OT: Restaurant menu ordering

[Tim Streater]

We visited Leeds Castle today and had some scoff in their restaurant. To "protect" their staff, they expect you to scan a QR code on their menu and then order online at menus.preoday.com. I tried this twice. Getting the items into the basket was tedious but relatively straightforward. Checking out, however, was not.

First it expects you to either have, or create, an account. Why they think I should want an account is beyond me. And why they think I would want to give them my email and phone is also beyond me. But, I tried entering these as requested along with a password - but then found that tapping on Sign In didn't, in fact, sign me in. So I tapped Done which erased everything I had done uo to that point.

So I gave up and insisted to the waitress that I wasn't going to use it, whereupon she took the order which took less than 30 secs.

Anyone any experience of this or any idea what the point of it all it

[Chris Bacon]

I imagine you ordered spam. WTF is it these days. Disgusting.

[Scott]

Well, Mr Bacon ....

[Tim Streater]

What, like your post you mean?

[Dave Plowman (News]

Things like church services (I'm told) require a list of those attending and contact details to be kept for a time afterwards. So they can be traced if needed. I'd have thought the same might apply to eating a meal indoors?

[williamwright]

I'm well known round here as an old fart, and the pubs know that I won't have anything to do with bar codes etc, so they just serve me.

Bill

[alan_m]

Quite easy to trace Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck!

[Martin Brown]

This is actually non-contact food ordering scheme to protect their staff from the punters and the punters from their staff. Mostly the former. Many hospitality venues are doing something similar with menus on apps or websites with various levels of sophistication (or not).

It is typically reactionary types that *demand* a personal service and drag the poor waitress to their table so they can breath on them.

[JohnP]

williamwright [e-mail] wrote in news:igr9vrFp92hU8 @mid.individual.net:

A bit surprised that you take out your frustration on the poor staff. They didn't design and implement the system. You are intellegent enought to do it, so why don't you FIFO? You could always sit out the current situation and return when things are back to normal.

[Tim Lamb]

Me too! I don't carry an intelligent phone but plan not to use restaurants/pubs until covid is out of the way.

[nightjar]

They did last time I ate in a cafe and that was before the second wave hit.

[Tim Streater]

I wouldn't have minded so much if the system actually *worked*. This is the second time this has happened to us.

a) most websites that you can buy from allow a guest checkout. That means that for sites you know you are unlikely to be buying from again it's possible to make a purchase, but you won't be able to see previous purchases.

b) You can't create an account without giving them information that, as far as I'm concerned, a restaurant doesn't need to know (I'd already done the venue checkin with the NHS app).

c) I "created an account" (as in, entering details requested), but there was no apparent button to then regsiter it so you could proceed to checkout.

d) Even if I'd arrived at checkout, oddly my phone doesn't have the ability to read a credit card, so I'd be typing in all the card details, a slow process.

e) Then they have a Done button at the top of the screen. Pressing this because you can't see any other way to proceed, erases everything you've done so far.

f) All in all, it was the shittiest piece of UI I've seen in a coon's age (or since I last used Win10, at any rate).

If they'd said, here's this iPad (much larger screen), use it to order and tap there with your card to pay, it would have been much more inviting.

[nightjar]

Even before the pandemic, some places were using order at table systems. It is claimed to speed up service by not requiring staff to wait at a table while the customers decide what to order. It also allows customers to pay from the table and leave when it suits them. I expect that the pandemic has resulted in a number of similar, but probably less well tested, applications being put onto the market.

[Clive Page]

I think that's a bit unfair. I have encountered these order-by-app systems a few times since the pandemic started, and the implementations seem to be uniformaly user-hostile. They only work if you have a fairly modern modern mobile phone and a QR-reading app installed (I do) and 4g data (which I turn on only when necessary) and a screen that is visible in bright sunshine (just). Then one has to go through so many unnecessary steps like setting up an account with a password and giving them lots of unnecessary personal information - why stop at date of birth when I can still remember my grandmother's maiden name?

In all cases that I've tried this, the system took at least 10 minutes longer than it should have done. I can see it protects their staff somewhat (but they still have to visit the table eventually to server the food and drinks). The result is that when we came across a pub last month that looked appealing with a riverside view, but saw that ordering was by app only, we simply walked away, still thirsty.

I've seen some reports recently that pubs and restaurants aren't as overwhelmed with customers as they expected - could this be that others are put off by the unnecessary use of apps with a terrible user interface?

[charles]

Weatherspoons have been using it for ages.

[Max Demian]

Do they have to list their recent sins?

[Bob Eager]

Indeed. And there are the QR codes they want you to scan when entering a pub, etc.

The problem with those is that there's no scan for when you leave; it times out when you scan somewhere else, or at midnight. So if you go for lunch, then go hone, you're marked as in the pub for many hours. And will get flagged as a contact with someone who turned up at 10 p.m.

I solved that by getting my own QR code, for use at home. When I get back in, I scan that.

[nightjar]

On 22/05/2021 10:23, Clive Page wrote: ...

Delivery by drone comes next :-)

[Dave Plowman (News]

Good to know you see the point in contact tracing.

[alan_m]

Get real, the government have spent millions on something that has never worked.I assume that you have the smart phone app that was going to solve all the tracing problems - and are using it?

If the authorities had been serious about tracing we would have had to sign in to every supermarket and shop and when using public transport etc.

I also assume, even with vaccinations, you are testing yourself twice a week as recommended.