[Infowarrior] - Waiter! No check, please!

[Richard Forno]

Waiter! No check, please!

July 6, 2010 —

 http://www.itworld.com/print/113139

My wife and I had lunch at a horrible restaurant in San Francisco Saturday called Santorini. After suffering through a hideous meal, we just wanted to get out of there, but our waiter was nowhere to be found. It was a hostage situation. Which got me thinking: Why do we cling to the obsolete ritual of paying restaurant checks the way we do? 

Here's the process as I understand it: 

1. Waiter uses a pen to write down the customer's order on paper.

2. Waiter carries paper to the restaurant's point-of-sale (POS) device, which is just a PC running restaurant-specific software, and hand-enters the order into the computer to make it digital. 

3. Customer tries to get the attention of the waiter, and makes a goofy "writing" gesture to ask for the check. 

4. Waiter prints out the digital order information to put it on paper again, and delivers the printout in a vinyl folder, for some reason. 

5. Customer takes a piece of plastic called a credit card out of wallet, and sticks it in a little plastic holder cleverly glued to the inside of the vinyl folder, and waits for the waiter to eventually come collect it. 

6. Waiter carries the credit card and bill back to the POS system, swipes credit card, gets an OK from the credit card company, then prints out the credit card processing paperwork in duplicate. 

7. Waiter carries the bill back to the table, along with the restaurant's copy of the credit card paperwork and the customer's copy all in the folder with a cheap pen (in hopes that the customer won't "accidentally" make off with the pen). Waiter is now friendly for the first time, knowing that the customer is about to make a decision about the tip. 

8. Customer uses cheap pen to add tip, does math by hand to arrive at a total, then signs the check. 

9. Waiter carries the paperwork back to the POS computer and hand-enters the data hand-written on the credit card information so its digital again.

All this raises several questions, including: 

* Why are restaurants the only places where we trust strangers to carry our physical credit cards out of site to a place where there are other strangers (the physical credit cards show everything strangers need to know in order to use that credit card, including the 3-digit security code on the back)? 

* The information involved in the sale has to be digital for the restaurant. But why does it have to be presented on paper for the customer? 

* Why does everyone accept a system that involves idiotically converting data from paper to digital to paper to digital to paper and back to digital, just to process payment for a sandwich?

* In age when everyone has an Internet-connected computer in their pocket or purse, why do we accept this bizarre sneakernetting of simple data back and forth in a restaurant?

Obviously, the restaurant ordering system is from the Spanish Inquisition. There has got to be a better way. Maybe that better way comes from Google. 

Google unveiled last week a Chrome extension for Android called Android Payment Extension that enables POS functionality to happen on an Android phone. That means restaurants and other businesses could set up Google Checkout merchant accounts, use the Google Checkout Store Gadget Wizard to set up a custom template, then use the Android Payment Chrome Extension to create a cart that involves a QR code to be scanned by the customer.

For restaurants, I have a better idea. As soon as customers sit down, the waiter presents the option for online ordering. Customers who select that option can punch in the restaurant's site, choose the ordering menu, select the items desired, confirm or, then buy it as if you were buying a book on Amazon.com. At the end, you could add a tip in cash or via the ordering system.

All this could be handled by Google Checkout, or any number of other systems.

The order is placed, the food is paid for (before it's even delivered to the table), and the customers aren't held hostage at the end.

Restaurants wouldn't need as many waiters because there wouldn't be so much busywork running back and forth to the POS machine, hand-keying data and re-printing it. Customers would be happier because the waiter couldn't misunderstand their order, and they wouldn't have to wait for all that check processing gymnastics.

In fact, this is pretty much how my local pizza delivery joint works. They have a web site that knows my credit card info, my address, and even lets me save my favorite orders. If they can do this for delivery, why couldn't they do it when I'm sitting in the restaurant?

The Android Payment Extension is nice. But I'd love to see Google get aggressive with restaurant-specific POS processing.