Most people love to skip cooking at home and prefer eating out, not just for good food but also for the convenience of being served at the table. It's a great feeling to just order what you want to eat from a string of options and enjoy it leisurely without any worry of serving and cleaning up after. But, there are times when we may not find the same comfort of eating at a restaurant that we expected. On a busy day, you may have to wait for the staff to attend your call if you need a refill or order more. It can be daunting to take a break from your meal and find no waiter around to take your request.
A new study might just solve this problem by introducing a new technology to improve restaurant services. It suggests installation of tabletop device that can bring better eating experience at restaurants and increase their revenues. The findings were published in the journal Management Science.
Tom Fangyun Tan, Associate Professor at Southern Methodist University in the US said, "We estimate one per cent sales lift per check which translates into $2 million extra sales or $1 million profit per month in the short-run, and that's a conservative estimate."
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Tabletop technology is meant to assist waiters of restaurants
The team asserted that this technology should be developed to help restaurant staff and not replace them. Customers can use these tabletops to look at menu items, place their orders and re-orders, play games or read news while waiting for the foods and also pay their bill.
"A good, attentive waiter already does what the tabletop device does...a less attentive or forgetful waiter does not, but relies more on the device, which makes up for the lacking ability resulting in faster service," Tan added.
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For the research, the team collected data from 2.6 million transactions between the years 2012 and 2014 from a US-based restaurant chain that owns 66 eateries. The results framed the team's recommendation that restaurants should revamp their operations model and imbibe the beneficial tabletop technology to offer better customer satisfaction.