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Tabletop tech helps diners pass, save time

Tablets are bringing technology to tabletops across the U.S. The draw: saving time. The drawback: losing the personal interaction of the dining experience.

ANNE REED
AREED@NEWS-PRESS.COM

Tired of staring at an empty pint glass? Feeling a fading interest in that gooey brownie sundae? Counting down the minutes until your server returns with your credit card as you calm fussy children?

Frustration when dining at casual restaurants usually stems from waiting. Waiting to re-order a drink, waiting to order an appetizer, or waiting for the check.

How can customers avoid the waiting, and the frustration, and how can wait staff avoid impatient customers who may leave less-than-stellar reviews (and less gratuity)?

Mickey Darling looks through the appetizers on the Ziosk tablet on his table at Chili's on Wednesday.

There’s a tablet for that.

Ziosk, a company based in Texas, was the first touchscreen tablet to appear on tables in restaurants across the U.S. Currently, there are 170,000 Ziosk tablets in over 3,000 locations, serving more than 50 million guests per month.

“Ziosk was born out of a business school project in 2005 to address guest frustration around the payment process at restaurants,” explained John Regal, CMO for Ziosk, in an email. “It often takes eight to 10 minutes to pay a check, and that can be a long and frustrating eight to 10 minutes for a guest who’s on a lunch break or trying to catch a movie after dinner.”

Kevin Jones and Renatta Mora look the tablet on their table at Chili's in Fort Myers on Wednesday. From the tablet you can order drinks and appetizers, play games and pay for your meal.

The tablet features a seven-inch  touchscreen with over 22 hours of battery life. It is Wi-Fi enabled, has a built in camera and provides secure payments with an encrypted credit card reader. Diners use the tablets to order drinks, appetizers and desserts, play games and pay their bill. From a social media aspect, diners can use Ziosk to check-in and share their restaurant experience on Facebook. The built-in camera allows them to take photos and post them to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Study: Heavier servers cause diners to order more

“Millennial families and kids in particular love the ability to play games,” Regal stated, pointing out that children often request that parents return to restaurants that have Ziosk.

One of the first restaurants to partner with Ziosk was Chili’s Grill & Bar.

“We asked ourselves, are we going to be a cutting edge leader, or wait and see,” explained Wade Allen, vice president of digital innovation and customer engagement for Chili’s. “We ultimately looked at the industry outside of casual dining and saw that there were great advantages to moving first.”

Chili’s partnered with Ziosk in September 2013, and after testing, rolled out the tablets to all restaurants in June 2014, making the chain one of the first major casual restaurants to implement and use the tabletop technology.

For Allen, the real value is in the data that the tablets provide.

“The biggest advantage and bearing of fruit that we get from those tablets is the feedback from our guests,” Allen explained.

According to Ziosk, restaurants that use the tablet technology see a 50 percent increase in completion of customer surveys compared to traditional surveys, which are printed at the bottom of receipts and direct customers to a website.

Printed survey requests have about a 1 percent completion rate. “Usually your most irritated guests will go through the (online) process or your most elated guests. Very rarely do you get that bell curve that exists,” said Allen. “With the tablet, you get more feedback from more guests and you get that bell curve.”

The tablets also save time for diners and staff. “Time is a commodity,” Allen explained. “These devices have to help the (dining) experience,” And that extends to time spent using the tablets. Chili’s has pared back on the amount of content on the devices, focusing on light ordering, entertainment, payment and the survey. “Less is always more,” said Allen. “Less content, less time.”

Locally, though, the tablets have yet to make an appearance beyond big-name franchises.

“You won’t find them in our restaurants yet,” said Mike McGuigan, an owner and partner in Ford’s Garage, The Firestone Grille, Los Cabos Cantina, The Lodge, Capone’s Coal Fired Pizza and The Boathouse Tiki Bar & Grill. “We are looking at it and looking at experimenting. It’s not the cost; it’s whether or not we want to do it.”

McGuigan sees positive aspects to using the tablets: entertainment, saving time when placing orders and paying. “Even with the most attentive server, they still aren’t going to be there when you need to leave quickly and pay immediately,” McGuigan said.

But he sees one major downside. “It takes away the direct one-on-one relationship between the server and guest.”

For Mark Blust, vice president of marketing and operations for The Prawnbroker Restaurant Group, that interaction between the guests and wait staff is an essential part of fine dining.

“Our demographic wants to be guided, to be helped through that dining experience,” Blust explained. “They like that interaction.”

Blust sees the tablets as having a place in the restaurant market, but so far has seen the tabletop tablets as a trend. “There are probably niches within our group where it could work, but as far as a broad stroke, I don’t think it is something that would fit with us.”

The restaurants within the Prawnbroker Group – University Grill, The Prawnbroker, Sanibel Grill, The Timbers and Matzaluna: The Italian Kitchen – could use tablet technology in a different form.

“I think there are applications where it can be used to enhance the fine dining experience, like a wine list or beer list,” said Blust.

Allen pointed out the same thing. “For fine dining restaurants, the form that Ziosk takes is a bit rudimentary,” Allen said, stressing that this was his personal opinion. “It’s hard plastic, it sits on the table and is a heads-up display. What I think will be a game changer will be the ability to pay electronically … what form that takes in fine dining, nobody knows yet. It could be a tablet inside a leather-bound billfold that allows them to pay, something along those lines.”

As for the loss of personal interaction brought on by the tablet use, McGuigan points out that it might not be a factor.

“This has been done and tested among the big chains, and you are finding it in more and more restaurants,” McGuigan said. “They have test marketed this and have found that the impersonal side is not much of a problem. I think we are probably going to end up testing (the tablets) and see how it goes,” said McGuigan.

As for Blust, he’s willing to sit back and see what happens. “Let the big boys play with it, vet it out, see what works and what doesn’t work,” explained Blust. “You will see it trickled down to the smaller restaurants once the kinks are worked out.”

Even then, Blust said, “At the end of the day, it’s still that human interaction that people are looking for.”

By the Numbers

95%: Ziosk’s share of the deployed tabletop tablet space

170,000: Number of Ziosk tablets in over 3,000 locations in the U.S.

50 million: Number of guests using Ziosk tablets each month

80%: number of guests using Ziosk in restaurants

75%: number of credit card/debit card users paying their bill on Ziosk

50%: Increase in customer survey completion when Ziosk tablets are present

750 million: number of Ziosk users anticipated in 2016

$8 billion: estimated worth of transactions Ziosk will process in 2016

Data provided by Ziosk through John Regal, CMO.