We like to sit you down, and show you a menu. We take pride on our chewable, edible food. These little fellers here are silverware.
This (gestures expansively to a cup) is what we here like to call a cup! It’s frequently used to hold liquids such as water, which is exactly what I’ve just poured into it.
"Babe, I think this place might be out of our price range. Why can't we just go to the place with tableside hamster bottles again?"
"Unlike many other restaurants, we offer a choice of beverages other than water. Some of those beverages will intoxicate you."
The ones that amuse me are the restaurants that don’t do table service, but still have a multiple staff on the floor and door seemingly only to tell diners they don’t do table service.
"All you have to do is scan a qr code, sit on your phone for 5-10 minutes to figure out our menu system, get water for yourself at the station over there, get your own silverware, pick up drinks at the bar, grab this vibrating puck, and pick up food on the other side of the restaurant. Don't forget to tip!"
Is this still common or are people beating a dead horse?
The whole QR code thing was big during the pandemic but every restaurant in my city deactivated their QR menu and setup.
I say that as a person who loves ordering from a QR and just having the server bring it over. Fight me.
I've still seen it quite a few times. It's only annoying when it's the only option to order.
The worst one was when they got mad at us for making 20 separate orders (group of 20 everyone orders on their own phone). Apparently we were supposed to take half an hour passing 1 phone around hoping the shitty webapp doesn't wipe our order.
I guess they wanted to be able to auto add gratuity to your large party and totally agree with you. I personally don’t mind the QR code when it is just me or one other person.
Luckily tips are still actually tips in my country. So you'd never pay them upfront and definitely not after receiving shitty service.
Vancouver is littered with QR Only restaurants, which is extra fun when we take out our boomer tech-illiterate parents.
It’s been so long since I’ve eaten out, but I feel like I’ve seen QR codes quite recently.
One was a yoga studio. I saw yoga happening (big plate glass windows at street level so it was hard to miss), and on a whim I thought “Well this seems like a nice place”. A teacher was finishing up and I asked her about a schedule, and it’s all online!
It’s such a minor thing but it annoys me so much. I want their class schedule stuck to my fridge with a magnet. I don’t want more time looking at this god-awful thing. Yoga is me trying to touch grass, get out of the house.
Maybe I’m some kind of bauhaus idealist, but I think paper in hand could play a nice role in turning that plate glass window full of yogis doing yoga into some walk-in traffic.
It annoys me because the world I grew up in, every business had some kind of paper handout with info. A yoga class schedule, assuming it’s stable, is the perfect thing to stick to my fridge and notice sometimes.
Being an old fogie sucks.
When a good portion of them end up just thrown out, IMO this is a step in the right direction. If you want it in your fridge you could write it down or print it. And then anyone who doesn't want it on their fridge or doesn't care enough to open the website doesn't cause another piece of coloured and printed paper to just be waste.
I mean, if they can just keep a handful printed or be ready to print them if requested that would easily meet both needs
I'm not sure what the OP had in mind but with their description I was picturing the fast dining places, kinda like Panera bread. Sometimes in the more trendy places where they put like dandelions or some shit on sandwiches they will have a really convoluted bs system that requires as little human interaction as possible. But then they need all this extra staff because the system they made is confusing
a lot of them just kept both systems around here, which is nice because I love the ability to decide "man I could use another side" without having to slflag the server down
Both is definitely the best. As a software developer I see a potential SSOT violation but it’s not that bad. The paper menu is a representation. It’s a cache expiry problem which, as someone who’s worked in software and in restaurants, isn’t as hard as a tough bussing problem.
I was in a Buffalo Wild Wings recently that only had the menu available via QR code. You still ordered like normal, but in order to see the options, you had to scan the code.
The only thing worse is when they don't explain that, and you're stuck wondering why a waiter hasn't come over. Yes I understand that the QR code is a menu. No I don't think it's more efficient to change the concept of a "restaurant" after 5,000 years.
Best thing is, last place that did this had a unique "fusion" menu. It's not like the food was self-explanatory. So the waiters had to come to every table anyway, but it was hard to flag them down.
Yes they are. They were already ubiquitous in the Roman Empire. Pompeii has them in its ruins. It's very recognizable as areas with seating and areas with food preparation / serving.
My experience:
"Oh, well, here you need to download an app, consent to everything the app wants to do and register with your phone number. Then you can order and walk to the kitchen to pick up the food you ordered. Also, leave a tip if you enjoyed the service."
At least around where I am, the places that use an app provide a tablet with that app to order on.
"We do family style, which means the portions are more than you can conceivably eat. That way you won't complain when we overcharge you by a factor of 10."
"You try stopping her from sharing my food. I have yet to find success in that endeavor."
I run a restaurant, and encourage people to share. My burgers are 3/4 pounders on garlic Texas Toast, bacon, onion rings, spicy aioli, Dijon and fancy pickles with old white cheddar. If I can sell those for 17, turn a profit and encourage people with smaller appetites to order one and cut it in half, these chain restaurants with 1 dollar input cost instead of 6 can fuck right off.
I mean, you can always pay more money for those tiny plates they sell at super fancy expensive places if that's more your thing. lol
I once went to a pizza place that had a slogan like "pizza done different" and you went through the a chipotle style line and picked out crust, sauce, toppings, then they made your pizza and gave it to you. I couldn't figure out that was any different from a regular place.
And the lawyers were careful to use the ambiguous participle “done”.
If they’d gone precise with “Pizza ordered different” it definitely wouldn’t sound so fun
I know both Mod Pizza and Blaze Pizza do this, so yeah, it's not any different at all.
Were they the the personal size ones? IIRC they are priced as such, and affordable to get multiple toppings it doesn't hike up the price. Also was a food court thing where the pizzas are made in like 3 minutes instead of 20. In a stone or brick oven. Idk that's dope imo I would love grabbing that on a lunch break.
Here at Restaurant, we offer "lonely singles style" dining. You order something you want to eat, and then you don't share it with anyone else. Unless they like, ask really politely for a bite, then that's on you. At the end of your meal, you ask for the check, then you wait like 20 minutes while going back and forth on whether you really need dessert or not, then you pay and leave!
Also you either pay us or up front. It's one or the other but we won't tell you until you flag us down and ask.
“You’ll be working front of the house. Your job is to walk around with these pitchers of ice water and ignore anyone who tries to get your attention”
I feel like this is basically every action horror story ever as well....
"Forget everything you've seen in the movies, the only way to kill a Vampire is put a stake through the heart! Guns are useless!"
Ugh, that's like D&D games where they're like, your character has no idea about what a vampire is because folklore doesn't exist in this universe so no one has ever shared a story ever.... even though the party has a bard who sings about things people have heard
Right? We don't need to spend 7 chapters of a 9 chapter story going "Why does this really old, really rich guy only come out at night and talk about not drinking wine!?!?!" When, the fucking cover of the story says "The Vampire Killer 3: The Vampire That Kills"
if your server is doing this it's because innumerable people before you have managed to fuck up eating out
To be fair, most customers that say they totally know how to do everything know precisely nothing and just don't want to appear ignorant.
Now before you get your food, you're definitely gonna wanna make sure you have the mechanics down, so I'd like everyone to just open and close their mouths a few times, get those jaw muscles good and warm because let me tell you, if you haven't had food before, you don't know how much you're going to need them in a second
Oh, y'all still have wait staff?
We have "digital kitchens" now: https://stories.whataburger.com/whataburger-debuts-new-digital-kitchen-all-the-flavor-with-more-convenience/
Same wait without the staff, tables . . . or blackjack
Placing your order ahead for pick up at the new Digital Pick-up Lane allows our teams in the restaurant, whom we call Family Members, to deliver fresh, made to order food while reducing your time in the drive thru.
jesus christ
I didn't believe you for a moment there but yes guys it does say Family Members on the site and is incredibly cringe.
Reminds me of the bars around here that have replaced the wait staff, or maybe the whole wait staff but one overworked person, with QR codes that go to their online ordering system.
I've started avoiding them because it always takes forever to find someone when we have a question about the menu, want something specially made or customized, or have a question about an advertised deal or item, etc.
And that's why this shit won't catch on, people like you who don't immediately jump on "The new thing"
@pizza used to have their own name for every ingredient and would correct you if you asked for something by its regular name
That is why I always bring my own table knife with a 15° full flat grind. Really cuts down on that pesky sharpening time that might let you cool off before the cops come.
True story: I ate at a restaurant inside of a casino and you can't have a pocket knife when you enter for obvious reasons, they gave me a steak knife with a 5" fully serrated edge when I sat down.
you can't have a pocket knife when you enter for obvious reasons
Are casinos more prone to stabbings than other establishments are?
Drunk people losing money can be stupid and violent, so casinos don't like it when you have greater means for violence.
Neither do Swiss army knives. That said, I dress western. Pocket knife mysteriously finds its way behind my belt buckle at metal detectors and no one cares to look down my pants after they see the buckle.
This obviously doesn't work at airports. Concerts and such, no one really cares that much.
Then they slide your silverware or straw over to you and say ...and there's that."
"Yes of course, that"
The only time I ever needed a waiter to explain how things worked was when I ate at a Paula Dean restaurant. That place did not work like a normal restaurant.
People don't order individual meals. You order a meal for the whole table which is then brought out to the whole table to share. They provide unlimited refills of everything. So the whole table has to get together to decide what entree and sides they want. They don't let you take any leftovers home either. Everyone gets butter rolls and a dessert.
If you go to their site you can see the menu but your choices are a 2, 3, or 4 entree meal with 4 sides.
They don't let you take leftovers home? They gonna tackle me to the ground if I brought my own box?
Most "all you can eat" places don't let you take home leftovers. The wat staff will judge how many portions to bring out and if you need more they'll bring it out in order to prevent too much food waste. It worked out really well and there was a lot of food.
Sounds like Maggiano's except Maggiano's is Italian food, and when I've been there they not only allow you to take home leftovers, the wait staff encourages you to ask for more when you're done so you have some to take home.
Fogo de Chao is unusual, too. The options are whether you want the salad bar or not, and what beverage. Otherwise, you have a thing that's red on one side and green on the other. If you want the servers carrying different cuts of meat to stop by to offer you some to put on your plate, you flip that to red. If you're good, you flip to green.
It is, they didn’t follow the instructions very well.
Unless they do have it right and it really is different to every other restaurant that’s like that.
