Self-ordering at restaurants - an idea whose time has come(?)

Yes, when I eat out, I almost always eat at places with actual menus. The difference is that parents don’t tend to let their kids play with the menus like they would with touchscreens. Haven’t you ever seen a parent park a child in front of a video game, or one of those “make your own greeting card” booths, and tell the kid to play with it? The kid waggles the joystick, presses the buttons, and generally handles the whole machine for quite a while.

And no, I prefer not to think about what’s on the average dollar bill, TYVM. These days, I use plastic almost exclusively…and it’s very rare that I eat in fast food places any more.

My earlier post was incorrect. Took my son to Sonic for lunch today. They don’t have touch screen ordering, just speakers.

I’m sure you’ve all been anxious to know.

As noted by another poster, some Japanese restaurants have them. The work really well for izakaya places where you order a bunch of small dishes, eat them and then order some more.

People are getting much more used to using touch screen devices and there’s less resistance in general.

The biggest problem is the GUI, graphic user interface and the menu layout. Because any touch screen used to be very expensive, they mostly went into installations where only a limited number of people would use them and you could train those people.

Now, it’s different. Touch screens are cheap and it can be cheaper to have many of them. However, there is a dire need of better programming and layout of the menus.