The only annoying thing is that the menu it opens is a pdf that was designed to be printed on A0 apparently, with times new Roman 10 point font, food on extreme left and price on extreme right.
And then you keep scrolling back and forth on your iPhone trying to read them.
Bonus points if you put the pdf in an iFrame in a site that’s off the bootstrap template but they forgot to include the js file so it zooms the hamburger button instead of the pdf when you pinch and refreshes the page when you jerk it too much.
If so many of the menus weren’t PDFs, I think the overall idea wouldn’t get such a bad rap. But yeah around half of all restaurants still do it in my experience.
It’s remarkable how particular non-IT industries attract personalities that are more or less technically averse than others. Arts and media, retail, building contractors: generally quite competent. Lawyers, medical: usually pretty bad.
Restauranteurs: the most technically inept grandparent you’ve ever encountered, the one who insists that if they ever touch a mouse it will catch on fire, and then somehow proves it
Go look at hobby sites for hobbies that are heavily weighted towards the elderly. OMG.
It's way better now, but for a long time I would go to woodworking sites (before it was trendy), and if you got much past GeoCities level sites it was almost a miracle.
I remember helping an older relative. They said they needed my help ASAP because Dish network was coming because they deleted their account. Couldn't get any details. Eventually saw they simply deleted an email about their bill.
Only sorta related but I wonder why it seems so hard for some to adjust while others do just fine. It seems like it would make sense that "email is just like real mail, its just on a screen." Maybe the "infinite options" scare them a bit?
Honestly, I think it’s the “mysterious beige box.”
When I was a teen in the nineties, I was the go-to guy in the neighborhood for fixing computers (beats mowing lawns). One trick I figured out was, I could demonstrate something like plug in a RAM chip or CD-ROM drive, take the parts back out, and then tell them to do it.
Even though their problems were invariably software-driven (fcking windows), just having that hands-on experience — not much different from changing your oil — would usually be all it took. The fear would be gone.
I've literally never seen that. It's almost always some web app type thing where you can select what you want, order it, and pay using apple pay/Vipps (my country's main electronic money transfer thing)/card. The UX isn't always perfect, but it has always worked too.
Edit: Downvotes? For simply sharing my conflicting experience? Okay.
You forgot "customized", and order drinks before food too - separately. The other part is: I dislike touching a phone screen while eating, so it needs to accommodate that too.
Edit: on a 2nd thought - how would family order look like - the kids need some way to link their orders (albeit having phones) to the payment. You'd need a temp password/pin for everyone to link to?
The ones paying the check are the ones making the orders. Makes splitting the check a solved problem by default. If it is a family with kids making the order, the kids simply pick what they want (no linking required for just browsing the menu), tell the parent what they want, and the parents order from their device. I don't think it is a hard necessity for everyone ordering stuff by themselves. Whoever pays the final bill can handle actually ordering the food.
At some point kids like independence... at least to choose/read the menu - around 5-6y of age. It'd mean sharing the phone with them one by one, instead of having a menu each.
Normally I'd pay the bill entirely (split whatever is non-issue at all) - however picking items for everyone is just bizarre, e.g. everyone would have to tell what to order, I would have to find and not mess up - in short not fun at all, cosplaying the waiting staff
Probably for US there is a market, but here in Europe restaurants mostly have a facebook page and that's it. They mostly don't really have an online presence and they don't really care either. That's what high taxes do, penalizing high achievers so ultimately every service 'stops' at a good-enough level.
And then you keep scrolling back and forth on your iPhone trying to read them.
Bonus points if you put the pdf in an iFrame in a site that’s off the bootstrap template but they forgot to include the js file so it zooms the hamburger button instead of the pdf when you pinch and refreshes the page when you jerk it too much.