The innovation: barely bigger than a Rubik’s cube, it serves as a candle on restaurant tables.
Posted at 11:00 a.m.
But the device acts above all as a “server aid”, allowing the staff in the dining room to be on the lookout for customer requests and thus avoid having them wait long minutes before having their drink served. of wine or to receive the bill. Its name: the Ordercube.
The device, a technology developed in Germany, lights up when people seated at the table press on it. According to a color code established by the restaurateur, it turns blue when a customer needs a little more mayonnaise for his fries, for example, and green if he is ready to pay the bill. When the Ordercube is activated, the waiter receives a notification on his smartwatch telling him that he is needed at table noh 35.
Who
Pierre-Antoine Morency, co-owner of several Groupe Blanchette restaurants (Shaker, Portofino) in Quebec City, heard about Ordercube through social media. Like all his colleagues in the restaurant industry, he has to deal with the labor shortage. Mr. Morency therefore saw, in this small luminous cube, a way to improve his service to customers, despite a reduction in the number of available servers.
“It immediately rang a bell in my head. I said to myself: wow, that can’t exist, he said spontaneously on the phone. All my life, I wanted to invent things like that. »
He therefore decided to import the device here, to distribute it and to develop it for the entire North American territory, just to adapt it to the market here.
The first devices have been installed on the tables of one of its Sushi X restaurants in Quebec. While he acknowledges that there was a certain period of adaptation at the beginning, both on the side of the customers and the staff, the experience was conclusive. “We developed a QR code that leads to a user guide,” says Morency. Basically, there are two keys: service and payment. It is not very complicated. »
Currently eight restaurants and one theater use the Ordercube. Two other establishments will be added to the list.
However, this technology comes at a cost. Each Ordercube costs $250, plus a $5 monthly installment to keep the software up to date. Then, the smartwatches linked to the device are worth around $300.
But according to Mr. Morency, the investment is worth it. A restaurant will make its purchases profitable in three months, he calculates. “It has nothing to do with what we are used to living. The customer whose fork has fallen on the ground now wants another one because his dish has just arrived, he illustrates. Whenever the customer has something in mind, he has the satisfaction of knowing that by pressing the cube, he no longer needs to ask questions, someone is coming. »
The restaurateur also claims that the device generates sales that are sometimes lost due to the waiting time caused by the lack of staff.
“The person who wants an extra glass of wine, they won’t order it if we don’t come to see them in the next four minutes. »
The future
For the next year, Mr. Morency has many ambitions. “We are going to integrate online ordering and payment into the system,” he says. Thus, when a customer pays his bill through the Ordercube, it will change color to notify the server that the meal has been paid.
“I’m aiming for mass distribution with pilot projects in chains in early 2023. I expect that to become the norm. »