So offended that Steak N Shake has order screens instead of servers these days and they still expect a similar tip before service is even rendered.
The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants
201–210 of 280 posts
Re: The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The convenience of digital simply made cash useless (mostly). Useless? Wait until your digital transactions fail or your bank or your state decides to block your access to your payment system. And believe me, it's not a "if", this is a real threat that will be waged against people. When it's technically possible, it always ends up becoming a reality. And by that time, "going back to cash" may not be an option in ce…
Is that more or less likely than the state deciding to block your access to freedom, and arresting and imprisoning/deporting you? When you live in an authoritarian state with arbitrary law 'enforcement', the problem isn't the payment system that you're using. It's that you no longer live in a country of laws. And that's not a problem that's going to be solved by using dead tree money.
More likely, by a huge margin, since it takes only checking a box in some software system, whereas the alternatives you mention need a lot of messy work to achieve.
Re: The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants
#203Restaurant dining rooms are a complete waste of valuable real estate. Everybody wanted to live like millionaires in the 50s without a thought for sustainability. Two hour drive into downtown to park your cat in a reserved spot and walk your wife and 2.5 children to their reserved seats, eat a 3 course meal with a waiter all for under 100 bucks including gas and tip. It was never going to last. If you don't use your r…
I loved the typo "parking your cat" -- that would indeed be the height of decadence.
Re: The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants
#204And every restauranteur I’ve spoken to uniformly describe the last few years as miserable
Re: The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
What I'd like to know are the demographics of the people using the delivery apps. Everyone I know refuses to touch them due to the massive extra costs piled on top, but whenever I swing by somewhere in-person to get takeout, I have the same experience as you - there's always at least a few bags on the "Doordash shelf" or equivalent. Who's burning all this money?!
DoorDash has a button that lets you filter by items that are eligible for SNAP (food stamps) when ordering from a grocery store. So enough people living in poverty are using DoorDash that they thought it was worth building the feature.
Over forty million people receive SNAP benefits so even if only five percent of them use DoorDash, it's still a couple million customers. Any fees DoorDash or other delivery services add on have to be paid by the customer and cannot be charged to SNAP.
Re: The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
Take out is terrible for restaurants. All the profit is in alcohol which people rarely take out. In distant second, profit comes from understaffing. So it should be obvious how and why productivity rises: in the absence of lucrative dine in drinkers, understaff. Then the denominator in the productivity calculation is smaller.
> All of our restaurants offer a full-service bar where our entire menu is served. During fiscal 2022, alcoholic beverage sales represented 12% of The Cheesecake Factory restaurant sales. We offer all items on our menu, except alcoholic beverages where disallowed by regulation, for off-premise consumption, sales of which comprised approximately 25% of The Cheesecake Factory restaurant sales during fiscal 2022. [0] In…
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Re: The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Something that always bugs me is restaurants that charge $2 or $5 surcharge for takeout. I'm saving the restaurant a ton of money by not using the dining room, why would they discourage that? Take out customers rarely order drinks, which is where dine-in has high profit margins. The extra charge compensates for that. The extra charge doesn’t discourage much because most people have already decided that they’re not…
I linked the Cheesecake Factory 2022 report below. I asked chat-gpt for some analysis and didn't double check the math so take with grain of salt. When you take into account the largest costs for Cheesecake Factory is labor of which 50% is waitstaff and leases for prime locations, profits from on premises alcohol sales do not compare to profits from takeout. If 11% of sales are alcohol at 20–25% of the menu price and…
Cheesecake Factory isn’t representative of restaurant businesses. It’s like saying restaurants should be more like McDonalds, or startups should be more like Google.
Re: The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants
#208Re: The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants
#209> The restaurants’ productivity growth rates are strongly correlated, however, with reductions in the amount of time their customers spend in the establishments, particularly with a rising share of customers spending 10 minutes or less. The frequency of such ‘take-out’ customers rose considerably during COVID, even at fast food restaurants, and never went back down. The magnitude of the restaurant-level relationship…
I noticed that food became much more standardized and similar at different places, maybe they are taking a page from McDonald's book and using some kind of a centralized model, where cooks at the restaurant just microwave and plate the prepared ingredients.
This is yet another reason to stop supporting chains and go to locally owned independent restaurants. Good food made with usually more passion and care with variety and quality ingredients.
Re: The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
How are they going to get the right apartment, and even if they do, what if the food gets fumbled in the handover and someone is injured by falling meals?
DJI has those smart docking stations. Maybe eventually each apartment will have one or it'll be subsidized by delivery platforms.
Food slides? Smart waiters? Hook and cook? And a large orange drink?