GONE D wrote:
People typically dine outside their homes in the hope that they'll enjoy less fuss 'n muss, certainly, but also that they'll enjoy some interaction with the restaurant personnel who serve them, and possibly some interaction with the diners around them. Your typical server is personable and knowledgeable, capable of advising your dinner party regarding the menu items, and may also have some feel for timing. Is the kitchen operating efficiently? Which appetizer is receiving the most favorable remarks?
The current fast-casual category is in constant uproar, and this creepy need to sterilize the process of employee-client interaction is, from my perspective, encouraging (as Panera does) its clients to pass credit-debit cards through doubtful protocols.
Having slept on this message, I wish to add that I spend in excess of $10K per year, before tips, playing the A Channel of Buzztime's enterprise, and less than half that at all the other bars and restaurants I visit. Regardless how much or little the company prospers in the future, I'll go to my grave convinced that Buzztime erred in trying to expand beyond the core competence of providing educational and conversational entertainment.
In my hometown there is a CUB supermarket. They replaced a number of cashiers with self-help check-out stations. It appeared to me on an unscientific basis that half of the people using these stations need help. I decided that when I go to CUB I would go to the check-out lines with live cashiers. The next time I went to CUB I waited in line to get my groceries checked out. When it was my turn to get checked out the cashier rushed over to help someone on the self-help stations. She returned after a couple of minutes and I was thinking that I was trying to save her job and she really wasn't cooperating. The addition of all these stations must not have saved CUB because they were just bought up by another chain that plans to sell off all the stores to rival chains.
I have to believe that a lot of people are going to have trouble ordering their food with the tablets if Buzztime ever does get it to work. It seems to me that Buzztime has enough problems getting their trivia software working correctly all the time.