Electronic Menus in restaurants-I

You enter a restaurant and take seat. On the table you have a touch screen probably double the size of a PDA(yes, smaller than the one displayed on the left). You open it and see various options available to you.
Food
Drinks
Music

Assuming you choose 'food' and you get options ranging from Chinese, Muglai to Thai and whatever you normally get to see in a restaurant. Just read the customer comments and ratings for each of the delicacies as rated by so many customers who would have tried them, loved them and hated them and you could probably choose from the best rated to weirdly commented.

How about the item you heard from your friend he said tastes good? You might want to check out how have others rated it and what do they say about it. Put it in the search option available to you on the top of your screen(powered by none other than Goggle).

You liked it! But then you like it low salt, low oil, spicy etc. You choose from the options of various degrees for each ingredient of the dish.

You choose your drinks, food and confirm your order. Pops up the screen letting you know the time you will have to wait for that chilled drink to quench your thirst or satiate your palate.

Now when you have had a nice time with your family so you don't call the waiter who could take a few minutes to come over and then do the whole money exchange thing(of course not necessary). Just look at the right side of the menu there is swipe machine integrated in your touch screen. You swipe your card enter the amount of your bill which was displayed as soon as you pressed that red "bill" tab - I know you hate it. Oh you don't use credit cards! Just press the "cash" tab next and that same waiter who served you appears in less than a minute with all the possibilities of the change that he may have to give you back. In the meanwhile you could have added your ratings and comments on what you liked and what you did not.

By the way you like music when you go out for a fine meal, don't you? You could have chosen your pick from the music library that was available to you right from your touch screen.

You just had your fine meal in restaurants that could be the future.

20-50 - Cricket world cup 2015

I always felt 20-20 is not for bowlers. In fact I often used to say that in T20 bowlers could only bleed as the concept of the game was to score irrespective of the pitch, fielding etc.

With India's performance against Pakistan and South Africa where the team defended average scores of less than 150, not only the bowlers have done a commendable job but I also gladly accept my wrong notion of no room for bowling.

But, of course the best thing I have liked in the T20 tournament till now is the short span of the match. 3 hours for a cricket match in my opinion is the best thing to have happened where one can watch the match without having to miss his work, take leave, stay awake the whole night etc.(all so common for Cricket crazy Indian fans).

I think this is how the 2015 Cricket world cup should be.

32 teams to play the world cup.

Round 1 - 8 groups, 4 teams in each group. 20-20 matches intra group.
Top 2 teams from each group to move to next round.
Let us say then we have A1, A2, B1, B2 .... H1 and H2

Round 2 - A1 plays B1 and B2 and so does A2. So 2 teams from one pair play 2 teams of another pair and this round be 20-20 too.

Based on the points and run rates the best 8 out of the 16 move to round 3.

Round 3 - Quarter finals.
and now begins the show down with 50-50 in place.

From here on the tournament goes as any other tournament.

With 32 teams playing cricket I am sure there would be lot more variety than we get to see today and with 20-20 in first 2 rounds it will not last for months. With 50-50 in last 3 rounds the big boys will not be able to complain either about the reduction in the quality of sport.

Of course grooming 32 teams to be able to play up to international standard will have to be ICC's job and I do think 8 years is a good time to bring teams to that level. ICC has much to gain from entry of so many teams into international arena so they should not have any qualms for such a daunting task.

Regardless of my weird ideas till India plays Australia on Saturday we can say - "Bharat desh ka nara hai, 20-20 hamara hai", "Indian's slogan is 20-20 is ours".

Sachin

Sachin's last play in England. A good slide show I found on The First Post.

This is not the first of its kind slide show especially for a legend like Sachin. But, since I admire him and I found it today by chance so thought of linking it here. I admire him because:

> His bat spoke for him and not he.
> He never answered criticism to defend himself. He knew what he was doing and what he had to do.
> He always made a comeback in the worst of times.
> His behavior was always of a gentleman.

Ok, since I am sounding very cliched here so I will stop before the fewest of the reader's of my blog pledge to stop reading my blog.

But like Ashoka, Budha, Ram, Krishna, Prophet and Jesus became history. He would become history too. A history that will be remembered till when cricket will not cease to exist.

Suggesting or insisting

On the FC Blogs, after reading Innovation: Lessons From a Car Shopping Experience, I had made a long comment. Longer than some of my own blog posts, so I thought of posting the same comment here too.

My comment was "Pushing a customer to alternatives of the product which the customer is looking for is definitely not going to help. In fact it will have a negative impact even if the dealer is suggesting a superior product at whatever price.

But, I think there is a finer line between insisting and suggesting. Suggesting is not a bad thing if properly dealt with.

In today's world with internet though most of the customers come with as much knowledge of the car as the sales representative at the dealer, still there are customer's who are not exactly sure what they are looking for. They have plain aspirations and that is where suggestive approach can help.
Again there has to be a strong restrain from making that suggestive approach into an insistence.

In this case you as a customer had very clear priorities and understanding, where the best a dealer could have done was answer all your questions and be obliged to meet your requests.

But, an attitude of suggesting superior product, lower prices, alternatives should have been the approach only after understanding what the customer is looking for i.e. after getting to understand a little more about the customer."

Now EnergyPods

No, they are not any new product from Apple which on plugging into ears will energize you.

Read here EnergyPod .

I am impressed by the looks, otherwise I do not need this big an instrument like a spaceship to take a 15 minute break.

Indian hockey - chak diya!

No, I am neither going to write a review for chak de! nor I would be writing a news item for Indian hockey team's victory over Korea in Asia Cup(7-1 victory is commendable).

I watched the final of Asia cup final on Sunday evening and yes it was a shocking victory (yes not a shocking defeat, but a shocking victory). Indian beat Korea 7-1 in an already flooded tournament - flooded with goals by Indian hockey team, who scored a mammoth 57 goals in the tournament. Then I coincidentally watched chak de, 2 hours later. I think this would probably be the reverse of what others would have recently done - I am assuming some of the so many people who liked chak de! might have watched the match.

This could well be a great opportunity for the celebrity hungry brand managers and media agents. For example even the news channels in my opinion have a good chance to spread their wings over some other sports and may be have dedicated shows for hockey.

Companies picking some of the good hockey players as of now could be spotting a good opportunity for much lesser a price than they might have to shell out in case they win another tournament and then all the companies jumping to cash them resulting in much higher prices for the new ambassadors.

It may look as if I am blowing Indian team's victory in the Asia Cup way out of proportion. But, as far as I can see hockey is one of the few games which can easily gain mass appeal in a country like India. I say so because,
(i) It does not require costly equipment to start with.
(ii) It does not need special courts or tracks for common man to play.
(iii) It is not a very complex game when it comes to scoring.
(iv) It's a good entertainer.

And then once upon a time... India was the best in this very sport and even though I doubt kids below 10 would know this, but it is India's national game.

I don’t think chak de was the motivation for Indian hockey players but it could be with these results coming in more frequently. Great hopes for hockey to gain its lost glory.

Does the menu matter ?

Have a look at some of the pictures I took while having dinner at Pizzahut on Sunday evening.





The pictures make everything worth eating and drinking. Drinks for example - under normal circumstance if everything is only written without any pictures then very few would really want to wander out of the normal Coke and Pepsi. But, when you open the menu and find a 15*10 cm picture of a refreshingly green "apple coolers.." it becomes tempting enough to try at least once.

Now lets look at what this could to the business. We as a group could have ordered a pitcher of Pepsi, which would have cost us Rs 90. But highly tempted by the pictures 2 of us ordered apple coolers and 3 ordered "masala lime" each costing 45 resulting into a total splash of Rs 225 only on drinks. That is 2.5 times what otherwise would have been.
Assuming that 1 of every 2 tables order drinks and 1 out of 5 such drink ordering tables is impressed by the pictures and makes an experiment, that would mean an increase of revenue from Rs 900 to 1035(vague approximation of all tables ordering same). This is 15% more!!!

The same goes for pizzas that we ordered.

15% more revenues for designing and redoing the menu once in every 6 months and including new and fresh pictures. I think the menu does matter!!

The bottom line for a restaurant is, pictures in the menu can definitely add value. But, remember it raises expectations at the same time and so living up to expectations is more important and difficult than creating those very expectations.

This is a practice seldom followed in Indian eateries, which I think is worth
spending some time and money in order to reap benefits from the visual impact.

Member Details

This morning I got a mail(in my bulk/spam folder) with subject line 'member details'.
I think this trick can definitely add traffic to the website at least initially.

The trick is, some website guys will send you thanks for registering on their xyz site with your username and password.

If you encounter a salesman approaching you with some product or file in his hand more often than not you look at him and say no, before even listening to what is he saying(in fact you don't even know if he is selling or buying). If you were a bit polite at the most you would listen to him and then say thanks, make some excuse for why you do not want to listen to him further. But now if he says "do you remember you bought that thing from us" or "do you remember we met" or may be something like "thanks for buying so and so" which you might have never bought, would you not be provoked to listen to him/her for a few more seconds and ask him/her back what is it that he/she is talking about.

Well the spam mails I am getting in my mailbox stating "thanks for registering at our website, your login details are following and please visit our website" is following the same trick(in my opinion). I think it does makes some new or gullible internet users to visit the website. In case you get an e-mail mentioning the website features, the possibility is that even the new internet users might not visit the site. This could be because they did not like the features or just that they are not involved with it. In case-I, it provokes them to think how could they be registered with this site so they visit the site to check it out.

I think the trick makes sense to introduce products to customers who are not willing to have even a single look at it.

2 years

2 years back from today, I joined this workplace. It was a fresh and new beginning to my career. I do believe I got a very good opportunity much better and higher than my expectations.

Over the two years I met lot of good and interesting people. Learnt lot of new things and saw places which neither I had ever though of or heard of.

Some of the things that come to my mind which i have realized/learnt:
1. It is not just the work profile that matters, it is the people among whom you work that matters equally.
2. Networking helps.
3. Its important to move on.

After having learnt my small share of the new things, now its time I start to unlearn as well so that I can learn new and more.

Learning is the key.

Being brutal

At my age I have read many a books on business which talk about performance and non-performance. All those authors often write about getting rid of non-performance and encouraging performance. I always thought it would be easy to encourage performance. At the same time when I read about the bell curve Jack Welch created I was shocked to hear that a team lead would be required to fire the bottom 5% performers of his team every year.

Jack himself said that he found team leads signing-off at the end of 3 years because there was no way they could fire someone they had been working with for 3 years and now he performed fine but was still at the bottom of his team.

I thought it was crazy but still always used to quote this example in any discussion that involved a point about performance. I did agree that it was an outrageous thing to do something like this but at the same time believed that if a standard of this sort could be established then others could try to establish standards equivalent to 80% of that by may be softening some of the rules.

I am standing at a position where my stance about someone's performance might result into a decision like that. Unfortunately the person in question is a good friend of mine. And more unfortunately an honest statement from my side might not result into happy state of affairs.

I do have sometime to decide on my position on the whole matter and I hope whatever I do is a rational and justified decision.