Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Anjappar – Chennai’s 1st Wi-Fi enabled Restaurant

For those of you who are not from Chennai, Anjappar is a chain of extremely popular restaurants that serves some great Chettinadu food. Go to any Anjappar outlet, and it is always packed despite having a reasonably large seating capacity – approx 100.

One of their outlets has recently gone Wi-Fi. Waiters take the order on an iPAQ. The order along with the table number is wirelessly transmitted to a printer in the kitchen. The printer functions similar to the machine used to process credit card payments – with two copies of each order getting printed. While one is retained in the kitchen, the other is given to the cashier to prepare the final bill/check. This initiative has significantly cut down the time spent by customers in waiting for their food. On one occasion, some food items were served even before we finished placing the entire order. Consequently, Anjappar is now able to turn around tables more quickly and is able to serve more customers.

A nice example of how technology can be used to better customer service and increase one’s business.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Mostly restaurants like Anjappar thrive on word of mouth (literally!) advertising and this is one more feather added to their cap...

Unknown said...

This is definitely cool, and not surprisingly it’s first visible in an over crowded restaurant like Anjappar. Love to see when technology enables businesses to make a real difference.

I wonder when the next generation of automation will be introduced in India. Obviously you know about this:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/31/microsoft-surface-hands-on/

Microsoft Surface has the potential to cut out the middle man, the waiter, and the best part puts the gizmo in the hands of the user. Plus make ordering fun!!

Nimish V Adani said...

yup, for those of you who have not heard about microsoft surface... check the videos at http://www.microsoft.com/surface/