Applebees and Chili's replacing waiters with Tablet PCs

[jimmy olsen]

I guess Judge Dredd really is an accurate forecast of our future. Hello 80% unemployment!

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/12/03/tablets_at_restaurants_applebee_s_chili_s_race_to_eliminate_human_interaction.html

Of Course Applebee's Is Going to Replace Waiters With Tablets

By Will Oremus

Score one for the machines. On Tuesday, Applebee's announced plans to install a tablet at every table in its 1,860 restaurants across the United States. Customers will be able to use the devices to order food, pay the bill, and ignore their dining companions by playing video games.

Chili's unveiled basically the same plan three months ago. But that doesn't mean Applebee's hasn't been plotting this move for years. In fact, Applebee's was the name that came up when my former Slate colleague Annie Lowrey first wrote about the tablets-for-restaurants idea in April 2011. Her story focused on Palo Alto-based startup E La Carte, which is in fact Applebee's partner on the just-announced deal. Chili's opted for a rival vendor, Ziosk. Applebee's went light on details in announcing the terms of its deal, but here's how the economics of the proposition looked when Lowrey wrote about it in 2011:

    The Presto [E La Carte's tablet] aspires to be the food-services version of the airline check-in kiosk or the ATM or the self-checkout at your local pharmacy. It makes a person's job a computer's job, and that cuts costs. Each console goes for $100 per month. If a restaurant serves meals eight hours a day, seven days a week, it works out to 42 cents per hour per table—making the Presto cheaper than even the very cheapest waiter. Moreover, no manager needs to train it, replace it if it quits, or offer it sick days. And it doesn't forget to take off the cheese, walk off for 20 minutes, or accidentally offend with small talk, either.

The restaurants deny that the tablets represent an attempt to replace human employees with computers. Applebee's is saying that it won't change its staffing levels when the devices come online next year. And Chili's is optimistic that the tablets will pay for themselves by bringing in extra revenue from impulse orders and at-the-table gaming. Not only will you not have to talk to a waiter when you want to order something, you won't have to talk to your kids, either!

Then again, of course these businesses are saying they won't use the tablets to replace employees. Announcing layoffs along with the tablet move would be begging for a backlash. The fact is, if the tablets work, they'll make the ordering process more efficient and cut the amount of human labor that these restaurants require. At that point, do you suppose they'll keep the extra waiters around out of charity?

[Ideologue]

I hope they enjoy it when the only people who can afford to go out to eat wouldn't be caught dead at a fucking Applebee's.

[Ed Anger]

Bleh. I also despise Applebee's calling appetizers 'Apps'.

[garbon]

What sane person eats at Applebee's?

[Admiral Yi]

What sane person eats at Applebee's?

Folks in suburbs and exurbs.

I mentioned before the epiphany I had on my road trip this summer: whenever i saw one of the ubiquitous Buffalo Wild Wings commercials I wondered to myself who the hell goes to these places?  But there are thousands of identical communities across the US, next to the interstate, with a big mall and cookie-cutter subdivisions, where THERE IS NO PLACE TO GET A DRINK.  So Buffalo Wild Wings.

[garbon]

I think Applebee's is one of the worst of the lot of those chains. Actually was at one this year and don't I regret it.

I've also yet to be in a suburb that didn't have a better alternative.

[Admiral Yi]

Your idea of a suburb is Palm Springs and West Hampton.

[garbon]

What? I grew up split between Central Mass and essentially that suburb they used for exterior shots in the first few seasons of Weeds (though are house was nowhere near as polished - we weren't in a housing tract).

Besides places like Cathedral City, La Quinta and Indio aren't known for their glamour.

[Razgovory]

Republican scions of the upper class turn up their nose at middle income establishment, news at 11.

[Ideologue]

Garbon is way right (I mean way correct) about it, though.  Applebee's blows, and there are many similarly priced, superior restaurants wherever one is to be found.  Hell, you can go under its price range and find better options: Waffle House is a significantly better place to eat.

[Josephus]

Applebees is a horrible place anyways.

Still...I remember reading a book maybe 10 years ago, and in it the writer suggested that the only safe jobs in the future are service industry jobs...ie. jobs you couldn't farm out to some kid in India. Well, that theory goes out the window.

[Ed Anger]

Garbon is way right (I mean way correct) about it, though.  Applebee's blows, and there are many similarly priced, superior restaurants wherever one is to be found.  Hell, you can go under its price range and find better options: Waffle House is a significantly better place to eat.

Now wait a cotton pickin' minute. awful waffle?

Weirdo.

[Ed Anger]

I miss Sambo's. 

[Ideologue]

The only possible upside to the new automation revolution is that reshoring will happen, either before or after we establish a Permanent Democratic Hegemony in the U.S., and we move to a vast redistribution of the wealth provided by our robots.

[Josephus]

...although someone still has to bring you the food; but I guess one person can do the work of three or four.