This just in, brought to me personally via the Jovian Headquarters newsboy:
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/iPad-menu-australian-restaurant,news-7062.html
Stupid use of an iPad. Or rather, just a stupid use of money. I’d go so far as to say the second-stupidest waste of money ever.
Summary: A restaurant has just blown $40K on developing an iPad appilcation (not including hardware) that will replace their paper-based menus. Restaurant patrons will now make their selection after reviewing the information presented on the iPad. They can now look into the details of the items, like the ingredient list, the origin of the ingredients (like the farms where the organic produce was grown, what free-range their chicken came from, etc), and even look up details about the grapes from the wineries that provide the wine list selections. Great idea, and a neat application of technology! As a former restauranteur turned geek*, this sounds like a pretty cool combination.
Unless:
You allow three year olds in the dining room. Worse yet, you give them forks.
You actually have liquids in the restaurants. Or condiments.
Big glowing devices in your upscale, dimly lit establishment are part of the ambience.
Your waitstaff actually washes their hands as frequently as they should, so that smooth roundish object doesn’t slip out of their hands.
Your marketing gimmick only needs to attract a few curious members of the media and the geek crowd. Once.
You trust your slightly-over-minimum-wage staff not to walk off with one.
…and anybody else that can walk in the door (“dine-n-dash”, with the dash coming before the dine).
And as a businessman, you’ve only got as finite number of tables at which you strive to seat as many people you can. This will bring turnover to a screeching halt: “No, we’re not ready, yet, we’re comparing the amount of trans-fats in your dishes that include tumeric, wine, and more than 300g of salt, as well as checking your stock price and tweeting”.
If they were using Kindles, I wouldn’t be so harsh on this stupid hipster fanboy moron idea.
What’s it second-stupidest to, you ask? Transformers II.
* – actually, I’m a marginally-successful-local-rockstar turned overacheiving-linecook turned restaurant manager turned geek turned security geek aspiring now to become Übergeek. Emphasis on rockstar and Über.
June 19th, 2010 on 5:58 pm
See, this is where the owner of the restaurant branches out and starts selling the software (as a service™!) to OTHER restaurants, negotiates leasing the hardware from Apple, to the other restaurants, and paradoxically ends up creating a company with a LARGER net-worth than Apple itself!