“Waiter, my tab, please!”

Is there a future for iRestaurants?

 

About this post:

The bill, menu, wine list, valet…all at your fingertips on a tablet. Deloitte Canada’s Duncan Stewart, director of research in Technology, media & telecommunications and co-author of Deloitte’s TMT Predictions, discusses the multiple uses and benefits of tablets in the restaurant industry. Duncan predicts that by 2014, over 30% of North American full service restaurants will be tablet-only restaurants. This comes from the fact that the use of tablets not only adds value to the consumer experience, but it also allows restaurant owners to better track and monitor the performance of their establishments, from anywhere and at any time. With emerging benefits of tablets in all aspects of life, where do you think they’ll turn up next? ... >> More

About the author:

Director, Deloitte Canada Research Technology, Media & Telecommunications, Life Sciences and GreenTech
Duncan Stewart is considered to have the best job at Deloitte, as he gets to travel so much. But, can he go the distance? Each year, that marathon man travels to 11 Canadian cities to present Deloitte’s TMT Predictions. After so many years of TMT road shows, Duncan Stewart... >> More

That used to be a call for the bill in a restaurant, but these days it could be for the bill, the menu, the wine list, the valet…pretty much anything. Because now the “tab” is a tablet.

Not only are customers using tablets in place of printed menus, but the whole restaurant infrastructure is being replaced. The point-of-sale system, the ordering, even inventory can be put on tablets.

As this story shows, one New York restaurant doesn’t just have a token tablet or two, they’ve gone “all tablet, all the time”.

What are the benefits? Well, it differentiates the restaurant, it looks cool, it wasn’t that expensive, customers like it…wow. Could it get any better? Actually, yes. Here’s the killer quote as far as I’m concerned: “The owners—Gonella, Luis Miguel Amutio, and Alex Gonzalez—can all monitor the entire restaurant from anywhere in the world from an iPhone and receive real-time data about the restaurant’s performance. Every transaction is immediately tabulated and analyzed”.

That transparency is a huge deal in the food service business, where margins are so small that owners need to be on top of everything.

I’ll go on record as predicting that more than 30% of North American full service restaurants will be tab-only by 2014. Am I giving you guys a sneak peek of a potential #TMTPred2012?

What do you think? Are tablets in restaurants a fad…or the wave of the future?

Duncan.

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