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.
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.
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.
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
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.”
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 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
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.