In Japan, I’ve encountered a restaurant that leverages on vending machine to take orders and payment! pretty cool!
There are 2 vending machines in the restaurant
once paid, the machine will output a thermal paper indicating your order number and it will send an electronic message automatically to the kitchen telling the cook your order number and what you’ve ordered.
after a few minutes, someone will bring the food and match the customer and the food by order number
Very creative and efficient, the restaurant doesn’t need to hire a lot of staff, since the vending machine takes care of the front end.
The con side of this restaurant, are first customer won’t be able to change orders. Once he/ she pressed the wrong button, that’s it!
Second, the order number that they produced is just a piece of thermal paper, it is hard for the waiter to see and match the food and customer by order number, specially if there are a lot of customers.
what they can do is announce the order number and ask the customer to get the food instead
or there is a holder where you can place the thermal paper that can easily be seen by the waiter
Overall, this is a brilliant idea
Vending machine business model has been around in Japan for more than 100 years already, now they’ve different types of vending machines, some of the machines are selling beverages, ice cream, noodles, snacks, non food items and other products
I had an opportunity to eat in one the famous dim sum restaurant in Shanghai
and I was surprised with this dish!
a finger size glutinous rice w/ meat
I wonder how they wrap it!
It’s like the sweet rice in Philippines called suman, if I can just recreate it with this cute size, I think I can sell it and make some money out of it.
Again about Fear! I failed the test to eat China’s exotic food like scorpions, star fish and worms, but probably I will try it if someone will reward me for doing so 🙂
However, I was victorious and was able to overcome my fear to do a sky jump in Macaw tower!
Exotic Food VS Jumping in a tall tower, both are scary, but why didn’t I eat and why did I jump? What’s the difference? I tried to analyze myself, and found out that the reason why I jump is because I want to get a photo and memory of it, and that serves as a reward for me!
So I concluded that one of the factor for me to overcome fear is that there should be an attractive reward and the reward must outweigh the fear!
I’m usually very adventurous when it comes to food, I will try anything, especially if it’s a delicacy in certain culture! However, I chicken-out w/ the street food from China!
It reminds me about FEAR. I learned that to overcome FEAR there should be a reward, and we should have a least knowledge or assurance that it will not harm us. Coz, it’s our basic instinct to protect ourselves.
So the question is, will you eat it? If I will reward you w/ a million dollar or with something that you would really want?
Did you know that Ministop is not originated from the Philippines? I didn’t know, till I saw a Ministop in Japan! I thought it was a franchise from the Philippines, so I researched more about it. And found out it was owned by Jusco Co. Ltd. Japan, year 1980.
Now, Ministop in the Philippines is a very well known convenient store, every where I go, there is always a Ministop, it might be even more popular than 711 convenient store.
This is the power of franchising, with a strong brand and the right system.
Usually when we travel, we seldom eat at restaurants that are found in the Philippines. But since my brother-in-law is a fan of Shakey’s Philippines, he wants to try out Shakey’s Hong Kong!
We ordered thin crust pizza and chicken wings
And to my surprise, the quality and taste of Shakey’s pizza and chicken wings were superb, YUMMY! A lot better than here in the Philippines, well… the price is a lot expensive too…
These are what I’ve learned
QUALITY keeps customers coming back
I will definitely eat at Shakey’s again, when I visit Hong Kong
LOYALTY CARD also keeps customers coming back, if only I’m based in Hong Kong, I will definitely get one. (Note that they leveraged on the QR Code – similar to bar code, and they also promote their FB Fan Page)
