聯合翻譯有限公司/聯合翻譯社

Technology is becoming increasingly important to restaurants and tabletop ordering devices only stand to multiply, according to Darren Tristano, executive vice president at the Chicago-based restaurant consulting firm Technomic.

"It's cool and trendy and kids love it," he explained. "It paves the way for other opportunities with applications."

Chicago-based restaurant Au Bon Pain uses iPads at six of its 220 locations, with plans to expand. Ed Frechette, the company's vice president of marketing in Boston, said diners usually fill out pieces of paper with their orders at the cafes, but iPads have simplified the process.

"One of our employees has an iPad with a menu loaded in it and they'll take your order," Frechette said. "You still see a menu board with all the information on it. We have handheld laminated menus for a reference, but all the paper pads are gone."

At 4Food in New York, where diners can build and name their own burgers, iPads are at eight kiosks with plans for as many as 30 devices, including Android and Blackberry platforms. Customers order and enter credit card information into the iPad to pay. Managing partner Adam Kidron said ordering food electronically will eventually be the norm.

"You've just got to imagine that this is something that won't just be considered to be a discretionary behavior," Kidron said. "It will be a necessary behavior."

Chief executive Patrick Eldon, whose orderTALK Inc. helps set up online ordering for restaurants, said the real value of using iPads is to develop customer relationships. Digital surveys, collecting customer e-mails and offering frequent diner programs are all possible with the tablets, he said.

"It's about getting to know your customer in a way that you can't get to know them from the waiter or waitress," Eldon said. "You now have incredibly valuable data about customers, how often they eat, what a particular customer likes to order."

The tablets are arriving on the travel circuit, too. OTG Management has installed more than 200 iPads loaded with menus at gates in New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, allowing travelers to order salads and sandwiches while they wait for flights. A waiter brings the food and diners can pay via the iPad or in cash to the server.

"I think eventually a significant number of restaurants will just use iPads for their menus," said OTG chief executive officer Rick Blatstein. "We're starting out using hundreds of them and I expect it to be thousands in the future."

Celebrity Cruises has 75 iPads loaded with restaurant menus aboard one of its ships.

Restaurants do face a few challenges. Tristano points out that restaurant owners must consider how to keep the tablets juiced up. At Chicago Cut, managing partner David Flom said the iPads are loaded with tracking software to prevent theft. And there are customers who won't want to use iPads.

Jay Clark, who headed the team at Shared Marketing Services Inc. that created Chicago Cut's iPad program, said while he sees unlimited uses for the digital devices in restaurants, paper menus need to be available, too.

"If people are very tactile and they're comfortable with a paper menu, they should be able to have it," he said. "Not all people are comfortable with technology."