"Your order is ready at locker number 5. Text 'here' when you arrive."

No, I was not deliberately trying to rhyme 'five' and 'arrive.' This was the literal transaction.

I don't know how to feel about this. On one hand, I don't have to stand in line, and plus they give me text updates on my order. Common sense says that is win win. And, to tell you the truth, the first time I figured it out, I felt as if I upped a level on Space Wars and unlocked credos. Forgive me for my misunderstanding of the gaming terminology. That stopped about 2004.

All right. Buckhorn is a Northern California icon, with its original restaurant in Winters, California. It is a true BBQ place. It is a place that, these days, you get a reservation for dinner, weeks before you arrive. They don't serve lunch.

But they have had, for many years, an offshoot. Buckhorn Grill. Not strictly fast food, not strictly sit in and eat, it is what I believe the trend is 'fast casual.' A semi cafeteria venue where you go in and order your stuff and pay for it and they bring it out to you. Works for me.

But in recent years (months) they have really stepped up their online ordering. Which is cool, no problem with that. You go online, and you order your Roadhouse salad with onion crisps and add tri tip, cooked to your specification, and it generally comes out like you want it.

But you normally go in, give them your name, and they give it to you. But now you don't even do that. Now, they put it in locked 'lockers' and they send you a text, and when you get there, you text back 'here', and when you go in Locker #5 is lit up, it's open, and you can grab your order and go.

Sounds like a dream world for Japanese animae role player gamers. I mean, it worked. I selected 'Utensils.' I got a fork. I only needed a fork, but I would have liked a napkin.

Don't get me wrong. As grisly and as futuristic as the situation presents itself, the tri tip salad was actually pretty moth@*$&*(&$ing good, despite the lack of human contact on delivery.

One can argue, that is a really good system. And I don't have a good counter argument for it offhand. But I really like, putting my order in, and specifying how I want things to come out.
And I'm not saying the system doesn't work (forget about my napkin) but something seems intrinsically wrong and I can't put my finger on it.

Am I alone?

 

uhhh... I don't remember anything about what you just said once I read "Roadhouse salad with onion crisps and add tri tip, cooked to your specification".

 

This is a restaurant thread, not a BBQ thread.

 

Doesn't matter to me, tri-tip is tri-tip. And that salad sounds awesome. Now, where were we?

 

Weird flex to spring your dinner from jail but whatever.

 

You are not alone. Not a world I look forward to living in.

 

https://buckhorngrill.com/

 

Their web banner says the food jail cells are only at one location. Maybe tell them you don’t like it?

 

The locker thing… I dunno about that. If it’s a take out order, I guess it doesn’t matter if it’s been sitting in that locker or in a box on a rack behind the counter. But if it’s for sit-down? Nah. Reminds me too much of the Automat idea.

 

I like it as long as it works.
My issue comes with what do you do if your food is wrong? Is there someone there to correct it or are you stuck on an endless robocall trying to select the right option?

 

I liked the automat idea. They disappeared from wherever I lived decades ago.

 

Get ready for more of it. 'e-grocery' and 'micro-fulfillment' has been booming the past couple of years and doesn't seem to be slowing down anytime soon.

 

Especially when it comes to food I want face to face contact with the person delivering/serving it.

 

I guess I should have been more clear about that. Background: I typically like to relocate to office #2 in the afternoon after leaving office #1. Office #2 has beer and wine, as if it is an English themed pub. Okay it's an English themed pub. Now here is the thing, I'm not saying their food sucks necessarily, but you get tired of eating bangers day after day and there are no fish and chips on Mondays because the Czech restaurant that adjoins it is closed*.

So the bottom line is that they really don't mind at all if you bring your own food, since they make little margin off of food anyway. The Czech restaurant is closed. The hipster cafe is closed. I just had Chinese the day prior. So, sometimes, I will go ahead and make an online order for pick up at the tri tip place while I am at office #1 and pick it up on the way to office #2 since it is on the way there. I certainly -could- stand in line, and order for to go if I wanted, but that eats up a lot of time (drinking time at that) so it's just a convenient and practical thing to do.

Before that, you had pick up orders sitting behind the counter, and you told an actual person who you were and you got your order. Now if the order got forked up, yes, there is a register person there that can sort things out.

*they have the deep fryer

 

sounds like a rough life

We have a lot of places around here that just have open lockers for pickups. No secret text exchange like you're talking about, just open face boxes with food in them with the receipt taped to the bag. Walk in and grab your food. No interaction at all.
It's done almost that way exclusively for grubhub/uber eats etc.
I've always wondered how many people just walk in and grab stuff, but it can't be many or they'd stop doing it.

 

I have avoided things like this absolutely as much as possible...even self-checkout lanes...
so I only have limited experience....but I think a lot has to do with the online ordering interface.... they can make them "honest" and easy..... OR they can do a lot to steer towards what they want to sell and burry options they don't want you to see.

I'm in a hurry, I'm already fumbling around trying to navigate my way through and to browse for things I might like.... just way to easy to miss stuff, or to settle for more expensive things that I really don't want just because it seems like the cheapest option based on what I have seen...
this has happened to me recently online ordering pizza.. AND also online ordering my kids' school picture packages.

 

The place where I eat 99% of my burgers has open shelves for pickup as well. Of course, I'd much rather go in and order from my Burger Girls, plus I'm eating there anyway. But the place in question is in close proximity to hoards of starving college students and homeless ghettos, so I guess they feel it is necessary to put some sort of safeguards in place.

 

Sounds pretty much like what Panera Bread does with their take-out/to-go options. Although they just use a cubby for it, no fancy light-up lockers.

 

Panera, Chipotle Grill, others. Just walk in, take a bag off a shelf, walk out.

 

Sounds like an unintended consequence of social justice.

 

all of this..... not super happy.

And, additionally, when I see an iPad being used as a check-out device, I know I'm going to be asked to tip for something that I previously may not have.

 

Well delivery is always an option:

 

No personal contact keeps the complaints down. Also puts more people out of work.

 

Don't. Even. Get. Me. Started.

 

There's that. The flip side is it allows them to serve food when they can't find people who want to work.

 

I think I saw a tv commercial for Little Caesars that is doing this with online orders.

 

This is one of many reasons I'm glad I live in a relatively rural area. None of this nonsense anywhere near where I live. Yet.

I was talking with my brother about newspapers. I had part of a Wall Street Journal that I was finishing and he commented on the fact that I still read physical newspapers. I grew up with 'em, can't read 'em online. Online, you can't flip through them the way you can physical newspapers, and I still prefer doing crossword puzzles with pencil (I'm not good enough to do them in pen). I subscribe to WSJ because they cover everything really well and intelligently, without the ad sections and comic sections and all that fluff. I also subscribe to our local newspaper. My brother said they stopped subscribing to theirs because it went downhill. I pointed out that our local newspaper is really local. Theirs, being published in a major metro area (San José), can't be really local in the way ours is. I love my local paper.

Yeah, I'm a throwback to an earlier era that is fast dying. With luck, I'll die before it finally and totally kicks the bucket.

 

Back in the day, detectives conducting surveillance used to hide behind newspapers. Now they really stand out.

 

It's the first step towards getting automated chefs in the back of the restaurant, and then your dream of "exactly to my specifications" will come true, possibly with high precision.

Right now I can't get a drive-thru clown to get my "no ice" correct on my beverage order, to say nothing of a 12-customization steak salad.

Imagine a world where you can specify the precise amount of ******ned thousand island dressing on your double double, the golden ratio of iced tea and lemonade in your arnold palmer (80/20, you sugarbomb savages), and only 8 ice cubes. Then you can save it on your phone, app, wherever, and you can have it perfectly done your way every time.

For now, it's a rough transition, but I see a glorious future, devoid of me explaining to someone who speaks little english what they got wrong about my order.

 

"Your order is ready at locker number 5. Text 'here' when you arrive."

I want to know what happens if you text "hear" when you arrive.

 

A rapper comes out and says "stop, look around and listen."

 

https://www.therobotreport.com/hyphen-raises-24m-to-automate-commercial-kitchens/

I can tell you that the controls and subsystem management exist to do it today. Once the right integrator comes along and solves a business case for it and has anything that even resembles a positive ROI on it, things will be off to the races...

 

Negative points. Should have been "Stop, collaborate, and listen."

 

My heart is ready.

 

You may just be lost! If your location is Oakland, why are you dining 90 miles east on Howe Avenue?

Thanks for the suggestion, though, we enjoyed tritip salads at the Walnut Creek location yesterday, at your behest. I'm guessing Howe Avenue has gee whiz stuff because they are adjacent the college campus... more early adopters, fewer guys yelling, "Get off my lawn!"

Paul

 

I shuttle between the two places. I say Oakland, but actually the office is in Berkeley, right next to the Oakland city limit.

 

Oh! That's where I live. Lunch?

 

I saw that @eman1200 is now in Oakland, too.

 

Sure. I'll let you know when I'm in town.

 

I hear, That is an excellent place for other people to live.