Ultraviolet image used with permission of the copyright holder San Francisco is known for its food culture based on fresh ingredients. A new restaurant concept that opened on August 31, called Eatsa, aims to offer nutritious and delicious meals that cost less than most fast food chains. Given that this is a tech-savvy Bay Area, Eatsa accomplishes this by using technology that helps keep costs down while delivering fast food.
The food service industry may seem like the last bastion of an old-world experience, but technology is increasingly playing a role in its evolution, as evidenced by computer terminals that send orders to the kitchen and split checks three ways, and mobile transaction systems like Square and PayPal that even allow the local ice cream truck to pay by credit card. Chili’s has installed more than 45,000 tabletop kiosks from Ziosk that handle payments as well as reordering drinks or games. Technology not only allows restaurants to operate more efficiently, but also reassign their staff to other duties or even, sigh, replace them.
Of course, there are restaurants that use technology as gimmicks, such as those that use robots to do triple duty as servers, chefs and clowns. It’s no surprise that many of these restaurants are also closed. But here are eight examples of restaurants using technology to increase their profits or improve the customer experience.
Eats
Eatsa is a new healthy fast food restaurant that revolves around protein-rich quinoa. As you create your bowls of super-beans on custom iPads (or in advance on your smartphone), you’ll notice something missing: cashiers and servers. With the exception of one employee who helps customers with ordering, most of the staff works behind the scenes to create food and deliver it in vending machine-style sections. The concept was developed by Tim Young and Scott Drummond, two entrepreneurs with backgrounds in technology and branding. By incorporating technology, redistributing staff duties, and eliminating meat-based proteins, Eatsa is able to cut wait times by delivering high-quality, nutritious food for as little as $7 a bowl—unheard of in expensive San Francisco.
The company plans to expand Eatsa to other cities, but the kiosk concept is already being implemented by restaurants such as Panera Bread, which is installing tablet-based ordering systems in its cafes to speed up food delivery.
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Today, you’ll find plenty of restaurants serving up molecular gastronomy, but Alinea in Chicago might be considered the most innovative in combining food with science and theater—so impressive that one restaurant decided to recreate it at home. As for chef Grant Achatz, he doesn’t even see Aline as a restaurant in the traditional sense. Instead of steak and lobster, you’ll find edible balloons filled with helium, a “flat” dish for guests to assemble, a chocolate ball filled with dry ice that falls and shatters to reveal a pumpkin pie dessert or a lamb entrée consisting of 86 ingredients. Alinea may sound like a mad scientist’s laboratory, but with three coveted Michelin stars, guests and critics consider it one of the best restaurants in the world.
Here we go
inamo – Interactive restaurant in London’s Soho
There are no paper menus at this Asian-fusion London restaurant. Instead, it’s projected onto a table, which you can move around like a tablet. Food is ordered by pressing virtual buttons on the “e-table”, according to customers’ free time. While waiting, guests can watch a video of the kitchen staff preparing their food or pull up information about the local area; they call the bill at the end of the meal. The projection system can even be adjusted on the fly, allowing the restaurant to change for special events. According to the founders, they developed the concept after a dining experience where they had trouble getting the waiter’s attention. They say the e-board actually frees up staff to engage more with visitors. As for the food, the restaurant has 3.5 stars on Yelp and four stars from OpenTable diners, so it’s not all smoke and mirrors.
OTG in Newark
Nobody really likes airport food, but that’s changing. Airports across the country are enriching their restaurants with tastier offerings beyond greasy pizza and hamburgers. One such food purveyor is OTG, which has partnered with United Airlines to revamp restaurants at Newark International that are more farm-to-table than deep-fried. Part of OTG’s strategy relies heavily on technology: food is ordered via custom iPads at the counter or table, which also manage transactions. OTG says the iPads aren’t there to replace wait staff, but they do ensure food is ordered correctly (reducing what it calls “gaps”) and delivered efficiently – important when you might be pressed for time before a flight. While you wait, you can scan your boarding pass on the iPad and it will pull up your flight information as well as access other information. OTG is rolling out the system at all airports where it operates, including Delta’s terminal at LaGuardia Airport.
McDonald’s Create your taste
McDonald’s is a pioneer in fast food technologies, from how food is prepared to how it is delivered to customers. In Australia, it launched a kiosk-based ordering and payment system called “Create Your Taste,” which the company is now testing in the US. The CYT kiosk allows users to design their hamburgers: they can choose the type of bun, filling and toppings. Despite the artisanal approach, unfortunately, as Eater’s Robert Sietsema discovered, you still get the same beef patty, and the kiosks are riddled with problems.
News of McDonald’s plans to introduce computerized ordering systems dates back to 2011, when it was announced that the restaurant chain would add touch-screen terminals to 7,000 European locations – followed by calls to replace human cashiers and cut jobs. McDonald’s is now caught up in the current debate over raising the minimum wage, and kiosks have been cited as a way around the issue. But McDonald’s executives say that’s not the case, and that the CYT program is just a way to improve the customer experience and that it has no intention of cutting jobs (although it is laying off employees at headquarters, due to a restructuring due to weaker sales).
Like it or not, computer kiosks are only going to become more prevalent in the fast food industry (e.g. Eatsa and Panera). For some reason, McDonald’s seems to get the most backlash, but for a company that strives to maximize efficiency through technology, is it that surprising that it would eventually move toward such a system? Now if I could just do something about those horrible speaker systems.
Book bell & candle
The vegetables at this New York restaurant could be a little fresher thanks to the aeroponic rooftop garden. The “farm,” developed by Future Growing, provides the restaurant with its own herbs, as well as eggplants, lettuces, peppers, tomatoes and more. Not only are they organic, it’s also a sustainable method of food production and consumption; the plants grow in tall plastic columns, using water instead of earth and soil.
Although food is still grown on farms and trucked to our local supermarkets, there is a growing interest in organic and local produce, not to mention concerns about water scarcity, high oil prices and overcrowding – issues that affect food prices. Technology like this aeroponic system would allow people to create modern victory gardens to produce sustainable and fresh food.
Ultraviolet
Dining at Ultraviolet in Shanghai is like feeding all the senses, not just the taste buds. The intimate 10-seat dining room is surrounded by video screens and speakers that provide an audio-visual experience that is paired with each “Avant-Garde” course (22 in total), complete with lighting and even scents that circulate the room. The brainchild of French chef Paul Pairet, the idea here is that food doesn’t just elevate one part of the sensory experience, which seems a bit Kubrick-esque (watch this video to get a sense of what it’s like in the dining room, where you’ll be sitting during early morning rain forests and thunderstorms ).
If you think the special effects are just gimmicks, know that the restaurant has five stars on Tripadvisor. Reservations can only be made online.
Muten Kura Sushi
無添 くら寿司 “Muten-Kura-Sushi” Conveyor belt sushi.
Kaiten-zushi, or conveyor belt sushi, is a restaurant concept invented in Japan in the 1950s. As the name suggests, chefs place small plates of sushi or other items on a conveyor belt that circles the dining room; guests can choose any dish they like. While Western nations are freaking out about kiosks replacing waiters, the Japanese have no such qualms when it comes to fast food.
Because this is high-tech Japan, the sushi chain Muten Kura has taken the concept of kaiten to a higher level. In every restaurant, guests never interact with the service staff. In addition to the standard conveyor belt that runs past each booth, there are two lanes: one for quick delivery of food ordered via tablet, and another that collects used plates. And the more you consume, you’re automatically entered into a contest to win prizes (also delivered via conveyor belt). There is also a spout for pouring drinks.
There are employees working behind the scenes, but the restaurant is highly automated. A conveyor belt that collects dirty dishes directs them to a robot that washes and dries them. Even the food is prepared by robots, because there are no trained sushi chefs. The computer system also keeps track of how many people are eating in the restaurant, as well as which dishes are popular and what the kitchen needs more of. Jiro dreams of sushi this is not, but technologies provide delicious sushi – usually an expensive meal – at a low price.
If you’re looking for something a little crazier than Japan, pop over to Robot Restaurant in Tokyo’s red light district.
Categories: GAMING
Source: newstars.edu.vn