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What Restaurants Know About You Before You Walk In

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Re: What Restaurants Know About You Before You Walk In

#51

Post by chinathrow »

robinanil wrote: post #50

Disclosure: I am the Director of Engineering at Tock. We power the reservation system at Eleven Madison Park which Will and Daniel own. The notion of a user's past history with rich data has been something high end restaurants have been trying to manage either via spreadsheets or via custom crm implementations. What we have done is to make that easier through product design and machine intelligence to bring it to mor…

To get that right, if you're a restaurant using your services:

a) you spy on your guests

b) you cross reference with other data sets without your guests knowing

c) you do this for improved revenue

I'll make sure I never eat at restaurants using Tock. Good look seting up proper opt-in once you serve EU guests after May 2018.

Re: What Restaurants Know About You Before You Walk In

#52

Post by xapata »

forapurpose wrote: post #16

Be sue to read though to the last paragraph, where the story becomes a bit darker (though not unexpected to HN readers): They’ve read your biography . . . “We have had guests come in and we’ve read their biography and read maybe they had a really rough last year or maybe they lost someone in their life recently,” Meyer says. “That may sound extreme, but all of those pieces of information are going to help us do a bet…

Darker?

Re: What Restaurants Know About You Before You Walk In

#53

Post by nehushtan »

It's going to be like eating at L'Idiot in Steve Martin's LA Story. There was a screen showing tidbits of live data about celebrities as they entered - how much their last film grossed, their sexual orientation, etc.

"You think with a financial statement like this you can have the duck?!"

Re: What Restaurants Know About You Before You Walk In

#54

Post by keiferski »

robinanil wrote: post #50

Disclosure: I am the Director of Engineering at Tock. We power the reservation system at Eleven Madison Park which Will and Daniel own. The notion of a user's past history with rich data has been something high end restaurants have been trying to manage either via spreadsheets or via custom crm implementations. What we have done is to make that easier through product design and machine intelligence to bring it to mor…

Lots of businesses are looking for ways to do lots of unethical or undesirable things - that doesn’t somehow absolve you of responsibility for enabling them.

Re: What Restaurants Know About You Before You Walk In

#55

Post by tritium »

nasredin wrote: post #44
tritium wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, what’s really going on is the franchise vs. mom & pop version of corporate espionage. Normal people with no skin in the game, beyond what’s for lunch, don’t behave this way. There’s a small-ish subculture of afficionados and foodies, but I’ve never met anyone that obsesses over dinner to that degree. Usually it’s a byproduct of a phase they breifly went through, when they were on a kick about something. The rare…

>since 90% of everyone is undateable. [0,1] Non-Seinfield non-Youtube citation needed. --- I have become one of those "Citation needed" people. Argh.

You wanna see what happens when your kind takes things too far???

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drifting_(motorsport)

  > CTRL+F

  Japan was the birthplace of drifting.
(hey, hacker news, fuck your downvotes)

Re: What Restaurants Know About You Before You Walk In

#56

Post by robinanil »

keiferski wrote: post #54
robinanil wrote: post #50

Disclosure: I am the Director of Engineering at Tock. We power the reservation system at Eleven Madison Park which Will and Daniel own. The notion of a user's past history with rich data has been something high end restaurants have been trying to manage either via spreadsheets or via custom crm implementations. What we have done is to make that easier through product design and machine intelligence to bring it to mor…

Lots of businesses are looking for ways to do lots of unethical or undesirable things - that doesn’t somehow absolve you of responsibility for enabling them.

Typing up notes is far from unethical or undesirable. Our responsibility is to make sure the product focuses on the right things like dietary restrictions or visit history, to reward for loyalty and provide a great experience

Re: What Restaurants Know About You Before You Walk In

#57

Post by robinanil »

chinathrow wrote: post #51
robinanil wrote: post #50

Disclosure: I am the Director of Engineering at Tock. We power the reservation system at Eleven Madison Park which Will and Daniel own. The notion of a user's past history with rich data has been something high end restaurants have been trying to manage either via spreadsheets or via custom crm implementations. What we have done is to make that easier through product design and machine intelligence to bring it to mor…

To get that right, if you're a restaurant using your services: a) you spy on your guests b) you cross reference with other data sets without your guests knowing c) you do this for improved revenue I'll make sure I never eat at restaurants using Tock. Good look seting up proper opt-in once you serve EU guests after May 2018.

a) unequivocally no! I am not sure what I mentioned caused you to believe that.

b)Yes, enriching the data is a key part of our offering but we are very transparent in our data practices and take this job very seriously.

https://www.exploretock.com/terms https://www.exploretock.com/privacy

c) Improved revenue comes with increased visit and spend, that happens only if the customers get a great experience.

The practice of taking notes is something that every restaurant is doing. What we make sure is that they capture only the necessary information. Every customer controls their public information through their profile page and can choose to remove it if needed.

Re: What Restaurants Know About You Before You Walk In

#58

Post by [deleted] »

robinanil wrote: post #56
keiferski wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of businesses are looking for ways to do lots of unethical or undesirable things - that doesn’t somehow absolve you of responsibility for enabling them.

Typing up notes is far from unethical or undesirable. Our responsibility is to make sure the product focuses on the right things like dietary restrictions or visit history, to reward for loyalty and provide a great experience

[deleted]

Re: What Restaurants Know About You Before You Walk In

#59

Post by Animats »

matte_black wrote: post #13
Animats wrote: post #7

Right now, it's high-end restaurants in New York City doing this. But they did that by hand in the past. The "headwaiter who knows everybody" was a big deal once. The big change will come when this filters down to chain restaurants. Which way will Starbucks go on this? They already have an affinity card and know your WiFi information. "You haven't visited a Starbucks in 72 hours. Are you OK?"

What are examples of some restaurants in New York City that do this, I’d like to try this next time I’m there.

If you have to ask that, you can't get a reservation.
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