Problem
How do customers know when food is ready at a restaurant where customers collect their food from the counter? At some coffee bars in London, England, the server simply shouts out a number. But often you don't hear because of the noise level, or you busy yourself doing other tests while waiting. You only get your food after retuning to ask when it will be ready. This causes clutter, delay, stress, food not hot, customers cross, risk of other customers taking the wrong order which looks similar.
Answers
Queues in government offices rely on everybody watching numbers electronically overhead. The change of numbers may be accompanied by a signal.
I have seen several variations on my travels.
Stories
In the USA in the Sixties a restaurant had little flags on every table with a number. A skating server brought the food.
For restaurants in Singapore, here is the device which you as a customer carry to your table. It signals food will be ready by showing a small red or green light. However, you have to keep watching, and to know what red or green means. Is it red for not ready and green for ready?
I must confess I was looking at the device and puzzling over this when I heard somebody call out, "Masal dosai!"
I assumed that you were supposed to eat with your hands.
I forgot to collect or ask for cutlery. They didn't tell me it was the other side of the till. Another customer told me I could wash my hands and pointed to the basin.
My bill told me that I was at Prata Wala restaurant at New shopping Mall. I remembered it from a year or two ago. It is above Serangoon MRT. Open plan by an escalator and noisy but some people like a buzz.
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer.
Angela Lansbury travel writer and photographer.
