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The early diners are dawdling, so your 7:30 p.m. reservation looks more like 8. While you wait, the last order of the duck you wanted passes by. Tonight, you'll be eating something else — without a second bottle of wine, because you can't find your server in the busy dining room. This is not your favorite night out.
The right data could have fixed it, according to the tech wizards who are determined to jolt the restaurant industry out of its current slump. Information culled and crunched from a wide array of sources can identify customers who like to linger, based on data about their dining histories, so the manager can anticipate your wait, buy you a drink and make the delay less painful.
It can track the restaurant's duck sales by day, week and season, and flag you as a regular who likes duck. It can identify a server whose customers have spent a less-than-average amount on alcohol, to see if he needs to sharpen his second-round skills.
So Big Data is staging an intervention.
Both start-ups and established companies are scrambling to deliver up-to-the-minute data on sales, customers, staff performance or competitors by merging the information that restaurants already have with all sorts of data from outside sources: social media, tracking apps, reservation systems, review sites, even weather reports.
Because most restaurant goers eat at the same place often enough to generate data sets with statistically reliable predictions.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday August 30 2017, @12:00AM (2 children)
I see you seem to want to eat at the restaurant.
Next time, try, if you're not stuck at the Escherian table, to enjoy a relaxed evening in nice company at the restaurant, complete with occasional food. Most of your issues will be irrelevant.
It is a different experience, for sure, but on ne vieillit pas a table (you don't age at the table).
And, for the love of all that you hold holy: well-done? Really? (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Wednesday August 30 2017, @04:55AM
This. Unfortunately the OP seems to be a product of the modern service economy, where people are dining out not because they want a special experience with friends, but because they are in a hurry and don't want to take the time to prepare their own meals.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Wednesday August 30 2017, @07:17AM
Because you think it's profitable for the restaurant for you to stay there and chat?
This is about restaurants not making money, from people who want to give them money.
And I'm sorry but what makes you think I don't do the above. 10 people arrive, we're going to want a drink almost immediately. Then we're going to want you to go away so we can talk, until our food is ready. Notice the almost unlimited amount of time for you to do this.
Then we want to pay, so you can go away again until we're finished. Hey, if only we could split the bill easily without having to rely on the waitress to have enough fingers and toes to work it out! Why can the card machines / POS not just "divide this bill by 5" or whatever as a button?
We're talking optimisation of the restaurant business, and the one thing you can't control is how long people linger and talk without ordering. That time is all waste, and there's nothing you can do about it without upsetting them. But there are plenty of other places you can optimise to increase your profit, decrease the bother to your customers, and keep out of their way rather than "Oh, sorry, I've just been in the kitchen for the third time, the duck is actually gone, could I interrupt you and all those who ordered duck re-order? Oh, so if you're not having the duck you don't want that wine, right, okay, hold on...." when you could have known that from a pad you were putting the order into at the table the first time round.
It's a service industry. And often in service industries the best way to optimise profit is to stay out of your customer's hair and make it as easy for them as possible. It frees up your staff, stops replication of effort, allows your customers to do what they want (socialise / eat) and that all increases your gains in reputation / service / saved profit.