Skip to main content

Is the Restaurant Industry Riding Tech Popularity?

 Is the food industry trying to ride the wave of tech popularity? Restaurant marketing material over the last few years has increasingly been using terms like “apps” and “handhelds.” They appear in television advertisements, email campaigns, and menus.


Over the past 30 years, technology has gotten so pervasive that terminology used in this space was bound to make it into everyday life. English vernacular, at least in the US, is full of borrowed terms that have taken on a meaning that has drifted from their use in industry. Think, stat (medical), boots on the ground (military), loaded question (legal), and AI (computer science). We may be experiencing two more that have crept into the food industry.


In the case of software, a common term is “program.” Programs are also known as applications, since a general purpose computer can be applied to various applications based on the software running for a given task. For example, the computer is being applied for billing now, but will be running payroll later.


For hardware, as it evolved, it took on increasingly smaller shapes. Machines that once lived in dedicated rooms gave way to those that could be operated by a single person. Further refinement led to mid-size machines the size of a small filing cabinet, and eventually desktop computers, laptops, and handhelds.


Casual observation of the restaurant industry will reveal a transformation of restaurant operations. Many familiar chain names made their way into the news for store closings and bankruptcies. The full service chain restaurants have given way to fast casual chains, and there seems to be more pubs, microbreweries, and local restaurants now. With this evolution of the restaurant business has come an air of pretentiousness and forced charm. For example, every new place has a patio, food from “farm to table,” and the adoption of terms that are trying too hard to be cool.


Enter “apps” and “handhelds.” Searching the Internet will reveal that references to “apps” go back a few decades. Though, it was an industry term, and not used by patrons. Today, operators use the term as though patrons regularly call their food an app, while pretending the more common usage of the term is not with regard to one’s phone. Similarly, using handhelds as a menu category to encompass burgers, wraps, and sandwiches seems forced. No one was getting confused by a wrap and a burger being listed on the menu next to each other.


Tech has been hot for a couple of decades now, and the food service business is tough. If a couple of terms can be jammed into a new context, it makes sense to borrow some of the hype. After all, the tech industry has done it too. Everyone will recall the cloud this and cloud that craze. Tech even gave AI a new meaning, and it stole that term from itself.


Still, the world will be fine if everyone goes back to calling them appetizers. And it’s okay if a wrap is listed next to the club sandwich. We don’t need deeper classifications on menus, but get ready for “bowls.” As this one is used more and more, patrons can enjoy trying to figure out if it’s a salad bowl or a noodle bowl. At least with this one, the term bowl was already used for food.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Skype Now Supports Emergency Calls In the US

With the latest round of updates to Skype , it was noticed today that the instant messaging and VoIP phone service now supports emergency calling in the United States. The release notes for the most recent update to the Android version of Skype indicated that the service now allows calls to be made to US emergency calling systems via 911.  Telephony services like Skype, Google Voice , and Vonage typically don't offer this emergency calling ability without some sort of intermediate step like deferring to the phone's default dialer, as is the case with Voice, or setting up a physical address location ahead of time which is how Vonage handles it. The indication is that Skype will handle the 911 calls natively, but when verifying with an account that does not have a Skype phone number assigned to it, it was found that the instructions in the FAQ explaining how to turn on emergency calling are not accurate. Emergency calling support in Skype for the United States Interestingly, th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Allow Windows authentication using SQL Server driver with DBeaver

DBeaver will allow Microsoft Windows single sign on access when connecting to Microsoft SQL Server using the SQL Server driver (rather than jTDS ).  From the driver properties settings, set the integratedSecurity flag to true . Open the Connection configuration panel and choose the Driver properties section. Set the integratedSecurity flag to true . A subtle, but important step is to not provide username and password credentials to the connection.
7 comments
Read more

Edit CUPS Configuration File To Re-assign Network Address

The printers.conf file can be edited to change the network address a printer uses.  This can be useful to fix situations in which the printer in question has a new IP address, but the local system is trying to use the previous address. Shutdown the CUPS server Change the network address Restart the CUPS server sudo systemctl stop cups sudo nano /etc/cups/printers.conf sudo systemctl start cups NOTE The editor used in the example is nano for the sake of those who may be less comfortable in the command-line.  With nano, once the change has been made, use Control + O to save the changes, and then Control + X to quit the editor. Ideally, this process would not be necessary.  Instead, once a printer is added, it will always be reachable at the address it was assigned when it was added to the system.  In practice, things like power outages, or breaks in network connectivity, may be enough for the DHCP server to issue a new IP address. A tip when making the address cha...
Post a Comment
Read more