DISH: Technology can expedite orders, bedevil staff

What’s going on in the restaurant world

By Eric E. Harrison (Contact)

LITTLE ROCK — A couple of technology trends in the restaurant industry, one you can take advantage of now, and one that might show up at an eatery near you in the not-too-distant future:

More and more people are eating restaurant-prepared food instead of cooking at home, but the trend is skewing away from eating in the restaurant and more toward taking food out.

The NPD Group, a marketing research firm, reports that in 2006 the typical American ordered 127 takeout meals from restaurants, while eating 81 meals at the restaurant.

Restaurants, and particularly chain restaurants, are beefing up their takeout menus, providing curbside pickup or expanding their drive-throughs. And some forwardlooking chains are, or soon will be, letting customers order online.

The advantages to ordering your next takeout meal online: You can view menus; you avoid wasting time on the phone or waiting in line; and it’s more accurate than placing your order on the phone.

In central Arkansas, the most visible place that offers online ordering is the Papa John’s pizza chain, which notes on its site (www.papajohns.com) that you can place your order anytime, 24 hours a day, up to 21 days in advance; the specials are always available; and you can view the entire menu at a glance. You can even order “en Espanol.” Papa John’s is so gung-ho on the idea that the Web site has at least three links to “order online now” or “try it now.”

The Pizza Hut chain also has climbed on the online ordering bandwagon, though more modestly; a single small button on the Web site (www.pizzahut.com) lets you “order now,” although you have to go through a three-step registration process that could be pretty cumbersome if all you’re looking for is an extra-large, hand-tossed pepperoni on your doorstep inside an hour. Once you’re registered, of course, all you have to do is log in and order.

Meanwhile, the Outback Steakhouse chain is rolling out its own online ordering system. Clicking the “curbside take-away/online ordering” tab on Outback’s Web site (www.outback.com) lets you sign up for order/take-out service at Outbacks in North Little Rock, west Little Rock, Conway and Hot Springs.

You don’t have to be a megachain to institute an online ordering system, however. Even mom-andpop establishments can get into the act.

All you need is a minimal Web presence (your own site or a connection to somebody else’s site), a little bit of programming savvy (or somebody to do your programming for you) and a fax machine and you can benefit from a new technology called Innoport.

Harprit Singh, president of Philadelphia-based telecommunications service company Intellicomm and creator of Innoport, describes it as sort of a bridge between high-tech and not-so-high tech. Among other things, it allows customers to place an order via a Web site and then transmit it to the small restaurant or shop by fax.

Of course, in the ideal situation, a restaurant with Internet access can take orders via a Web site and have them actually pop up directly on the kitchen printers - “sirloin steak, medium-rare, hold the salt; baked potato, cheddar, chives, sour cream; to go, Jones, 7:30 p.m.”

However, “Until we get to that stage, the fax can be a proxy,” Singh says. “It’s a way to get into the digital world without having to have the infrastructure involved.”

It’s a way, he says, for the owner of a small restaurant to get over the digital divide without having to dive whole-hog, and whole wallet, into the computer age.

Interested? Check out Singh’s site, innoport.com/restaurantfax-software.asp.

Meanwhile, out in Los Angeles, where trends are born, a company called Customer Service Innovations Inc. has started the national release of its MyBell System, a button that rests on the tables of restaurants “whose patrons demand only the best of service,” according to a news release. You press the button on your tabletop and a chime sounds in the back,while your table number pops up “on a pleasant LED screen.”

According to the MyBell folks, the button allows restaurants to easily address (at least) the top 10 requests of the average restaurant patron that require immediate attention from a server, busser or seating host:

1) I want to switch tables.

2) I am ready to order.

3) I need a drink refill.

4) I received the wrong food order.

5) I want to order something else.

6) I would like more bread.

7) I need the check.

8) The check is incorrect.

9) The check/payment is ready.

10) I want my food boxed to go.

MyBell also says a more modest use for the button is to place it under the table so the server can, for example, let somebody know that the table needs bussing.

The idea of the system is to save the time servers spend “circling tables, hunting for empty glasses and tracking down table-bussers” so they can spend it “on more productive tasks,” according to the news release.

It’s also supposed to swell the pockets of restaurateurs, or at least that’s the pitch, by increasing service efficiency and turning over tables faster. And, as any good restaurant chain official can tell you, the more times you turn your tables, the more money you make. Or, as the news release puts it, “More open tables per hour means increased revenue for both the restaurant and staff.”

Sounds like a neat idea, unless you actually happen to work in a restaurant where this system is in place.

Let’s assume you have 25 tables in your establishment, and that each table holds four patrons and that they will be at the table for 45 minutes (that’s the time chains like Macaroni Grill set for maximum table turnover).

Now let’s assume that each of those patrons will make at least five or six of the top 10 requests listed above during the meal. And that’s not counting the people who will, just for novelty’s sake, press the button just to see if it works.

That’s a minimum of 20 button pressings per table per meal, or a total of 500 little chimes that will sound back in the kitchen in those 45 minutes - an average of more than 10 chimes a minute, or one chime every six seconds.

Or, assuming (once again) multiple and simultaneous customer requests, the whole “pleasant LED screen” could light up like a stadium scoreboard and you’d think you were working in a chime factory instead of a restaurant kitchen.

Dish is a monthly look at the business end of the central Arkansas restaurant business. Send notices of new restaurant openings, closings, menu and staff changes to Restaurants, Weekend Section, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, P.O. Box 2221, Little Rock, Ark. 72203, or call (501) 399-3667, or send e-mail to: eharrison@arkansasonline.com

Dining Out, Pages 67 on 08/03/2007