We may never wait for a server to bring the check for our meal again, if E La Carte’s “Presto” device catches on. A glorified, toughened-up iPad with a credit card reader included, the Presto could sit on a restaurant table, take your order at the exact moment you are ready, and email your receipt to you. Human servers would still be used to deliver the food, and if you have a really, really complicated order (beyond a simple “dressing on the side”). The Presto could even include games to play, and convenient methods for splitting the check, according to Annie Lowrey’s article.
I love gadgets–but I love actual human interaction more. One of my great pleasures is to be recognized by the greeters and servers at my local haunts. I feel a glow when they remember my “usual.” Somehow, it would not be the same knowing that the Presto was simply executing an SQL command to retrieve my order history from its databanks. I am glad to see pictures of my favorite servers’ families, to hear their stories, and to occasionally offer sympathy at life’s vicissitudes. I enjoy relating.
I haven’t yet mentioned the privacy issues, nor the fact that we need *more* jobs like this, not fewer.
I half-remember a quotation about the point of life is not to make it faster… I don’t want life to become more difficult, necessarily, but given a choice between “more convenient” and “more rich” I will choose richness. There will always be places for gadgets; let us hope there will also be a place for people.
At a Chili’s a few months ago, Dave and I were introduced to small tabletop electronic devices loaded up with games. You know, in case you decided talking to the person at the table was not amusement enough.
Chip,
It’s possible this sort of thing will become pervasive, I suppose. But it reminds me of Russ’, a chain of locally-owned restaurants in West Michigan. Some of these, the ones that seemed older, didn’t have wait-staff as such. You went in, were seated at a booth, and left to your own devices to make sense of the menu (this wasn’t really very difficult–it’s a meat-n-potatoes sort of place, fried fish, soups & sandwiches). Then, when you were ready to order, you picked up the phone hanging on the partition between your booth and the adjacent one.
A few minutes later someone would bring you your food. It always struck me as a strangely impersonal way to experience a sit-down meal. But fun for an 8-year-old, too. The tips must have been pathetic, though.