Fast track TGI Fridays. For those people that REALLY don't want to have a relaxed conversation over an overpriced poor quality meal.
Wait, an actual QR code use case? TGI Friday's builds techno-restaurant
The good burghers of TGI Friday’s have cooked up a plan to get you in and out of their eateries faster: using mobile tech. The restaurant's Manchester Piccadilly Station branch is the first Fast Track TGI Friday's, which aims to serve you within ten minutes and help you pay quickly and leave by using your mobile phone. This …
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Friday 8th August 2014 13:45 GMT JDX
You can have a relaxed conversation over your meal (your snotty comments on the quality are neither here nor there) regardless. Not having to wait for a waitress to come and visit you, especially when you want to pay, would be nice. Trying to pay is the area I hate in nearly all restaurants... you feel bad walking up to the till but often when they clear away your plates they assume you don't want to pay, or ever leave!
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Friday 8th August 2014 16:24 GMT JDX
Yes, they should do. Except they frequently lose all interest in you as soon as you finish your food. You'd think getting the money would be important!
Walking to the till is what you do in exasperation to avoid wait for a waiter...ask for bill...wait 5 minutes...wait 5 minutes for them to come and take your money.
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Friday 8th August 2014 12:31 GMT Anonymous Coward
Never mind fast food
Some clueless politician who didn't even know what they were has already decided that the unloved QR codes should be used for, your energy bills:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/qr-codes-on-energy-bills-put-consumers-in-control
The larger player in this sector are resigned to idiotic and all pervasive government interference, but the smaller suppliers are less than happy about this idea about kick starting competition, because redesigning bills, and making the QR code do something useful isn't cheap. And despite all of the polticos' vacuous thinking about "competition", this won't make any difference because the real driver of higher costs is global markets, and interventions by governments as they conduct their ongoing War on Climate Change (at our expense). But luckily your gran will be getting a QR code on her energy bill, and she can use her Hudl to move to a new supplier and she can pretend that she's saved money.
On the other hand, if the Rt Honourable Ed Davey really wants to help my household cut energy bills, perhaps he could stop passing new legislation, statutory instruments, regulatory guidelines, and launching market reviews, competition enquiries with the frequency of somebody enjoying norovirus, and then he could shove his beloved renewables and EU-directed energy policy up his @rse.
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Friday 8th August 2014 13:01 GMT Adam Trickett
Re: Never mind fast food
Wasn't quite sure what the point of a QR code was on a electronic bill. I've not had a hard copy utility bill for several years so I was most surprised when something designed to interface between physical and electronic appeared on my electronic bill.
It's a good job our 19th century politicians are catching up with the 20th century... One day they may even understand the Internet...
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Friday 8th August 2014 17:49 GMT Dan 55
Re: Never mind fast food
Out of morbid curiosity I read on a bit more. If you scan the example QR code on the first page of this PDF you get sent straight to an example online dashboard with your address and energy usage, the option to share them on Facebook (sigh), and a button to go to a tariff comparison website with this data.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/qr-code-use-in-energy-sector-midata-programme-study
So no, I don't think they have thought the authentication through that much.
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Friday 8th August 2014 18:52 GMT Gannettt
Re: TGI Fridays, badly mitating Applebees *again*
Whatever people think of poor service and bored wait staff, I find this electronic ordering rather sinister. Doing people on minimum-wage out of a job to save money really is the pits. if they could have a robot open up, cook the food and bring it to your table, these restaurant companies could do away with all wasteful human capital. The railway station situation seems logical, though, but for the rest of us, looks pretty bleak.
As for TGI Fridays, cook-chill meals brought in on pallets, warmed over in a semi-automated kitchen, never really appealed to me.
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Friday 8th August 2014 21:59 GMT peter_dtm
Re: QR Menu ?
exactly
put the qr on the menu
scan (using table scanner) hit ORDER button
the waiters and waitresses can then concentrate on looking after the clients; keeping tables clean & clear of dirty plates/glasses so their meals become a pleasent experience
and may be they will stop the usless 'is everything ok there ?' noddy questions - because if it isn't ok; you; the waiter/waitress will be 1st to know !
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Sunday 10th August 2014 14:52 GMT DropBear
Re: Bogus QR stickers
You must have a quite high-en supermacro phone then - I find the typical 1x1cm QR codes on bottles are quite impossible to get close enough to to scan them. Something like 3x3cm is the absolute minimum I can scan with a macro-enabled Galaxy S2, and I have never seen one that big on any bottle...
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Friday 8th August 2014 15:55 GMT Colin Miller
Why is an app needed?
With an integrated billing system,
all the QR code needs is http://tgi.com/payment/<restaurant- nmber>/<bill-or-table-number>
and it will take you directly to a payment site, with the correct amount, and inform the restaurant that you've just paid. A smart site will allow you to under-pay the bill, aslong as someone else pays the rest of it, thus allowing splitting.
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Friday 8th August 2014 16:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
Use Scenarios
(not use cases)
Actually, I find QR codes quite handy to transfer info quickly from my computers to any phone with a barcode reader. In KDE, the clipboard tool has a "Show barcode" option which allows you to do this very painlessly.
To be fair though, I have less of a need for that since KDE Connect came out, as it does automatic clipboard sharing between all interconnected devices.
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Saturday 9th August 2014 09:08 GMT James 100
I like the idea of paying this way (and their provision of power+USB) - and yes, electronic ordering would be a very welcome addition.
Last time I was in a Harvester restaurant, the waitress entered the order on some form of smartphone (looked like an iPod Touch from what I could see, maybe an Android device though). Clever: she could see all the options at a touch (no more coming back later when the kitchen asks which dressing you wanted, or whatever) and no time wasted carrying a paper order back to the kitchen: she could go straight on to clearing another table or taking another order instead. Of course, better still if I could have entered the order myself.
Yes, it does reduce the workload, hence potentially cutting the number of staff employed. That's not a bad think for everyone: how do you think those staff get paid?!