Kindle2 for Online Ordering? Why not?

Amazon announced the new Kindle2 today and from the initial reviews it looks like a worthy follow-up to the original e-reader.

After reading yet again about its free wireless access to the Internet, ability to have relatively large storage (when it comes to books and blogs, anyway), nice display and pondered the possibility of using such device for restaurants to receive online orders.

Takeout Online has been providing online ordering via fax (for vast majority of our clients) and some via computer/printer environment (where Internet connectivity was a must).  The reason vast majority of restaurants we serve do get orders via fax is because most of them don't have computers and Internet connectivity and certainly aren't about to spend the money to have such just to be able to receive online orders.

But Kindle2 offers built-in Internet access from anywhere, as well as a nice display and one could easily set up either a private blog where orders would be shown or just a web site.  Each restaurant would have their own feed of orders.  All of the benefits of Internet access without the monthly fee.

Even though this approach is doable, reasonably simple to implement and should work very well - it does have some drawbacks.  First, the cost of the device, something most restaurants would have a hard time justifying.  Although that could be countered with the monthly Internet access fees, which would make it pay for itself in about 6 months, but still that's one drawback.  The second drawback is employee use of such an expensive device.  That might also be an issue, since so many employees are not very savvy when it comes to technology or taking care of someone else's $359 device.  Then there's the theft issue, it's mighty easy to walk away with one of these or leave on the counter and have someone else walk away with it.  And last, but not least - the lack of print functionality, which many prefer - they want to have a paper in the kitchen from which to make the orders.

Clearly, this device wouldn't be for any restaurant, but I think some better class restaurants might benefit from such an arrangement.  If nothing else - one could always use it for something esoteric like... I don't know... reading books :)

We are NOT in eating recession

Image via Wikipedia

Just read this article, submitted by Jeffrey Summers via Twitter, that concurs with our own experience on Takeout-Online.com, which in essence indicates that people are still busy, they still need to eat, they still don't have time (or don't want) to cook and therefore ordering takeout is as popular, even though recession is all around.

I'm sure the impact is there and there are restaurants that are hurting and going out of business, but, at least at this point, it's a minority. We haven't had a single restaurant on Takeout Online go out of business in recent past and haven't heard from anyone that they would be, although some have indicated that the business has dropped a bit, for some.

Geographic location and local economies are certainly a big part of this mix as well, but as the article points out - people are ordering takeout, which is still something that every restaurant should offer, with the convenience of online ordering of course :)

People with no life... ordering takeout

A few days ago at 3-4am there were a few takeout orders that came in for hundreds of items, clearly bogus. Obviously someone has no life and wanted to test their form-filling skills.

The bigger question though - what to allow on a restaurant web site, in terms of information that would be considered acceptable. Certainly one could check for short name entered, but some Asian names are 2 characters long, so that wouldn't really work for all situations. One could limit the order to 10 or 20 items, but then again, when Microsoft places an order for a gathering - that's not going to be sufficient. So, in the end it makes sense to just ignore the losers who have nothing better to do and concentrate on real improvements to the service and support of normal, legitimate customers.

Of course this isn't only a situation with online ordering, I'm sure there are pranksters who call on the phone and do the same thing, although they'd have to use different tactics.

In the end online ordering is still a better alternative, because the restaurant doesn't waste time dealing with bogus orderers, since online ordering service handles the order part on their behalf.

What's your experience? Comment here or tweet @takeoutonline

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• Online Food Ordering System: It's All About Time! (articlesbase.com)

Economy Tanking but People ARE Eating Takeout

Looking at the only orders, an interesting development.  Seems like online takeout orders dropped when the whole economic woes news broke out, which was expected and not surprising to see.  However, as time progressed and more and more bad news is coming out, without visible end (at least so far) in sight... and yet the orders have picked up and continue to come in at a decent clip.

Anyone else noticed a similar effect?  No question that some restaurants are going out of business and clearly times are worse, but perhaps the fact that people still need to eat and still want the convenience of online ordering (i.e. don't want to cook, but do want to eat at home) explains it somewhat.

Thoughts anyone?