03.06.12
America’s innovators: Squeezing blood from the remaining stones
Over the weekend some snob at The Atlantic went Tom Friedman, marveling at the alleged innovation of the Presto, an app to rid restaurants of people who already earn crap.
The young Presto innovator, Rajat Suri, takes the Atlantic writer to a restaurant with the machine installed.
Called Calafia, it’s in the nation’s high button district, where all the most brilliant are, Palo Alto.
It’s where even food has been innovated upward, the writer letting us know the restaurant is the creation of “Google employee 53,” who also peddles his Food 2.0 cook book there.
Through name-dropping we are informed all the best minds eat at Calafia, and so, by logical extension — the best eat at the best places and since they are the best we would do best to pay attention:
[You’re] retracing the footsteps of giants. Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt were once spotted talking shop there. Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Mark Zuckerberg all frequent the place …
“I love a quail egg, so I agree to order that,” informs the writer, Alexis Madrigal. Now they don’t offer that at Bobby’s on El Molino!
Rajat Suri’s innovation turns the restaurant into a glorified automat.
Like so many innovative things from America in 2012, it does it by being disruptive technology, antagonizing newspeak for stuff that reduces or eliminates the wages of people who already earn very little, using programming to transfer what’s left of the spoil to people who already make a very good living.
Technology, in other words, to squeeze blood from stones for the benefit of the so-called much-betters.
From the Atlantic piece:
“It costs about a dollar a day per table, it can even go lower depending on if you have sponsors involved because all the alcohol companies want to get involved,” Suri says. “For that, they get about $6 a day per tablet in increased sales. That’s extra desserts, appetizers, drinks. They get about another $5 in extra table turns. If you can fit in one more table per night, that’s worth a lot of money. And some restaurants, though not Calafia, get about $4, $5 extra because they choose to save labor.”
… And, if the restaurants choose to cut some employees because they have an automated ordering system, that trims a bunch of costs, too.
The minimum wage is apparently too high in Palo Alto, according to Suri, the Presto’s maker: “In San Francisco, the cost of labor is $10 an hour, the highest in the country for staff … So if you can reduce 10 percent of your staff, it’s just a huge win.”
A huge win.
Those who retain their low-paying jobs will be better off, the man claims. This is because he claims people tip “better” through the machine. It also needs to be mentioned lots of places don’t actually pay even minimum wage to waiter staff.
Vendor claims, ah, always anchored in the bedrock of fact, never in the land of conveniently made-up shit.
“I don’t want people losing their jobs of because of something like this,” one lady customer tells the Atlantic’s journalist.
“It is impossible to ignore that this technology threatens a job class, which through its flexibility and unusual hours, has supported many people trying to pull themselves up through school or a creative career,” concedes Madrigal.
A less polite way of putting it is to call the Presto yet another trivial piece of app technology that enables those who have it to make money through wiping their feet on a class of those who always have bad things done to them. And calling it progress.
One similar attempt at this, except on a much larger scale, was the push to get self-checkout into supermarkets, the idea being that checkout staff could be reduced on the backs of shoppers.
It’s been in Pasadena at a couple stores — Albertsons, Whole Foods — and hasn’t been particularly successful. A lot of people don’t like to use them and, consequently, there has been no obvious impact on employment.
Plus, people still use cash money, which renders them not so useful, particularly at a run of the mill place like Albertsons.
Supermarket self-checkout being replaced with people.
Perhaps part of the Presto’s secret pitch strategy is to get it into the
high end restaurants, working under the assumption that the Mitt Romney-strata that runs and eats at them “like firing people.”
Chuck said,
March 6, 2012 at 4:22 pm
It seems to me that all of this new technology is a way to avoid social interaction. In the old days, when you actually had to talk to someone or even acknowledge their existence, I think we were a bit more civil to one another. Or perhaps I’m just too old.
Today, you are passed by crowds on the street glued to a cellphone or some other bit of technical kit. People speak of “friends” on Facebook or Twitter without realizing what a real friend is.
I’ve witnessed people texting away at symphony concerts.
And now, a place where you don’t even have to interact with the people handling your food.
Personally, I’d rather eat in the kitchen and jawbone with the cook, which is why a meal at a friend or neighbor’s home is so memorable–and a meal at a restaurant where you’re a stranger is so forgettable.
Food should be a basic social experience, not a business meeting.
What new techno-phrase will take the place of “let us break bread together?”
Christoph Hechl said,
March 7, 2012 at 2:47 am
Although i absolutely refuse to join any of the so called social networks i disagree as far as the social interaction is concerned. The physical part is not a necessity of social interaction and remote friendships are nothing new.
The definition of a person as a friend is the important part here and that, at least in my opinion, is something that everybody has to do for themselves.
Personally i would value the aspect of “is there for me when i need him/her” quite highly, but even then the physical presence is not always the important bit.
There can hardly be any doubt, that a mental exchange is very well possible via Internet, and so is building a smaller or larger community.
It is also more likely that you stumble upon a person who shares at least one of your interests while communicating on sites that deal with that subject.
An exchange of thoughts and ideas over a longer period of time does not necessarily make a friendship, but it could and there are certainly worse things you can do with your time.
On the other hand there is of course an exchange of lots of trivial information, but that is pretty much the definition of small talk. After all you can’t be forced to participate.