Would you like a side of technology with that?
The owner of Winnipeg's newest restaurant is confident that Rudy's Eat & Drink will be the most technologically advanced eatery in the province when it opens its doors this month.
Servers, for example, will be equipped with handheld devices, which will immediately transmit customer orders from the table to the kitchen, a vastly more efficient system than waiting for the server to punch in multiple orders from an in-house terminal.
"Being a chef, there's nothing more irritating than five orders coming in at once," said Michael Schafer, who also owns Sydney's at The Forks.
Other technological elements at Rudy's include the tweets and postings of social media buffs being shown on a giant video wall and messages being pushed out to customers' phones about immediate specials on domestic beer and chicken wings.
Rudy's, which has leased out space on the main floor of the new headquarters of Manitoba Hydro on Portage Avenue, will also take the jukebox to a new level. Customers will be able to request songs from the restaurant's iPod with their smartphones. (There's no risk of customers playing anything inappropriate, Schafer said, because he controls the list of songs.)
Rudy's is one of what is expected to be a significant number of new restaurants to open up in the downtown area in the coming months as entrepreneurs look to tap into the more than 15,000 hockey fans who will descend upon the MTS Centre for Winnipeg Jets games more than 40 times this year.
from Western Investor November 2011
