The case for restaurants

One of the most cited usage examples is Pearl, a restaurant in Melbourne, Australia. In June 2010, The Australian newspaper interviewed the manager, Chris Lucas, who is using the iPad to provide diners with detailed information of the menu, the wine list, food ingredients and their producers. He says “I think a lot of traditional restaurant situations can be very intimidating. This is a way to liberate the consumer."

In Sri Lanka, the owner of Nihonbashi Japanese Restaurants, Dharshan Munidasa, explains in an interview with the Sri Lankan Daily Mirror “describing an original dish without a picture is tough and hard copies are time consuming and expensive”. He is using the iPad to show customers what the dish is like. Much like Sharp’s proof-of-concept iPad application which replaces the laminated sushi menus typically found in Japanese izakayas. The demo video is on Youtube.

Various restaurants have replaced their wine lists with an iPad-based version. South Gate, a  New York City restaurant launched custom design iPad wine tablets. The Wine Spectator details some of these restaurant initiatives and interviews Johnson Chan who remarks “for a large wine list, it offers the convenience of [being light-weight], as well as selection by price range, vintage, size, year, grape variety”.

While establishments like Das Brechts in Berlin simply use the iPad to replace complementary newspapers or magazines for in-restaurant reading, others are using it as a point of sales device to process credit card payments after customers have used the iPad to place orders.

A Lecere demo video shows how they envisage the iPad as the basis of a restaurant management system. Menupad offers to customise applications for restaurants to allow patrons to use the iPad “to call the waiter or place an order with one touch”.

Craig Simpson of Global Mundo Tapas in the Rydges Hotel in Sydney, Australia demonstrates the customer user experience of ordering via the iPad. Another video demo is here. Simpson emphasizes that the iPad is “one of the points of difference for our restaurant”. It is an element of this restaurant’s brand.

From the point of view of a restaurant manager, the iPad gives establishments the flexibility of changing the menu and wine list on the fly according to stock levels. It empowers the customer to make informed decisions and showcases dishes and beverages. As Craig Simpson notes “We have something that presents really well, sells our food really well and is absolutely dynamic”. As part of the restaurant management workflow, the iPad is touted by vendors as saving time and personnel.

Just how the iPad affects the relationship between restaurateur and diner varies depending on the use case. Dharshan Munidasa is clear: “no, you cannot order from the ipad”, possibly fearing an erosion of this relationship. As Delicias general manager and sommelier, Gino Campell, tells Wine Spectator “a lot of guests are regulars and prefer to talk to me. They prefer to have interaction with a human."

What do customers think?

Gil Fewster is adamant that “screens have an inherently detrimental effect on interaction between people.” A place made for social interaction should not be atomised by single user devices.

On his weblog “Shanghaied”, Marc van der Chijs recounts his dining experience at the Shanghai based Satsuichimae restaurant. His overall reaction is enthusiasm over the possibilities of extending the usability of the iPad restaurant applications. He proposes ideas such as “let clients log in with Facebook Connect, Twitter or a Chinese non-blocked service, so they can see what they ordered last time. Show stats of the most popular food today, this week and this month, and give people the chance to log in at home to leave a review that appears in the iPad app.”

Amy Wisniewski writes for Chow about her experience perusing iPad wine lists at the Barbacco, a San Francisco restaurant. She discovers the awkwardness of leaving it to the customer to decide where and how to place the iPad on the confined space of a small table, and mentions the fear of breakage.

Usage issues need to be addressed. Waiters are not only detracted from service time by having to explain an application‘s use to diners, but they must also wipe the iPad display of fingerprints after each use, for aesthetic and hygienic reasons. How are special customer requests dealt with such as “I'd like a martini, but dry, with 4 olives, shaken, and can I have Xellent vodka?” Chompstack has compiled a list of additional challenges.

Clearly the restaurants mentioned above are pioneers. The functionality of the demoed iPad applications is rudimentary and the user interface design lacks sleekness and polish.

The role of iPad in the relationship between restaurateur and customer already differs widely. The potential for expanding application functionality is considerable. Certainly, restaurants are another area where power is devolving away from the sommelier or chef to the user. I, for one, welcome our new overlords.