Speaking only for myself as a consumer, I'm not just buying fewer lattes, I'm actively looking for businesses that can make the ordering process familiar and convenient. I don't want to have to have my phone on me, or to pull it out, scan a QR code, read a digital menu. Just let me walk up to the counter, read a physical menu, place my order with a human being and get out of there.
There are a FEW situations where mobile ordering and such is better. When there is a MASSIVE line at the counter for example. Mobile ordering can skip waiting in line and let you know when your order is ready to go pick up. In that situation, it makes sense.
But most restaurants, at least where I live (in a medium sized city), don't come close to having that issue.
Yet trends are trends and we love solving things with the wrong tools just because something is popular somewhere, so businesses assume consumers will enjoy it everywhere and it will be the "next big thing." 90% of the time, it's not.
>Just let me walk up to the counter, read a physical menu, place my order with a human being and get out of there.
Seriously. Seems like so many physical businesses are going fully digital with little reason to do so. Following a trend, I guess. But the utility of interacting with a human versus navigating an app (of which it seems every restaurant or fast-casual-takeout has their own) is just so much higher. The cost to build and maintain that app too eats into the establishment's costs, which in turn mean the end consumer's costs are higher. I'm already paying high prices as-is, and my experience isn't drastically better doing everything digitally.
As you said, maybe there's a scale at which digital processes are indeed faster and less cumbersome (like a McDonald's level operation), and offers higher marginal utility, but most places I order from aren't at that scale. Few are.
In many areas, there's a huge reason -- the availability of labor has decreased, so cost of labor has skyrocketed, along with inflation generally that can't always be passed on to customers.
Restaurants that used to be able to afford 2 servers can now only afford 1, so customers have to order digitally because otherwise it's too many tables for 1 server otherwise.
You don't have to be McDonald's scale. I'm talking about independent small restaurants.
(I agree it sucks for the customer -- I'm just saying restaurants are being forced into this. They're not doing it for fun.)
I prefer ordering via software and busing myself. Save a bunch of money not feeling like I should tip and the order is more likely to be accurate. And I save time not having to wait for waiters.
Yeah. I feel like any time this comes up on HN, the comments heavily skew towards moving _away_ from integrating technology into the dining process. I'm all for it. I don't want to do the whole song-and-dance of chatting with a server, I don't want to deal with them coming to the table mid-bite to ask if everything is OK. Just let me order via a QR code and table number. Hell, I'll even clean the table when I'm done.
This obviously does not apply to fine dining, only really fast casual/fast food.
I don't mind restaurants that have tablets on the table in place of paper menus. There is a sushi restaurant in my city that does this and I love it. This avoids the same problems you're talking about, with servers coming to check on you etc.
Where I have an issue is when the restaurants expects me to have my own device, to install their app, or even just jump through hoops (scanning a QR code) etc.
I'm not attached to my cell phone. I often like to leave it at home. And I'm sure as hell not going to install a restaurant's app on my device.
Another thing the tablet does better is just better UX. My phone screen is tiny and my old man eyes are poor. A tablet is often much easier to read and use.
I've only seen QR code -> PDF menu (and one where it was QR code -> web interface to order food/drinks). I agree with you re: app, but I think it's completely reasonable in 2023 to expect the general public to carry their mobile phones around with them.
> I think it's completely reasonable in 2023 to expect the general public to carry their mobile phones around with them.
I have to respectfully disagree with you on that one. Phones get lost, stolen, damaged, compromised, forgotten and batteries die or get low enough to not want to drain what's left reading a menu when paper menus have existed for trillions of years and didn't need fixing.
Many families also have a "no devices at the dinner table" policy and so it's annoying for the restaurant to undermine that.
So no. I don't think it's reasonable to expect me to use MY phone when I'm in person at your establishment.
The market will ultimately decide, however. I know I'm the grumpy old guy that hates tech despite being a software engineer.
I suspect you might be in the minority, unless the staff is outright atrocious. I love interacting with other humans. Working remote so much face to face interactions are a positive for me. I don't want to spend my entire day pushing and clicking buttons then my "break" from that is pushing and clicking different buttons.
I think as far as tipping goes Software vendors are working overtime with business owners that customer tip nonetheless even if there is no human in sight in whole establishment. Maybe a poor robot needs screws tightened, or joints lubricated with money in tip jar by generous patrons like you.
My comment re: tipping really was just further emphasizing the "forced pleasantries" of modern dining. I know this is a relatively bitter/cynical take, but at the end of the day, I'm there to get food, the workers are there to work and get money. I'm not trying to be someone's friend while they're at work.
I brought up the scale, to be fair, because my wife and I have a Disney World vacation booked in a couple of months and for quick service restaurants at the parks it looks like mobile ordering will be a life saver. But we're talking a theme park with enormous crowds and long lines. It's not your typical environment.
I know there are some busy restaurants in major urban areas that get long lines out the door, particularly at peak times of day ... but how typical is this for most restaurants? Not very I suspect.
> Just let me walk up to the counter, read a physical menu, place my order with a human being and get out of there.
The problem is, as wages and COL go up, this gets harder and harder to do. Humans are expensive, and as they keep getting more expensive, it stops making economic sense to use them for low-margin goods and services like lattes. Notice how we don't have elevator operators, pump station attendants, etc. anymore, because eventually it became uneconomic to do that with people instead of making the customer do it themselves.
The future for most retail and food service businesses is fewer people and more automation (e.g. ordering at your table via an app and the server only comes by to bring your food); it can't really be any other way unless you want your food subject to Baumol cost disease.
Sure. But according to the article the cost of the tech is not worth it for the businesses and so they're cutting those expenses. Reducing labour costs only helps business when customer demand either remains constant or doesn't dip enough to offset the savings.
And customer demand is driven, in part, by demographics. I have a feeling that apps will become more popular over time, not only due to cost savings (assuming this will be true) but also because the target demographic will be more accustomed to using their phones for absolutely everything. I completely recognize that I'm the middle-aged equivalent of the 80 year-old who still pays for groceries with a personal cheque.
At some point you run out of jobs to replace, while just making your product less appealing. The entire world can't be employed by tech, and the answer isn't cut out workers - it's stop making things expensive. If technology drives efficiency, why do prices constantly rise instead of fall?
> If technology drives efficiency, why do prices constantly rise instead of fall?
This is the Baumol's cost disease I was talking about: technology only drives efficiency in some sectors, but in every sector it doesn't touch (mostly because human availability is the bottleneck), prices have to rise to match the equivalent wage workers could be getting at the other places with more efficiency.
The only reason it is like this is capitalism. Success in this system demands constant growth to define success, and eventually cutting down on human labour is one of the only ways to grow profit.
Gas stations could absolutely afford to pay someone to pump the gas if they wanted, but it would mean slightly less profits for shareholders. Its the same as what is happening at supermarkets with self serve checkouts at the moment.
Dont defend this practise with arguements of it being unecononic, its purely about more profit.
I absolutely prefer online ordering. I'll use the app to order even if I'm standing in the restaurant and there is a human and no line.
Telling a human what I want means that person has to hear me, understand me, and then press the right buttons on the register (which in a lot of cases is literally the same buttons I press in the app).
All that does is introduce another place for error. My doing it myself I can confirm that my order is exactly correct.
My issue with online ordering is that I will be missing higher degree of customizability, options and allergies for some case. Online ordering does not cover edge cases. If I like the ingredients that comes with the food, then online ordering is awesome. If I want to further customize it, I am limited to online ordering offerings (in some case, I barely could).
I found in-person ordering is reliable enough that they know what I am asking for and could try to swap out a different menu to get me a cheaper price for the same quality. In online ordering, it didn't have an ability to do that. If I order a cheeseburger and remove the cheese, it is just a hamburger. In-person ordering knows that and would change it hamburger, the online ordering does not and keep it as cheeseburger minus the cheese while keeping it as cheeseburger price.
> In-person ordering knows that and would change it hamburger, the online ordering does not and keep it as cheeseburger minus the cheese while keeping it as cheeseburger price.
Maybe your experience was different but I've found the opposite. I usually had to tell them "actually it's cheaper if you ring it up this other way". The big one was nuggets at McDonalds. I wanted 40 nuggets once (for a group!) and they had a deal on the 10 packs, so it was cheaper to order four 10 packs than two 20s. They kept insisting that two 20s had to be cheaper. I had to twist their arm to ring it up as four 10s and even after that they still didn't understand why it was cheaper.
> My issue with online ordering is that I will be missing higher degree of customizability
At most places with app based ordering, I've lately found that even in person they can't do the customizations anymore because they are using the same app I am but on an iPad in front of themselves.
I would if they let me! The main advantage to going out is that someone else has done the prep (buying, storing, chopping, slicing, etc) and someone else is cleaning up. I actually like the cooking part, but you can't do it without the other parts.
The payment system that adds a tip line for every transaction is another big one. It feels so passive aggressive when a staff member stands there and watches me fret over what to tip when I'm just buying a bottled drink. And it's not even that person's fault.
The thing I miss the most about Iceland (and Europe) having returned to the US is how utterly easy it was to buy anything, at the price advertised, and use a phone/watch/card as the payment method without the checkout person being phased by it.
I utterly despite tipping culture. It's gotten even worse since I returned. Now not only are tips expected we have crap like service fees and "cost of living adjustments" as line items on checks that are trying to put even more responsibility on the customer to pay for employee benefits.
One thing I’ve noticed over the last few years: none of Michelin-star, tasting menu, $200 and up per plate restaurants have QR code menus. And regardless of personal taste or any kind of objective assessment of pros and cons of digital menus, whatever upscale space converges on, becomes the status symbol. So digital menus are bound to become a symbol of cheap places, if they haven’t already.
I hate QR code menus so much! It's not just the fact that staring at my phone is the last thing I want to be doing when I'm out having a nice dinner, but trying to see what the restaurant offers through a tiny little screen is also much worse than reading a proper menu. Instead of just looking at what's available, it becomes a whole fiddly process: pinching to zoom, panning around, zooming back out, scrolling around, zooming in again - like trying to read a book through a microscope. Just annoying.
QR code menus are just annoying. Scrolling is significantly worse than pages, because at least with pages you can have a page bookmarked with your finger and flip back scan quickly if you saw something you liked. And trying to do a shared order for a table on a phone sucks.
Does this sort of "status symbol" thing really matter to the average restaurant goer though?
I've never cared about it, with my only concern being if the place has something I'd be interested in eating and if it seems sanitary. Only reason I don't go to supercheap fast food places often is that their options for vegetarians tend to be pretty limited (particularly since I'm also not a big fan of vegan "meat", I want vegetarian food that's good through being vegetarian rather than despite it).
> none of Michelin-star, tasting menu, $200 and up per plate restaurants have QR code menus
Waiters and Bussing staff cost money, and are much more expensive now. Margins and salaries are high enough in $$$$ restaurants that they can afford staff.
In all honesty, I don't really remember ever having concierge waiter service at restaurants as a kid in the Bay Area, but then again we never really went to white people restaurants.
You're discounting the time you spend waiting for your order to be prepared. I now pretty much exclusively get lunch at places that have online ordering, because I can order before I leave the house and it's ready when I get there.
Same here. I live by a coffee shop with usually long lines and inattentive staff. But they take mobile orders so I just give them a few minutes buffer after they say it’ll be ready, then head over and it’s waiting for me.
It saves me like 20m which is the difference between that coffee being worth it or not.
Restaurants prefer QR codes because they're less work for servers (either one or two fewer trips, depending) they can change menus daily or even hourly, and table ordering makes everything super-smooth.
Most people do have their phones on them all the time now.
Having said - onboarding for these services could be so much easier. That's the part that doesn't work for me - sitting down, wanting food, and having to fill in a long form to register, usually for no good reason.
You could just as easily order, leave the app open, and get updates by table number with none of that.
Back in September I went out to get a haircut. My usual barber was swamped with kids due to back-to-school so I decided to try out a different newer place that was just up the block. They advertise that they offer online appointments and walk-ins, and I see a LCD screen by the cash register announcing that the walk-in wait was only 5 minutes so I figure why not. I sit down and a minute or two later a employee ask:
'Hi, can you tell me what email address you check in with online'
I respond: 'I didn't check in online, it says you take walk-ins on your sign.'
She responds: 'Yes, no problem, can I have your email address'
I say: 'No, I just what a haircut, why do you need my email address'
To make the rest of the story short I didn't want to give these strangers any information in order to get a simple haircut, told them this was all weird, and left. The next day I was able to get my haircut at my usual barber who has only ever wanted to know a name to address me as and whatever information I offer up in the usual getting your haircut small talk.
I have nothing against online appointments and the need to use a email address to create one. My issue was that I was there in person cash in hand and they seemed to have no way to proceed with doing business with me without a email address, which seems crazy to me when all I wanted was my hair cut.
Can we safely assume that the goal is always to benefit the consumer. Perhaps there is a pitch to merchants, maybe they get some benefits, but as for consumers, many so-called "tech" companies would have every consumer using a computer for anything and everything in the name of "convenience" or some speculation like "this is the future". The so-called "tech" companies are the ones who stand to benefit. These companies may have a blindspot for conflicts of interest. Their interests do not always align with the interests of consumers. They certainly have a blindness toward the fact that computers are not always essential in every life situation.
I'm rooting for people like you to stick around and to be vocal about this. Not because I agree; in fact I couldn't disagree more. Having to deal with a person is annoying, error prone, and takes extra time. The electronic ordering systems are substantially faster to order, I can avoid the line, and all of the options available to me are quickly discoverable.
The best part is that most people tend to go towards the human ordering line if it is available so I can quickly get my stuff and leave in a fraction of the time. I don't understand why people wouldn't do the same, but until they catch on I am benefitting immensely.
> Just let me walk up to the counter, read a physical menu, place my order with a human being and get out of there.
Reminds me went to Quest yesterday to get my blood drawn. Tech told me I had to sign in at the kiosk. So I did. And then it wanted to scan my drivers license. Nope. A few minutes later an old man hobbled in. Directed to the kiosk he said he didn't have his reading glasses. So another tech had to stand there and ask him for the information and enter it for him.
Maybe I'm old but it feels like the enshitification is moving faster and faster.
Quest has a horrible billing process. Kafka would be proud.
Quest sent me a $2000 bill. My insurance EOB (explanation of benefits) stated the negotiated price was like $350. I emailed Quest with the EOB attached. Never got a response. I emailed the next week. Radio silence. I called Quest, waited on hold for half an hour, was told I was being transferred to the "billing department" but was hung up on.
The next month I got another bill in the incorrect amount. I called and waited on hold only to be transferred to the "billing department." I spoke with the second person there who transferred me to a third person who hung up on me. After calling in a few more times, being transferred around numerous times, and being hung up on 80% of the time, I was finally told to ignore the bill and email in the EOB and it would be corrected.
A few months later another bill for too much arrives. This time threatening eventual debt collection. When another bill arrives as a "final warning" before debt collection actions I am in the midst of buying a house. Having my credit score dive 100 points would be a big problem. I call in, select make a payment and am immediately and conveniently routed to a menu where I pay off a credit card. I stupidly assume the Quest balance would soon be rectified and I would receive a refund.
Later that month I check in on the website. There is no sign of a refund. I go through the phone gauntlet again and the under-trained support people say they did not receive the EOB even though this is the third time I've sent it. I call my health insurer and they conference call Quest. Health insurance Co faxes the EOB to Quest.
I still have not received the refund a few weeks later. I burn an hour of time to reach the "billing department." Quest says they received the EOB, but their records show insurance never paid blocking the refund. I start another conference call. Quest had filed a duplicate claim, causing rightful initial claim denial, and while they happily took payment from both me and insurance in the re-filed claim, the initial claim denial triggered a hold on any refund. A refund is promised within 4-7 weeks.
4-7 weeks later there is no refund. I burn more time to reach a "billing department" "supervisor" who apparently works in an entirely different company. They say there's still a hold on the refund due to the claim denial. They say a refund should be out in 4-7 weeks. I am now well past the 60 day window to file a chargeback, as my credit card company tells me.
Around a year into this saga I filed a small claims lawsuit. The next week I received a check and cancelled the suit.
I forgot to add, when I walked in there was just two phlebotomists and no one else. And when the old guy walked in there was just the four of us. So it was obvious quest had a rule that customers were supposed to use the kiosk no exceptions. The whole experience smells of management desperation.
> Nick Martin cited higher borrowing costs as a main reason that Joe Coffee has reduced the number of software products it buys. The company now has roughly six software subscriptions, down from 12 to 15, accounting for 3% to 5% of operating expenses, down from around 8%, he said.
> Decisions on what to get rid of are based on whether a product is a “nice to have” or is essential to business operations. “Can we get away with just doing this in a spreadsheet?” he said.
12–15 is a lot of software subscriptions. I think you'll expect to see more consolidation of software products, if they're all so specific to the restaurant space. Especially with customers just wanting better integration and less complexity.
> “Can we get away with just doing this in a spreadsheet?” he said.
Realistically you can do pretty much everything a startup or small business needs in a spreadsheet. Buying specialized software at that scale is a nice to have.
Well popular excuse we have when stopping to get coffee at a shop/drivethru is that we are running late. Just implying no time to make coffee/breakfast at home.
> It is just latte.
Maybe you deserve Ferrari. However for lot of us, "deserve" is used for innumerable trivial/unnecessary things in life.
I read this as "vitamins vs painkiller" analogy. People forget to take their vitamins all the time, and if it's expensive vs the perceived (sometimes vague) ROI, then it's going to be the first to be cut. Versus... people do NOT forget to take their painkillers and nobody is looking too hard at how much ibuprofen costs (beyond comparing costs... they're gonna buy it regardless).
Let's also keep in mind that vitamins as supplement pills are mostly useless, we all mostly know this, yet we all mostly buy them anyway. Maybe this idea is already wrapped up in your "perceived ROI" comment...
Technically true, but spreadsheets are also very easy to accidentally mess up.
Yesterday I discovered my personal finances spreadsheet was giving me a total that was wrong by about 10% because I'd forgotten to update which fields it was summing over. Nothing relied on this sum so no harm done this time, but oh boy do I have slightly[0] more sympathy for the news stories where billionaires accidentally loose track of one hundred million.
Get proper accountancy software if it's important; a spreadsheet will lead to tears.
[0] but only when they're being asked about some asset by a journalist or on twitter etc. and not when they make this mistake on taxes, because they should be getting professional help with taxes well before becoming a billionaire.
True. I guess question here would be : Should a reasonably priced one time license cover this requirement for accounting software or a perennial subscription is only way to go
HR, payroll, time tracking, POS, online ordering, review alerting, online advertising, social media marketing, email marketing, integration services, financial reporting, website, email, rewards management.
And that's for a business that mostly operates offline. It's really easy for these things add up quickly and without you realizing it.
This is why I always object when someone points out that $50/user/mo is a tiny percentage compared to what you're paying for the employee. It's not $50/user/mo, it's typically ($50 * 10-20)/user/mo.
Turns out, consumers aren't the only ones fed up with having needless subscriptions shoved down their throats. In infinite money covid land, it wasn't that much of a problem for businesses, but like so many other things, now that rates are up small and medium businesses are questioning whether these things are providing that monthly value.
I sometimes have a dream where I escape software and end up running the local donut shop down the street. In this dream, I always end up writing some GNU donut shop software though :)
I find this to be quite common. Nearly everyone I know in software dreams of not doing it anymore, and everyone not in software dreams of doing it lol.
I really think there is a market for niche software solutions, where a small shop can evolve with the business and keep growing with customers.
Some products seem enticing at first, when let's say a user is only $20 a month, but it quickly adds up and that does not account for migrations and retraining employees which often is an extreme pain point.
I write/manage a large project and we are very careful about any large changes because it is a pain to retrain non-technical employees.
I know an older guy, who has been working with multiple similar businesses and tailoring AS400(created circa 1986) to them. He made a business around it and it has been chugging along for few decades now.
Extreme example - I’m just a guy with an Airbnb as a side hustle. (Barely even a real business!) I’m pretty thoughtful about taking on new software subscriptions, but I currently pay for:
- Google/Nest video storage - $18/mo (might be a little off there)
…and I’m probably forgetting something. I scrutinize this list regularly and there’s nothing I’d get rid of. These are also purely software subscriptions - not including things like cable/internet, recurring maintenance, insurance, etc. There’s also a long list of products I probably could add to the mix to help manage the house and the business that is a short term rental.
I’m pretty sure this pattern exists in every corner of the market across industries and across business sizes.
Anecdotal evidence of macro trends aside, it isn't clear to me what value Joe Coffee provides. It seems like they are a SaaS reseller for a particular vertical (coffee shops), and have some amount of custom software. My local, Barrett's Coffee in Austin (they are excellent, btw), seems to use Shopify on their website, and I suspect that the iPad-like PoS system in the shop is backed by the same inventory and sales management system. I don't really see the value in using a middle-man that's specific to coffee when it seems like a reasonably smart owner plus a general sales platform should do the trick.
I run an online retail business from home as the only employee. My software costs:
* Excel (accounting)
* Sellbrite (inventory and listing) - subscription
* ShipStation (shipping) - subscription. However, this can largely be replaced by
* Veeqo (also shipping) - free
Sellbrite, ShipStation, and Veeqo work well enough, but they don't handle the recording of each order's financials, which I do in Excel. If there is a one-stop solution that can grab orders' revenue, sales tax, and fees from Amazon, Walmart, and eBay in this way, I'd like to hear about it.
Software costs can really add up for a small business. I run a relatively small business -- mostly online -- and between 3 main services, the software (and hosting) adds up to around $15k US per year, which is not insignificant. And that's with hosting our own email server, which otherwise would cost us another $15k or so per year to go with an established ESP.
Small business, a legal designation in the US, can be surprisingly big: Depending on industry, you can have up to 1,500 employees, or $50mm in revenue, and still be considered a small business by the federal government.
We do a lot of opt-in email for the newsletters we run -- most software (such as MailChimp) that provides the services we need is very expensive, especially if you have more than 100k subscribers. Hence, hosting the email ourselves saves a siginificant amount of money, though at the risk of not being particularly user friendly and also requiring expertise in maintaining the server and email deliverability.
I wonder if increasing percentage of tip, aggressively seeking tip from reluctant shoppers will help cover loses due to less footfalls in coffee shops and the likes.
Yeah, a voice command on payment terminal, that shouts loudly at niggardly tippers "Hey there! looky look we have cheapskate award winner for today" will certainly help.
Props for use of the word niggardly, but I don't think that would work. I certainly would never again to to a business where that happened, even if it was someone else that it happened to.
Well, if 5% of places have this software one can avoid, if > 50% have this it will be normalized then. Just like 20% tipping is normal without any expectation beyond a plate of food placed on your table and waiter never returns except to bring in check.
There are a FEW situations where mobile ordering and such is better. When there is a MASSIVE line at the counter for example. Mobile ordering can skip waiting in line and let you know when your order is ready to go pick up. In that situation, it makes sense.
But most restaurants, at least where I live (in a medium sized city), don't come close to having that issue.
Yet trends are trends and we love solving things with the wrong tools just because something is popular somewhere, so businesses assume consumers will enjoy it everywhere and it will be the "next big thing." 90% of the time, it's not.