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About half of all restaurant bills are paid with credit or debit cards, requiring a signature.
A signature requires a pen.
A business that wishes to advertize itself or a new service simply pays a restaurant to use their pens and only their pens in little black folder when the bill is presented.
First-time
customers at this particular business could be randomly polled to see how they found out about this particular business or service - for example, "Chez shapu." Restaurants with higher rates of cross-references would qualify for bonuses, and eventually this leads to a free-agency mentality among restaurants and thus higher initial contracts, possibly resulting in lower food prices or higher pay to employees, or both.
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Annotation:
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Would be a good idea for anything that you might want to use right after a meal - a taxi service, ice cream place, espresso bar or the like. |
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i'm glad it's not wearable billboards for the
waitstaff. that would ruin the atmosphere
of the dining experience. |
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Great Idea! Expanding on [jutta]'s comment, I wonder if taxi services could get their name printed on the martini glasses? |
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/About half of all restaurant bills are paid with credit or debit cards, requiring a signature./ |
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You guys don't have PINs? |
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[jutta]: I agree, labeling it as pseudo-viral was a bit of a misnomer. |
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[Texticle]: We do have those sorts of things in the states, but most restaurants don't bring a PINpad to your table when you pay. This is more of a sit-down restaurant kind of thing, as opposed to fast food. |
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Fascinating. So you pay while remaining seated? What do you do after that? Sit around for "free" for a while longer? |
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I thought paying on the way out was the norm. |
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Yeah, you finish your conversation or your cup of tea. If everything works out, the waitstaff doesn't have to hurry, and you don't have to hurry. Yay pipelining!
In my parts of the world, of the places that don't bring the check to a seated patron, slightly more are pay-as-you-order than pay-as-you-leave. |
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Waiter! I didn't order the spam! [-] |
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Alternatively, with many city restaurants using wireless PIN devices, these machines could be sponsored by the same firms. |
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I think pay-at-table vs. pay-on-way-out is a cultural difference, and not necessarily a swankiness difference. I've only paid at the table when abroad, and most of those times were in "sensibly priced" restaurants. |
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I would go as far to say that most restaurants in the UK (using my neck of the woods as a guide) use the wireless system - unless it is pub type food where you pay at the bar. So I agree - it's not a swankiness thing, it's simply a cultural implementation of chip&PIN. |
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I run a restaurant, and we use random pens...currently, we use pens from a neighborhood hotel, a Speeddating organization, pens from a family reunion in 2004, and pens from some animal doctor. |
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No one has ever asked about the pens, which may indicate that the average customer (at least the average USA customer) doesn't care enoough to notice. |
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Since I don't like to dole out fishbones (because all ideas are probably good in SOME way...I hope), I will award you with this --- an undercooked fish-stick sandwich |
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Maybe you should go to the hotel management and try to implement this? I'd be interested in hearing how it goes. |
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Bun just for providing pens to the waitstaff instead of making them supply their own. (which get taken by the customers, and have to be replaced.) |
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What if the pen had a hi-intensity LED attached to a pressure-sensitive pad so that when the person started writing, it would (through an el cheapo small plastic lens) throw an image of the advertising on the customer's writing area? Can't miss advertising. The advertising is not user-changeable, thus keeping theft to a minimum. If someone still takes it for the novelty aspect, the person has just walked off with your advertising, which is not bad in itself. |
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