Restaurant Customer Ordering
a row of nine computer screens runs the length of a metallic bar. Step right up, touch the screen, and you're on your way to ordering.
Dining Out: ChefPlex is techy and tasty, but the setting does not compute,
By Nancy Hobbs
Special to The Tribune
OREM -- Last September, ChefPlex opened its doors -- and the door to the future of fast food, its partners hoped -- with five restaurants under one roof and a computerized system for ordering and paying that promised customers total self-service.
It still is open after six months, but obviously not with investors' hoped-for success. Two of the five original restaurants have left: Chichia's Best Mex closed its kitchen more than a month ago; and in the past three weeks, the Italian Buona Vita has been replaced by Falduto's, which offers so few menu items, it looks like a quick patch-up job.
That leaves Humdinger's Wicked American Gourmet, serving burgers, sandwiches and fish and chips; Siam Grill, dishing up Thai specialties and salads; and Moo Scoops Ice Cream for dessert.
Having visited on a couple of occasions and tried a variety of offerings from each restaurant, I found the food superior to most fast-food options, as well as reasonably priced.
Siam Grill's steak salad -- Yam Nuae Nam Tok -- was a complex combination of spices, vegetables and thin-sliced meat, and its sticky rice with mango was a perfect combination of sweet and fresh. Humdinger's homemade beer-batter onion rings were simply addictive, though Falduto's breaded zucchini sticks were almost as good, with both items delivered piping hot to the pick-up counter -- about the only point where customers come in contact with a human employee.
So why do the restaurants, as well as the concept, seem to be struggling?
It looks as though ChefPlex took up residency in the former digs of another failed restaurant, and though I have no idea what it was, I'd be willing to bet on a steakhouse. The building is a huge, wooden barn, surrounded by an equally large parking lot that looks almost vacant even when there are a dozen cars parked in it.
And this is the home of fast-food of the future? The paradox is almost too much to digest.
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Back to the future -- - almost -- is inside the door, where brightly painted walls are lit by futuristic hanging lights and a row of nine computer screens runs the length of a metallic bar. Step right up, touch the screen, and you're on your way to ordering. Choose a restaurant, and its photo-enhanced menu appears on the screen with simple step-by-step ordering instructions. You can change your mind, go back, or even start over. Once you push the button to place an order, a receipt is printed and you are on your way to the pay station.
This is the second part of the totally automated system that Orem's International Automated Systems Inc. is banking on to change the future. (The company announced in October that it had committed to 20 additional terminals for two more restaurants scheduled to open over the next year. Repeated calls and messages to the company spokesman to find out where and when those restaurants are planned went unanswered.)
The technology is pretty amazing. A scanner reads the total due, and the voice of a female automaton guides diners through paying with cash, credit or debit card. Several orders can be scanned for a single total, allowing everyone in the family to use a terminal for ordering, but Mom or Dad still foots the bill.
That pretty much ends your brief encounter with the future, as diners next find seating that -- again -- is more befitting a barn dance than the 21st century.
Wooden rafters and a wood-burning stove just don't jibe with the clipped techno-talk of ChefPlex's automaton cashier. Bring on the strobe lights, loud music, modern chairs and metal tables to complement the computer bar.
The food isn't the fault; an incomplete concept may be.
The Salt Lake Tribune -- Dining Out: ChefPlex is techy and tasty, but the setting does not compute,
Posted by Craig at March 26, 2004 02:35 PM