The problem with pizza, PayPal and iPads

Right then, compare and contrast time. First up is The Other Ewan, discussing the launch of Pizza Expresses’ iOS application that allows you to use PayPal to pay for your Pizza:

The app is integrated fully into all Pizza Express restaurants. From table booking to bill paying. You might be wondering how you actually confirm that you’ve paid? Quite simply, you just have to show your transaction receipt to the waiter, however the restaurant will get confirmation of your payment too.

And now Jonas Luster (who you might recall I had a lightsabre fight with at Le Web when we got bumped by Nicolas Sarkozy). Luster is a Chef as well as being just as switched on to tech as McLeod, and recently discussed the use of iPads in a restaurant:

They’re all the rage, if a good dozen or so vendors at this year’s NRA [National Restaurant Association] Show are to be believed. They range from simple (“we’ll scan your menu, you define ‘hotspots’ to click on, and we turn it into an app”) to extremely versatile. And they won’t take off any time soon.

Now there’s a world of difference between a fast food joint and a sit down, book ahead restaurant, but I’ve now got two smart friends, in two different areas of the food service industry, showing technology being used to shave seconds and cents off a transaction in the fast food world while the smaller more traditional spaces have no industrial scale to respond.