davemcclure

nice. Tiny Post (nee Tiny Review) was headed that direction at one point...

hope to share a beer and a meal in London sometime then... if we can get the waiter's attention ;)

happy to chat... ping me @davemcclure.

if it's really the case that none of your staff at all of your nightclubs / restaurants have these issues, them I'll eat my shorts & buy you a beer (either way, I'll buy u a beer in fact ;)

certainly it's been my experience that technology used to improve efficiency may not always be appropriately / perfect, but in MANY use cases where I've had to wait or choose from confusing menus, I can't imagine how it wouldn't help.

however, I'm open to hearing why I'm wrong if you have data to back it up.

great to see u jump in david :)

1) yes. proven already at 100's of restaurants using E la Carte PrestoTablet systems. immediately positive economics. also reduced turnover time, so more available spots for additional customers.

2) there's plenty of inefficient market to address... literally hundreds of millions if not billions of customers. certainly millions of restaurant.

3) absolutely. and should be higher on priority, if they only knew how much money they would save / make.

again, we put our money where our mouths are. check out http://elacarte.com if you don't believe me.

1) I've been a customer of restaurants for far longer than I've been a tech entrepreneur.

2) I've been an investor in over 20 food-tech based Startups. I'm not clueless about the industry.

3) I come from middle-class (or lower-class!) america -- Appalachia, to be exact -- and my opinions are not based exclusively on either fast food restaurants nor high-class ones, but rather all of the above.

you're welcome to your own opinion, but I'm hardly I'll-informed about the industry, from either customer or operator perspective.

so you really believe that keeping people waiting is what they want?

seriously? seriously? bueller?

ok fine, guess I'm the only customer in the world who hates waiting in fine restaurants.

yeah, right.

interesting. rather elitist perspective, and seriously out-of-touch with most mainstream consumers.

I'd hate to build a business based on pissing off customers, but I guess you're welcome to give that a spin.

best of luck with that.

umm...

1) if it's a customer problem, it's a restaurant problem. 2) simplicity helps restaurants as much as customers 3) shorter wait time / quicker payment helps restaurants as much as customers 4) happy customers order more, come back more often 5) pretty sure we have experience in the industry, from 20+ investments in the category. certainly several of our entrepreneurs know what the hell they're doing, especially ElaCarte (also YC co & Lightbank co)

in short, the issues noted are just as much "restaurant" problems as customer problems -- and if you think those aren't connected, you've got even bigger issues as an entrepreneur.

anyway, you're entitled to your opinion. but I'm pretty sure you're assuming a zero-sum game here when actually the solutions help both sides.

check the stats for both time online & online spend -- I'm sure both are still growing; even in the US. then add in the # of young / old people on smart phones and tablets that weren't online 3-5 years ago, and you could say that even raw # users in US is also growing.