Making restaurant menus fun using AR
Today, I wanted to talk about something I have thought about in the past - how AR technology could one day add value to the experience of having dinner with my children at their favourite space, Wagamama?! Without a restaurant app yet supporting this featute, I am going to simulate the experience using few available apps on Google Play.
Inspite of queuing for a while there was a bit of a delay being seated due to a recent policy of not allowing dogs even in the outside seating area and I thought for a moment that I might not be able to blog about the hypothetical dining experience using AR. A pragmatic solution involved agreeing to sit at the edge of the outside seating area and tethering the dog outside of their marked off area! So now I could continue writing about the topic!!
The process of ordering involves either considering the items on a printed menu or on the restaurant app. After the initial meet and greet, we ordered our food using the menu on the table. It is useful to point out that at this stage an ability to see the food on the table before ordering may create a real fun experience - especially with children about. My little one ordered ramen noodles without vegetables and the rest of us our usual favourites.
The food arrived shortly afterwards. It is at this point that my little one realised that ramen noodles comes with soup.
Of course, it is what the dish is about; but he went by the look of the dish in the menu and didn’t necessarily clarify about the contents. If instead he could see his dish before ordering, wouldn’t that be a wonderful possibility?!
In the Google Play store, there are a number of apps that are aiming to serve this need. I explored a few of them and this is a feature in one of them. Of course, the content don’t come close to the looks, aroma and flavours of Wagamama; and I think it is an area that family friendly restaurants like Wagamama should test with their diners.
Apart from the fun of ordering food, it could prompt interest groups amongst table - say Chicken Udon Lovers and Katsu Curry with Rice Fans! Not to mention an engaging and immersive channel to showcase the ethically sourced food and how it is prepared through a mix of gamification thrown in for the fun of the diners and the waiting staff.
