multiple language support, immediately-adjustable specials menu, filtering for food preference and allergy requirements, maybe even an ordering history allowing you to re-order, or explicitly not order the same thing twice, even ordering (or server hailing).
It's clear the UX isn't there yet, but it was all thrown together by non-technical small-business owners on short notice, who have been trying to make things work at a very strange time. I'm actually kind of impressed at how well it's generally worked in my experience. I'm looking forward to seeing what comes of it.
The "tradition" is to sit, wait for a waiter to appear. Ask for purpose (lunch? big meal? just a drink?). Then you wait again for the correct menu to appear. Then you get asked for a drink. And wait for the drink. And then comes the longer wait where the waiter tries to detect when you are ready to order, if they see it at all.
Combined, that's some 20-30 mins in and the prepping of your meal hasn't even started yet.
Now if you're the kind of person that's going to be in there 3-4 hours anyway, the ritual doesn't harm, but it doesn't add much value either. It's needlessly slow and inefficient.
Your future dystopian nightmare is already here, and it's fine. In the Netherlands, some sushi restaurants work as follow. You are seated. There's an iPad for everyone, and people just tap what they want. Some minutes later, your food arrives. This supposed cold-hearted efficiency means I get to spend more time engaging with my friends, the very point of the visit.
By the way, you're not doing restaurants any favors with a slow and long visit. It means they can't use your table twice. So finish your meal in 1.5-2 hours and if still not bored with your friends, go to a damn bar.
I'll order what I want at my leisure, not having to flag down a server is a plus. We often make up fun little games to see who has to order the next round.
Menus can be surprisingly disgusting if the waitstaff is really busy, I'd rather not touch them and/or lay them on the table.
Its the same as the general minimum in several places, and at or above the federal general (not just tipped) minimum even more, so if its unlivable “basically everywhere” that's more than just a tipped minimum problem.
I find it very convenient. Connect to the local wifi, there's no confirmation code, just open wifi (most of the time - some of them have an unnecessary "accept" step. Never any "confirmation code"). Scan. Browse. Choose. Pay, or pay later (convenient, I can adjust the tip before I pay).
All in all it's much faster than having to wait for a waiter to come to the table to take the orders. We can add and remove and make up our minds in peace, then just sit down and wait - drinks arrive straight away, the rest later.
And we don't have to wait forever to get the bill and to pay. It's all done. In short, to me it's a great improvement. Obviously it wouldn't be if the implementation hadn't been good, but around here it is.
Edit - let me add that most places I visit also have a physical menu to look at, it's just that ordering and payment is done via the web browser.
Skipping the second waiter trip to swipe all the cards or the awkwardness of bringing out the PoS system to the table is immediately worth it to me.
1. QR code to PDF of full actual menu. If they direct you to a HTML page is usually awful and is accordion based mobile UI that involves a bunch of clicking in and out. A PDF can be zoomed in/out but all the content is right there.
2. QR code to pay. This is great when it comes on your bill and you can just pay and leave. However, if it allows Apple pay it's very smooth. Unfortunately, most of the systems involve a web based checkout flow including manual credit card entry and capturing more info than is really needed (email/phone) so they can spam you later.
Then comes the predictable ice breaker event. Somebody, as part of their conversation, needs their phone to show you something. The car they want to buy. Looking up a fact to settle your argument.
The first phone comes out, starting the phone avalanche. Everybody knows its ok now, and check their messages or whatever. The seal is broken.
The addiction is so widespread that we're still at full denial stage at society level.
Because the true reason almost everybody is itchy to pull out that phone is so bitter that it cannot be said out loud, but I will:
Whatever is on that phone, you find more interesting than your friends. And quite likely, because it really is more interesting. Because your phone can do anything and is full of surprises, yet your friend is not.
Downvote me, the truth hurts.
Simple, efficient, fast, low touch, low tech, and no tip.
It certainly wasn't a perfect system, but it was a lot better than the US, where restaurants have multiple different menu layouts, some are PDF, some let you pay via mobile, etc. The lack of relative uniformity makes for some positive but many negative user experiences.
For me the best restaurants in China were the mom and pop joints where the person who takes your order is also the person who cooks your meal, or at least where you can see into the kitchen from the dining room so you can call out a request or ask a question as they're preparing it. This way it's much easier to figure out what's in the dish, see if the food is fresh, ask for it a bit more spicy, add another side, whatever. It makes the meal into a more of a social experience, and something that feels homey and satisfying rather than mass-produced.
Ironically going to these sorts of Chinese chain restaurants with the QR code menu, they also tended to be twice the price of the mom and pop joints, so whatever money they might be saving by eliminating a server is definitely not passed down to the consumer.
But can they afford to have an NFC reader at every single table?
Can street vendors without access to electricity/mobile connection just hold up a QR code cut into some wood and you can pay that way?
NFC seems to put the onus on the vendor, Wechat pay/Alipay has no such problem.
It's definitely not quick in the US, where it hasn't been really adopted at the same level, it might be fast in Australia.
By contrast, QR codes are cheap to manufacture, so you can put it on every table and anyone anywhere can pay without having to go to the counter or whatever.
Plus, NFC doesn't work over distance. Nor is it bidirectional.
I think there is something about QR that helps it gain critical mass over NFC, I have not seen anywhere penetrated as heavily by NFC as the QR codes are in China. Alipay QR codes are showing up in DC & SF too now.
I'm curious if those commenting have been to China/used the QR code system, I was likewise very skeptical before visiting.
Nobody wants PDFs. On desktop sites, it's common to add a (PDF Warning) to links that lead to PDFs.
And on a phone, PDFs are even worse. They're almost always sized for the desktop, which means you have to pinch and scroll to see anything, and I don't download stuff from Firefox often enough to know how to find and delete the menus for every single restaurant I eat at.
If the menu QR code led to a responsive website, I'd be fine with it. When the QR code leads to a PDF, it makes me angry. If the QR code led to an app I had to install, I'd walk directly out of the restaurant.
I wonder how often restaurants change their menus. I live on the coast of Poland and 5 years later of living here, I can probably tell you what the menu is for the 5 'hot' locations to go to because it literally hasn't changed.
This statement is utterly useless. It provides no value to the discussion, doesn't make any interesting points, and tries to emotionally manipulate the reader.
> Like all things in life, when its implemented well it works and when it does not it is terrible.
HN readers seem to be bearish on these technologies because they're usually implemented poorly, and there's very little reason to believe that the situation will substantially improve anytime soon (or at all). People generally discriminate between restaurants based on price and food, not menus, so there's little incentive for restaurants to improve electronic menus - similar to business websites - meaning that if QR code menus gain wide adoption, we're extremely likely to see significantly worse experiences near-universally.
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.
This is a great way of making tech look stupid to luddites and it reminds me of modern UX trends that expect people to just know how to do some mysterious thing--and developers rely on most users assuming they are the stupid ones because they don't know how to use an app's hidden functionality. Not. Accessible.
Every restaurant used to have the same UX, now they are all different. Stupid.
Not around here, no. Was out eating yesterday. That place we went to has the exact same number of wait staff as before QR codes, the difference is only that they're not exhausted, they are not stressed when interacting with us (showing us the table, bringing food, checking in on us if we need something else, etc). We don't have to wait for them to get the bill or to pay. The overall atmosphere is much more relaxed now. And yes the other places I visit also keep the same number of staff as before, as far as I can tell.
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.
One of the things I did was create a QR code on the labels such that they pointed to a bitly address which then redirected to the PDF of the lab results for each product.
This allowed for the consumer to actually read the Lab results, and it provided an litmus to the interest in each product by count of scans.
I loved it, it worked really well - but the company wasnt too fond of showing the direct lab results for the reason that the PDFs had the manufacturing facilities address on the PDF...
Could have done it better, but the overall idea was sound and was very easy to implement. An admin assistant could build this out.
Thought of also tying it to slack or something such that we could just have a product interest channel and get an alert any time the products were scanned into that channel...
There were actually a number of creative things that could be done using QR codes.
This is great for very small packaged goods, such as pre-rolls, wax, diamonds, etc - where you have very little space on the package, and are already regulated on exactly what information you must include on the packaging, so if you wanted to provide more detailed product info, this would work well..
It's really interesting to see how a different crowd to tech workers who are constantly in contact with the myriad of ways in which technology can be harmful to human interaction and happiness can be so quick to downplay any legitimate criticisms.
> Go to a restaurant I just get shown where to sit and don't need to waste time with the host/server giving me menus or telling me anything.
...in which you view a human being as a hurdle to be surpassed rather than a human being.
Conversations with waitstaff are often some of the most rewarding parts of a restaurant experience. Even just focusing on the food, the best way to find out about dishes you haven't tried is by talking to waitstaff. And I've formed great friendships with waitstaff at places I go regularly.
The only downside? After deciding what to eat, adding the table number and pressing "order"... you discover that you can only pay by credit card (I mostly use debit).
No option to pay in cash. I had to go to the cashier, re-order everything, tell her my table number and pay in cash.
Not that huge of a deal, first world problems, but still - they could have stated right away the payment methods for the online thing.
We're talking patron UX here and point is I don't what to shoulder the burden. I didn't even want to calculate 15% tip in my head and you want me to start carrying cash everywhere, something I haven't done since Y2K was a concern. Spend 15 minutes waiting for the manager to come over? No thanks.
> Not tipping doesn't accomplish anything and the server who has no control over the system and is already underpaid gets screwed over.
I view that as "not my problem". I know it's wrong if the server gets screwed, I'm not arguing this is a just behavior on my part. But, if you extrapolate my behavior to all patrons the restaurant would get a hint real quick that people didn't want to tip 20%/25% and reduce the defaults. They know I'm dissenting it's just that I'm the only one dissenting so they're not even paying attention. Instead, what is happening is the opposite. Patrons were conditioned that 15% is too low. 20% is now standard, pushing up to 25% which will be standard in a couple years if trend continues.
FWIW, I hate tipping in general. I wish they were paid a fair wage and I was billed appropriately on the front end.
Well except, you know, literally a stylus.
If you're going to print out a half dozen menus, you're pretty much right back where you started.
There are lots of iPhone users and often business can getting better (lower) processing fees by accepting more secure methods like Apple pay so if it's literally just flipping a switch and possibly paying a bit less for processing why wouldn't a business do it?
You're free to leave, but you'll cook at home.
So two posts ago you were extolling the virtues of accessibility for at most 6% of UK's population, but now it's suddenly no big deal that 18% of the UK's population can't access your menu. And that's ignoring folks like my father: he technically has a smart phone, but he never has it on him and he wouldn't know how to scan a QR code even if he did have his smart phone on him.
And sure, nobody is turning away people without smart phones or blind people. Anyone is welcome to order food as long as they can figure out what your restaurant actually makes.
[1] https://www.rnib.org.uk/nb-online/eye-health-statistics
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_Kingd...
EDIT: You also completely ignored my point about having a working ad-free QR reader installed. I've got an entry-level Samsung phone, which did not come with a built-in QR code reader. The free one I downloaded came with ads.
For example, Toasttab QR codes on the paper tab work brilliantly. They do not require the restaurant to retool with thousands of dollars of mobile devices for servers. Excellent use of a QR code.
As others have pointed out, getting a pdf that does not format well on your smartphone is a disappointing experience, but that is not the fault of the QR code. The problem is in what comes after.
You could be able to order from your table via smartphone, but usually you can't because the landing page is a dumb pdf of a paper menu, and the QR code does not include information about which table you are at, and the restaurant systems need human intervention to know when to open a new tab.
So, double press power button, long tap QR code, and click link to visit site.
Super-thin phones.
Touch-screen controls in automobiles.
QR codes instead of menus.
All of these things seem nifty to marketing departments, may be accepted by consumers, and are detrimental to actual usage.
This seems like an odd take. I'd be interested in tangible data, but I'd be inclined to believe that most tech-affluent people are probably OK with QR codes being the norm, in general. It saves money, paper, and isn't really a hard step for anyone with a phone. In general the west is pretty pro-tech.
There is a bad-ass product from Seagull Scientific, called "barTender" (as in Barcode Tender) -- which is free to use, and does any and all barcodes/QR codes - and label document design.
The only cost is a $500/$600 license for actually connecting it to a printer - but it makes it a breeze to create awesome labels, and print them out en-mass (like many thousands on the high speed printers)...
You can hook it up to a DB or a spreadsheet for pulling all your product labeling info easily to fields so they auto fill for the products you are printing.
Also, with using bitly - you also get a map of the geoip location of each scan - so you can see where interest is high geographically...
1) All such restaurants offering free open wifi + 2) A commercialized system that hosts the menu PDFs on tiny https servers on the restaurant's wifi router and serves them locally (potentially avoiding issues with far-away outages and also saving on the internet bandwidth for the common case).
This still assumes each customer has a phone. I bought an LTE watch so I could leave the distraction of my phone behind while I dine.
This is a lot to unpack. I'm always surprised by people in the tech industry, where we seek to automate so much to make things better... be against innovation?
If a QR menu can tangibly provide a similar or better experience, for less cost, then it is objectively a better value for everyone involved. We shouldn't keep manual jobs around "just because." If that was a valid mindset, then we should get rid of all cars and have large caravans of people to trade across the country to ensure more people have jobs.
In this case, the question becomes "does the QR code provide a similar, or better, experience?" Only time will tell - but if it does, overall, then it will replace the wait staff, and this is a good thing.
This is why discussions of UBI take place, because we shouldn't intentionally do things less efficiently just to save jobs.
> The reason these wait staff get tips is because they work so hard, with less service comes less tips. Now you have a whole industry of overworked AND underpaid staff.
I don't disagree here, but tip culture is an absurd concept and I wish it would die in America. Just bake it into the price of the menu, and pay workers better.
“I don’t like it” is not a critique though. The people you would want to hire could try to answer “here is an imperfect solution, how would you improve it?”
To me, a waiter provides no value at all. I'd rather order at a counter and pick up the food myself. Then I don't have someone asking me "how is everything" when my mouth is full. I don't need to pay someone a 30% cut for this.
I usually can't stand comments that are just "correlation does not imply causation," but are you sure you aren't mixing up the two here? It's not hard to imagine why a McDonalds wouldn't be one of the first to pick this kind of technology up, but I have a hard time that a previously good restaurant that adopts this will suddenly have their quality fall down the shitter. Nothing really changes for the wait staff except now the order shows up on a screen instead of a handwritten form.
>For me the best restaurants in China were the mom and pop joints where the person who takes your order is also the person who cooks your meal, or at least where you can see into the kitchen from the dining room
There's a similar sort of thing in Japan, but with older technology. You place your order with an automated kiosk out in front of the restaurant and pay the machine. It spits out a ticket that you hand to whoever and eventually your food comes to you. It exists at large chains as well as some mom and pop places, including some where you're sat eating your food a few feet from the cook/chef. The places I went to that had these didn't seem to suffer from lower quality than their counterparts without such a system that didn't have it, nor did they feel more "mass-produced."
As a result, I always ask for physical menus, and 99% of restaurants are happy to give them to me.
It's seamless on iOS and on many (but not all) Android camera app.
Also, Lens is most likely uploading all sort of data directly to Google, not the best solution for a privacy-conscious person (I'm aware of the irony of privacy implication when talking of Android, but it's either that or the walled garden of Apple).
As much as I prefer paper menus, I don't think the restaurants that have switched are going to go back to it. Would have better luck pressuring them to have less shit electronic menus.
Everyone I know, "tech-affluent" and tech-savvy alike, hate them. Next time you go out for a meal with a large group, ask for physical menus and gauge the reaction of those around you - likely that most of them will ask for one too.
Payment by QR on the receipt, however, is absolutely fantastic. A place near me uses Toast and it just opens an app clip, has me review my receipt, touch Apple Pay, and I’m done. I’ve always felt uncomfortable giving my server full access to my debit card details just to pay for a meal.
Have you gone to a restaurant with your boomer parents before the pandemic? They still pull out their phone to use the flashlight or even take photos of the menu so they can zoom in.
This piece is bizarre in that they say they don't like something, give a BUNCH of reasons why other people might like it, then just dismiss it entirely because they don't like it.
In NYC, you can see this at World's Wurst [1] in SoHo.
[1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/World's+Wurst/@40.7279645,...
I do get notifications from my banks through text and email.
Really hope many places just stick with online menu - also allows for quick updates and changes.
If navigating there is done via QR code, NFC or some other means is a different question. but QR codes seem to work really well for this sort of thing and even non tech users can easily figure it out.
Found these guys: https://smartermenu.co.uk/ - no affiliation. It just seems like what I'd build.
But it cannot work in America because of the tipping culture.
But the negatives are also huge.
- My phone is slow, so it's painful to navigate the menu
- Half the restaurants have horrible UI for their menu
- You can't casually peruse the menu, you have to go item by item down the list.
At least to me, it's an awful experience.
Luckily, my non-technical date had a mainstream phone that came with a QR reader. Using it redirected her to a word doc hosted on a google drive. And there was no link to this word doc on the restaurants official website.
If you're going to do QR codes, the menu should be available from the website, there should be a printed url under the QR code, and it should be an actual webpage. Preferably lightweight static html.
I do my best to eat plant-based most of the time, so I always appreciate when I can have a chat to the cook or server to see what is in the dish and if they can avoid garnishing with ground pork or whatever. To me that's the whole point of going to a restaurant, to have someone cook for you personally. If you're just going to get a production line meal, then you might as well order from a vending machine or get a meal to go from a convenience store. No judgment on those meals, they are fine too, but when I go to a restaurant I expect a bit more of a personalized service.
Luckily restaurants have paper menus as backups.
GP's experience sounds great; an interactive mobile/responsive website that I can directly order from would be more convenient than the traditional experience. PDFs are basically fine, but given the option I'd rather have a physical menu.
(Thankfully, I haven't yet heard of or encountered a QR code that redirected me to an app; that would be a pretty quick way to make me leave if no alternative were provided.)
I remember reading a Sci-Fi short story where the main character was digitally excluded; I forget if this was a criminal sentence or a matter of "backwards living" [no offence to Amish and similar]. I remember a scene where the main character had to interface with a digital menu type of terminal and he couldn't -- either because of ignorance or legal incapability. A child noticed and offered to help him out.
For about 15 years I had a flip phone, well into the "everyone has a smart phone now" age. I felt the limitations of no internet, no QR, no this, no that. Phone calls and texts only.
I switched after I lost my phone at ... get this ... a Sci-Fi convention. And I waited a year between loss and re-acquiring//upgrading. Yes I got the "You don't have a cell phone?!?" shaming, just as I did the Gibbs flip-phone shaming beforehand. Nowadays I "pass" like normal.
Rambling Point Being: This QR Code Menu deal going on... I've encountered it, I don't like it either, I've been able to deal with it only because I lost and replaced a cell phone.
One physical menu please. Thank you. Sorry for being an cartoon alien crab and here I am.
In China restaurants can go under very quickly - you might see at a certain location two or three different restaurants in a year. The mom and pop operations tend to be eaten up by the national chain restaurants and "hip" (i.e. QR code ordering) franchises, and when one of these restaurants moves in then not only does the food quality go down, but the prices go up too. I think a lot of young Chinese techies like the change because it seems more clean or more hygienic or more futuristic, but if you just want to sit down and get some local food made by a local person, that experience is harder and harder to find.
I guess an app could give people access to a webcam to engage in discussion with a cook as they prepare the food, for people who really want to watch the process and talk to the cook.. is that a feature you'd be interested in?
I mean, obviously, that wouldn't be right for a lot of places -- many eateries don't want people bothering the kitchen staff -- but if you've been going to places where people can interact with the kitchen-staff as they work, and if that's something the customers value, it'd seem like that process could be made more available.
Edit: Actually, when you were talking about engaging kitchen-staff, were you thinking of places like Subway? Or did you mean actually talking to people in a separate-kitchen, like you walk back there and chat with them while they make the food?
You thought you were dissenting, but it mostly just reflects poorly on you.
Source - brother is a server.
Also, I don't feel like my check size is very related to the amount of work involved. At least in my 95% use case of 2-4 people. The waiter does the same thing, checks in on us just as much, still juggling 5-10 other tables. I'm there for an hour. I just don't see $15-30 of value in the service I got during my interaction (my typical check size is $50-100), that's where I land back on my 15% standard. I don't always see that value either, but it's what helps me sleep at night.
If I'm with 5+ people or stay longer than an hour or am eating at a higher priced place where waiter is probably serving fewer tables simultaneously then I adjust accordingly.
Another irk of mine is how alcohol falls into this equation. If I buy a $50 bottle of wine I'm supposed to give $10 tip when usually all they do is open the bottle? My rule is a dollar per serving. It's probably outdated rule and needs some adjustment for inflation as that's been my rule for a long time.
Unlike these guys, we're working on software that makes the waiter more efficient. You download the phone app and scan the code that the waiter gives you. From there, you have shared list between you and all your friends at the table from which you can send orders directly to the waiter from the app. The customers can hail the waiter and we plan to add direct messaging as well in the future.
We've noticed that while some people enthusiastically love the system, its a 50/50 split between those who prefer paying from in our app and those that pay the waiter directly the old fashioned way.
We're currently in a few select high profile restaurants in London and hoping to expand soon.
...which is exactly what would happen, because you can measure how many times the upsell works, but you can't easily measure how many people stop going to your restaurant as a result of this crap, and companies will literally kill people if they can find metrics to show it's profitable.
> I think places could get creative though, for example leave comments for the chef about the meal, make specific requests which the prep team can respond to, have the chef speak about the daily specials in video rather than have a wait staff regurgitate them after having never tried them.
Having worked in food service in the past, the last thing chefs want is comments on the meal from customers. The ignorance and rudeness of the general public when it comes to food is astounding.
The chef speaking about the daily specials might be the only reasonable idea here, but my gut feel is that the only people who would use this would be tech folks interested in the feature, not end users. I don't think this is probably enough of a value add to be worth implementing.
This ritual or ceremony of waiter, menu, waiting, ordering, signalling for the cheque that you apparently find vile... I enjoy it. Any inefficiency you have declared is part of the experience of going out to eat.
You want fast food? Go get fast food.
You want a butler and cook? Hire them.
You want to go out to dinner? Here's a waitress, menu, and some time for walking back and forth between their station and your table and their other tables in their zone.
All of this is, or at least should be, factored in to the restaurant's business. It's been 100 years, at least in the US. If they don't get it by now, at least you should.
I ran into a few of those mom and pop joints in Korea as well. Basically every 김밥 (kimbap) shop is kinda like subway where you can see them prepare the food.
I believe they were talking about how interacting with an actual human is part of the experience of going out for them. And just going to a restaurant in order to fiddle with a menu screen and order kind of defeats the purpose since you could just do that with takeout? It doesn’t bother me either way, but I prefer restaurants that have a button on the table to call the server.
My favorite method put the menu into the table with a glass top. Better than people touching.
Nope.
> That is to say, all businesses are obligated to accept U.S. currency as payment
No, they aren't. If there is a preexisting debt, the “legal tender” status of currency has some effect especially if there isn't a contracted-for form of payment, but many businesses operate payment-first with no debt created, and those that don’t tend to contractually specify forms of payment.
* Homeless/poor may not have phones
* Old people don't have smartphones or know how to use them
* I don't want to have my phone with me at all times. I actually leave my phone in the car when dining sometimes.
* Something as simple as a listing of options, which is often static for weeks or more at a time, now depend on a WAN connection! It's meatspace dependency hell.
I know "menu costs" are such a thing that it is taught in accounting and business classes. Nevertheless, the idea of getting rid of a hard menu, even as a backup, is absurd, unnecessary, and dare I use a buzzword I hate, "privileged".
I would also be okay with an NFC approach or both NFC / QR code approach, NFC stickers are cheap and can do similar to QR codes.
Today it is difficult to go out to eat with friends or family without everybody being on their damned phones. Making people use QR codes just gives them an excuse to get it out to look at the menu, and then check their email while its out, reply to a non-urgent text, and finally might as well look at reddit for a few moments.
I want the opposite of this nightmare we live. I want people out of their phones and into discussions. I want their attention, and to give them mine. Phones get in the way of that exchange.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/tipping-for-online-orders-becam...
Another great aspect of the QR code driven menus is that after my meal or drink arrives I still have the menu readily available, so I can check what is in the dish or drink that's in front of me. It's great for foodie restaurants that give lots of description in the menu - before, when the meal came out I would sometimes find myself wondering what that odd shaped component was on my plate, but with a first class phone accessible menu I can get back to the description of what I ordered and figure out what's on my plate, or figure out what might be making my drink taste like bitter orange.
I didn't notice how much I liked these things until I recently traveled to Santa Fe, where every place was still using printed menus. One drink menu for a table of five? Let's all pass it around and tell the server to come back in a few minutes after we've had a chance to look one by one. Server took all of the menus after ordering, then comes around after the meal inquiring if we want dessert? I don't know what's on the menu, but I'm not interested in waiting for the server to come back with the menu. I ordered posole as a side, but forgot what the description was? I guess I'll google it...
A lot of smaller Chinese restaurants are just one guy at a wok standing near the entrance and a bunch of stools inside (sometimes also outside). They're commonly a husband and wife team, where the husband cooks and the wife acts as a runner or takes orders when it's too busy to bark what you want at the cook, but sometimes it's just the one person. If you get there early, sometimes the wife is preparing mise en place at one of the tables, or on a stool out front.
Another common layout for larger restaurants is tables and stools on the inside plus a small counter to pay, but there's a window at the back going into the kitchen where they might have a couple of cooks and more space to prep.
In both of these cases it's not unusual for customers to know the owners and engage in some smalltalk, whether about the food, or whatever other thing. It's a lot like a classic diner in the US, or a UK "caff".
These QR code ordering systems tend to be in place at a different type of restaurant. They are more like strip mall chain restaurants with optimized seating and standardized menus and nobody knows anyone or cares. Personally I don't see the point of these sorts of places, because if you're just getting Sysco-style meals without any service then you could cut out the middle man and buy the meal without going to a restaurant.
I don’t think anyone cares enough actually
We aren’t triggered by this possible reality
There are limits to the etiquette and whats considered rude but it has shifted
Its the level of engagement, not the presence of the device itself
I don’t hate it, but I don’t love it. It was like a custom web-DoorDash for one table with only one restaurant option. Probably someone could run with that and scale it up to a food court without much difficulty and a willing mall partner. Efficient, but if I gave a damn about the economics I would cook at home and this definitely removes some of the hospitality of the hospitality business.
It certainly could be made super slick (embedding the table number, for example, in each QR code).
But with all that, it'd cost money. So pretty much the only places you'll see do this well are big chains which tend to have crappy food.
I can see at some point I'll try to open a menu but won't be successful
Your belief that it's good to cut out a human interaction is one you should reconsider.
I would just leave to be honest
If the point is not to keep calculating the tip, that's worse. And then we would need to wait to get the change on the tip?
It seems to me your focus is less on the quality of the food (provided it means quality standards) and more about the ambiance and experience of another human catering to your customized requirements. In any other domain this would be a luxury you'd be expected to pay more for.
I say bring on the impersonally delivered, high quality, cheap food!
An appliance menu server would cost practically nothing if they're already offering Wi-Fi or use electronic POS/ordering systems.
for a good example of this look at the iPhone's predecessors and the iPad's predecessors... before those the PDAs were basically awful and internet phones were junk. the iPad basically created a wide-spread tablet market.
This pandemic was a complete reflection of human laziness. With the technology we're spoiled with, if there's an effortless way to carry better hygiene habits, we should make use of it.
So to the author, you can be as bummed as you want watching customers stare down at phones. You can go ahead and paint it as some Orwellian fever dream. I don't want this planet's landfills to load up on slightly cracked Cheesecake factory booklets.
A few minutes later I witnessed an elderly couple experiencing the same thing. They sat for 10 minutes expectantly waiting for menus to be delivered.
Lame experience.
In China...if someone else can get you a SIM, you'll be OK, or maybe you can get one at the airport in customs (that used to be possible), though they have been cracking down on SIMs without ID numbers or resident visas associated with them.
I've seen and used NFC pads attached to cellphones using Square adapters, so you can go that route if you want.
NFC is definitely much faster in Australia than in the USA.
?? I use Google Fi which has agreements with providers in almost every country, I had data as soon as I walked off the plane in China. Alipay was almost as easy to set up, although I understand that until recently it was limited to those with a Chinese bank account.
The way we set it up, use of the app is entirely optional. The waiter can still take your orders the old fashioned way. wether they have regular menus as well is up to the restaurant as is the option of everyone paying separately through the app. Our waiter app allows the waiter to take care of everything on his end for those that are opposed enough to downloading another app.
On top of the increased cost, the food tends to be lower quality, not higher quality, presumably because the ingredients are mass produced and reheated by cooks who don't have any personal reputation at stake if they prepare something poorly. This is exactly what chain restaurants in the west are like, and they tend to be a much worse dining experience than either mom and pop or boutique outfits.
That sounds really nice...and a bit surprising considering nothing else Google works in China without a VPN.
So...does it also work as a normal phone with a Chinese number so you can logon to wifi at Starbucks in China?
It is a bit surprising, although Google does have offices in China. It also has a VPN built in, which I recall would intermittently bypass the GFW.
> So...does it also work as a normal phone with a Chinese number so you can logon to wifi at Starbucks in China?
No, I don't think so, but I had unlimited data.
Funny enough this applies more to your statement than the statement you're responding to. They were making a meta-critique of the general discussion here, and I find it to be a legitimate perspective.
Personal sentiments on liking or not liking QR codes, which any lay user can make, does not make as interesting a discussion as a principled approach to what components of the UX flow exactly fails, whether these failures are essential to QR codes or specific to the implementations today, and how/if they could be addressed as an engineering exercise.
It is akin to saying "this first gen ICE automobiles suck, bring back horses" and go on to discuss the annoying doors of the car while the unexploited fertile land of discussions await on the actual engine, cost benefit analyses, incremental improvements, adoption barriers, UX flows etc.
I personally go to restaurants for consistency. Do you really think waiters taking orders pass along information about who ordered the order and their preferences? You can give instructions to the waiter but from my experience it's not carried a large chunk of the time. Every layer is a place for miscommunication, so going consumer -> app -> cook is a lot less likely to be messed up than consumer -> waiter -> notebook? -> terminal -> cook. There's generally a high turnover for waiters and I don't think they're all super informed about the meals, but I guess it depends what restaurant you go to. But with online ordering a restaurant that can't afford to have a highly trained wait staff can still deliver high quality information to customers
You can provide a lot more information on an app about a dish, including pictures, ingredients and customization options than a person.
You can always take the time to ask for a menu and I’m sure someone will bring you one, but it’s my opinion that you’re making too big of a deal out of something that’s such a small part of the dining experience.
Requiring an inordinate amount of technological sophistication/complexity for simple things is how to build vulnerable systems.
The context of this conversation is around restaurants being able to legally pay less because of tipping, however if they willing to violated the laws that we have now, why would they not also violate the min wage laws.
Around here an average meal at a restaurant would be about $14 lunch and $18 dinner per person.
So to make the often promoted $15/hr wage, the server would need to clear $96 in tips over the base wage of $3/hr. At an average of 18% tips that would mean the ticket revenue would need to be $534 for the shift. @16 avg per person that is about 4 people per hour, or 1 or 2 tables per hour
If the restaurant is that slow, that the server is only serving 1 table per hour, well chances are the server needs to look for another job anyway because that place will not be in business very long.
This is also why alot of servers I know prefer the tipped model over a higher base wage, if a strait 15/hr wage was created with no tips, many servers would make LESS money then under the current system
Most of the people calling for a $15/hr base wage have a delusional belief they will make $15/hr PLUS tips... that is never going to happen
general minimum wage is peanuts, yes. but tipped waitstaff only make $2.83/hr is not true. If the employer did not make up the difference then they risk being fined/shutdown.
From my perspective, if I need to use an app to select my dish, applying only the pre-approved customizations, then the experience is no different from ordering delivery. If you live in the US, then perhaps this experience is not unusual, since it's a lot like the experience of visiting a chain restaurant - same menu in every location, same customizations available, same "perky" waitstaff, same supplier of ingredients behind the scenes - it's basically just a more expensive version of fast food. Adding a QR code ordering system to this kind of restaurant is not changing much about the experience other than the speed of ordering.
But in other countries - notably China - there is a whole nother class of restaurants that is both cheaper and more personalized than a chain. And these family-owned restaurants are the ones that are being edged out by more expensive, less culinarily interesting restaurants whose primary appeal appears to be gimmicky apps that provide either the same or less functionality than a food delivery app does.
It might be that these chain restaurants are successful because a lot of people prioritize consistency over everything else. But I feel like in China in particular it is more trend- and status-based. People think it's cool to order on their phones instead of talking to the server, or they think it's classy to eat what the folks in Shanghai are eating instead of the local food from their region.
Personally, I would prefer to see more local restaurants and less chains, not just in China but everywhere in the world. I understand that's an orthogonal issue to QR code ordering, just in China it does appear to be correlated.
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
FWIW I didn't read the gp's comment as implying causation. I read it purely as correlation. That restaurants that use these systems are much more likely to use other cost saving "short cuts" as well. Just because someone notes a correlation does not mean they imply a causal relationship between the two. Correlation, even without causation, can still be highly useful. Lack of causation does not equate to spurious correlations[0]. You'll note that on this website that the problem isn't that one doesn't cause the other, but rather that there's no reason to suspect these factors are correlated in the first place, and that correlation does not imply connection.
To be fair, you just 100% described a keg. It's just not common -- or is even non-existent? -- for wine to come in kegs.
A restaurant wants to know your order. Why does this simple thing take 20-30 mins? Whom benefits? How does it enrich your experience exactly, this useless waiting and pointing at a menu?
In the end, I left my usual tip to the server and zero to the rest and left it for them to figure out, just like in every other restaurant on the planet. Servers make full, much higher than Federal minimum wage in my state plus tips, so really we should be abolishing tipping at this point IMO.
This is the real issue I see with this system going forward. Becoming a second-class client simply because I don't have a cell-phone on me at all times is not going to be great.
It almost does in Portland. Starting July 1st, it's $14 plus tips. There is no "tipped employee" minimum wage. It's the same for all. I think it will be $13 per hour in the rest of Oregon outside the metro area but there may be a third level for the most rural counties.
I guess I don't know how you go from the idea that you are accomplishing nothing while making someone else's day worse to being able to say "not my problem" and go on with your life.
I would much rather they were paid a fair wage. But I'm not going to voice my opinion on that matter by refusing to give them the money that I personally factor in as part of a meal anyway. I get where you're coming from, but I don't see how this method of addressing it is intended to accomplish anything.
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.
There is a ton of abuse in the food service industry in America, not the least of which is paying servers less than 3 bucks per hour, and thats one of the cushier jobs. I was a server a long time, and sometimes you make the money in tips, sometimes you don't. I knew a lot of servers who put up with workplace abuse because of the illusion of easy cash the job creates. BOH staff work harder and usually take home even less.
Ordering from an app is great. No mistakes, no forgotten orders, and nobody abusing the machine.
You mean just like every restaurant in USA. I rarely tip in France, only if I had a really special interaction with the waiter/waitress. Once it was because the waitress was a student we chit chat a bit and ended up talking programming (!). I never tipped once in China (nobody does it there)
This whole $2 thing is bullshit that’s carried forward if you’re the average HN reader in a coastal city. My friends who are waiters across a spectrum of restaurants (in a coastal city) probably make $50-60 an hour, and double that at the higher end places, for a job that yes, can be exhausting (but not exceptionally more so than many other low-skill jobs), and requires no specific training or degree.
Arrive at the table, scan the QR code
Connect to the wifi, just a short PSK, no captive portal
Order food from web page (no registration or account, the QR code is already set up to be my table). Extra-options for the dishes available.
Initiate second order, add some 0-cost salt, mayo, and water.
Payment didn't involve the website at all, just paid at the register with cash like normal.
At no point was I urged to enter any personal information or install an app.
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.
[1] https://nypost.com/2021/04/05/low-risk-of-catching-covid-fro...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/opinion/coronavirus-airbo...
The study you proposed doesn't address the topic at hand, because there's a very large confounding factor: packed lunches are going to have very different foods in them than what you'd get at a restaurant, which has obvious health implications.
I think most people have life experience that shows them that in-person human interaction is a necessary component to human happiness, especially after the pandemic. Maybe somehow you've never experienced or heard other people's experiences of that, but if that's the case, you really should seek out the opinions of people who aren't like you more often. Maybe start with the waitstaff at your local restaurant. ;)
Are you aware that there's a widespread feeling that tech/business folks are out of touch with reality?
Restaurants can offer QR menu to those who like them AND have more time to pay attention to those who don't.
Correct. Like most of my life, I have things that are opinions but I'm more than willing to change my mind if evidence comes along.
And to be clear, I did not make any assertions with my initial post about health and wellbeing from contactless ordering. It was you that came here to tell me:
> Your belief that it's good to cut out a human interaction is one you should reconsider.
The quote you quoted said nothing to that effect.
Personally, I don't believe it has an effect one way or the other. My opinion is this would probably only really matter for someone who's only social interactions came from talking to the waitstaff. That'd be a pretty rare individual.
> I think most people have life experience that shows them that in-person human interaction is a necessary component to human happiness
Correct, I don't disagree with this
> Maybe somehow you've never experienced or heard other people's experiences of that
Incorrect. What I've not experienced is any positive impact from talking to waitstaff, store clerks, bar tenders, valets, etc. I, like I'd assume most other people, do not get my human interaction from people I purchase services from. I get it from my family, friends, and coworkers.
Perhaps if I were proposing we move to a world where everyone lives in a box never interacting with another individual, you'd have more of a point. That said, my week is no better or worse as a result of moving to online banking or when I have groceries delivered.
I could concede that if the only form of human interaction someone experiences is from a restaurant wait staff then there'd be a net negative for that individual. However, getting food delivered or preparing food at home hardly seems like the problem you are painting. Nor does it seem like me being "out of touch with reality".
Perhaps another concession I'd give is that I could see how limiting human interaction would minimize opportunities for empathy. Certainly, I think more people would be empathetic to field hands were they to directly interact with them.
But, again, I don't see how that really translates when talking about food prep at a restaurant.
I hate how using a QR code actually goes. Unlock my phone. Open the camera app. Swipe to the photo mode in which QR codes work. Aim at the QR code and awkwardly try to tap the hovering URL.
Did the slightly more than half the population throughout history also have someone else cook for them too? A woman's woman perhaps?
No, I'm not buying any argument that says a person is not privileged to have someone provide for them just because they consider the provisioner to be a lesser being like a woman or a slave. Quite the contrary in fact: I consider that a reinforcing argument for a privileged existence.
If it points to a website properly designed for multiple screen size, and the WiFi works well without too many hassle or a mandatory invasion of privacy (login to Facebbok to access the WiFi network? No thank you), then it can be a great experience. The restaurant should make sure to have at least a couple of printed copies in case someone can't use their phone, if there's a website outage, etc.
What a curious statement, American Stockholm Syndrome in full effect.
I'm in Australia and tipping is only really done in the case of exceptional service. The price on the menu is the price you pay. Nobody feels animosity towards someone who pays the price on the menu, and nobody feels guilt for "only" paying the price that was specified.
Also nobody would expect sub-par service or to be disparaged if they don't pay more, as sibling commenters have mentioned.
Much simpler for everyone - why should customers have to do convoluted maths to work out how much to subsidize a business that can't afford to pay their workers? That is pretty much the definition of an unviable business.
Billionaires get tax breaks while the lowest-paid workers buying power goes down every year without fail.
And no guillotines because they're all too busy trying to keep their head above water. GG billionaires.
Servants and maids where much more common in the past than now, especially among the middle class. Also it was more common to have several generations living under the same roof, so 1-2 people would often be preparing meals for 6-12 people. Today it is much more likely that you have 1-2 people preparing food for 1-4 people.
I strongly suspect that the proportion of people eating a meal they cooked themselves is almost certainly higher now than at virtually any point in history.
This is not true. I’ve been a service employee. Your employer withholds taxes on estimated tipped earnings, typically resulting in literal $0 paychecks. This is the norm in states with lower tipped minimums (might not hold true in states like CA). In fact, getting actual cash on your paycheck means the business was so slow that they needed to pay you to make up the difference (or close to it). In which case, barely over $7 is still abysmal to deal with the bs in that biz, and obviously far too little to actually live a decent life.
I'm moving towards a fixed amount. Since, as I mentioned elsewhere I don't see a strict correlation between menu price and work performed. The amount of work to bring me a steak is same as work to bring me a burger; but the steak might cost 3x more. Majority of dining experiences follow the same script and same amount of interaction with waitstaff so I'm thinking of just giving everyone $X and don't even consider what I spent. Maybe adjust up if we had appetizers, extra beverages, or some difficult situation. Having a toddler, I've left my fair share of huge "sorry for the mess" tips and that doesn't bother me at all.
>In which case, barely over $7
Right, so tipped waitstaff only make $2.83/hr is not true.
True, tipped minimum is $2.13/hr.
> If the employer did not make up the difference then they risk being fined/shutdown.
Employers make up reported shortfalls in tipped jobs, but they also often treat shortfalls as a negative performance indicator, justifying termination. In jobs where there are cash tips (not everything through a payment system), this incentivizes enployees to assure that there are no shortfalls.
