You arrive at your restaurant and sit down anywhere you want and wipe the table down yourself from a box of baby wipes on the table.

Then you QR Scan the pattern on the now visible table and check out the menu using your phone, then make your tables selection, and hit send or submit or email or whatever, and the table number from the QR will tell them where it is. They turn up in 15 minutes with your food, and you are billed to your mobile number or via a Credit Card online billing just like any other website.

If they can find a way to include an actual dumb waiter coming from the center of the table, all the better. Kinda like Yo Sushi but more vertical.
-- PainOCommonSense, Oct 15 2012

blue2th or wifi restaurant menu
[xaviergisz, Oct 16 2012]

Smart Menu
[xaviergisz, Oct 16 2012]

Waiterless Restaurant Waiterless_20Restaurant
[PainOCommonSense, Oct 16 2012]

Kind of like a digital automat, I guess.
-- ytk, Oct 15 2012


This would be better for pre-ordering at a drive-thru.
-- 8th of 7, Oct 15 2012


[POCS] - Since I can't comment on your User page, I will comment here that I was certain your user name was a reference to 'Common Sense' by Thomas Paine. (For you Brits, that was the pamphlet that explained why it would be stupid to remain under British rule.) But I saw nary a reference to said pamphlet on your User page. How's that possible?
-- sqeaketh the wheel, Oct 16 2012


Now to the idea: I thought a better title would be iDumb Waiter. Still, [+].
-- sqeaketh the wheel, Oct 16 2012


I assumed the same thing, [squeaky], but I figured the lack of explanatory reference was part of the clever joke. It's one of those 'either you know it or you don't' things.

I am entirely ambivalent about this specific idea, since I live in a place where it's hard enough just to make a call with your cell phone, much less do anything else with it. Also, our restaurants don't have tables, just big wooden troughs with tin spoons chained to them.
-- Alterother, Oct 16 2012


To add to this we could add a special of the day, as in specially fast. This would be a blandly populist dish which would be guaranteed to arrive in less than 3 minutes from ordering due to the mass production nature. E.g. a Mixed Fried Noodle or CTM production line.
-- PainOCommonSense, Oct 16 2012


Turning this on its head, how about making your decision on your phone, before printing a QR code containing your order on the tablecloth in front of you. This is scanned by a ceiling mounted "waitba" (like a roomba, only upside down and waiterlike) which scuttles off on its ceiling-mounting out into the kitchen, extends down a tray and waits for the order to be filled, before reeling the tray back up again, and scooting back to a position above your seat and lowering the scalding hot food and beverage choices into place in front of you.
-- zen_tom, Oct 16 2012


The waitba should be styled like the ceiling-baby in Trainspotting and should deliver your meal by vomiting it into your bowl/lap.
-- calum, Oct 16 2012



random, halfbakery