Barista Magazine

APR-MAY 2017

Serving People Serving Coffee Since 2005

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server knows where help is needed. A cursory search through Alibaba (not Amazon, though) reveals a selection of call bell systems of every stripe, including those which look like standard doorbells. From Happy Days to 2001: A Space Odyssey If Thrillist' s prediction is correct—that quick-service restaurants are more likely to prevail than trendier sit-down dining spots—then perhaps it's rea- sonable to believe they will be the proving grounds for ordering technolo- gies which complement or ultimately replace the server altogether. These technologies may include customer-facing tablets deployed as kiosks, as well as apps or services that allow customers to place their order from somewhere outside the restaurant. Ordering and delivery services such as GrubHub and Seamless bring the restaurant's menu to the customer. Many of these services, though, require more from the restaurant than simply paying the associated service fees. Fees can range up to 10 or 20 percent of the order total, and that's before the customer and/or restaurant pays a delivery charge. One restaurant-industry veteran who has literally watched the evolution from shorthand on paper to data pushed through the cloud is John Meyer, former COO of Portillo's Hot Dogs, the famed Chicagoland hot dog pur- veyor. John was instrumental in tweaking the company's well-known traffi c control system in the drive-through at their earliest shops. "This was back in 1983, at our seventh location in Downers Grove," he says. "The drive-through was an afterthought, so the kitchen ended up being too small." The demand from the drive-through quickly outpaced the production capacity of the kitchen, so they found a need to expand the kitchen. With the expanded kitchen came the desire to try to move the cars through the line faster. John and his team developed a system of issuing paper tick- ets—not unlike what one grabs at a delicatessen—to a car, then writing the order on a paper bag using their own specialized shorthand, calling the order in to the kitchen, accepting payment, and then retrieving the order from one of the drive-in windows. Even with all of the employees expe- diting the process, Portillo's quickly found themselves with lineups of as many as 20 cars. One of the biggest changes that occurred to help move the line along—the goal was always that cars wouldn't have to come to a com- plete stop—was the advent of credit-card processing in the line. Prior to the avail- ability of portable credit-card swipers around 2003, making change in an all-cash endeavor was a chal- lenge, and due to shifting and rotating team members, a loss- prevention concern. The biggest challenge, though, was actually fi nding the right gear. "We were looking for those change-dis- penser belts like the ones they used to have at gas stations. We fi nally found them through an offi ce supply store, and when they saw how many we were ordering, they actually came out to see why we were buying them. They had never seen someone do this before." John's experience with Portillo's, as well as a stint overseeing the rapid expansion of Stan's Donuts in the Chica- go area, eventually brought him to Las Ve- gas with the start-up brand Fat Papa's, a venture that will bring classic Chicago street food such as hot dogs and Italian beef to a city traditionally dominated by buffets and expense-account restau- rants. While the new venture may incorpo- rate mobile kiosks to facilitate ordering, John is almost nostalgic for the days of placing an order with a server. Even Portillo's has introduced an ordering app, and customers who use it miss out on the human conveyor belt experience of the drive-through line. "I see things changing all over, but it's generational and cultural," John says. "The art of the phone call is lost. Now you see [kiosk technology] at Chili's, where you can order your drinks from the table. Everyone is staring at their phones. I always thought the best part of going out to dinner was being with and talking to people." Still, John understands the inevitability of kiosk and mobile point-of-sale as a replacement for some of the customer-server interaction. "You're going to see more QSRs going to kiosk models because it's hard to fi nd good help!" That doesn't necessarily mean kiosk solutions will work everywhere, as evidenced by grocery locations where "self-checkout" stations have been integrated into some stores, only to be removed later as the problems of theft and malfunction override the benefi ts. Kiosks Indeed, kiosks work in some instances, but not all. Near the end of 2014, Panera began installing iPad-based ordering kiosks as a way to reduce the amount of time spent in line. Within a year, these ordering systems had rolled Kyle Gla nv i lle o f G&B; C offee a n d Go Ge t Em Ti g er i n L.A. h a s figured out a way to use technology to bring convenience to his customers without losing the human interaction that is so central to their service model. 98 barista magazine

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