Ripples on the brain

You cannot miss the pride in the faces of the waiters these days when you dine in the A/C hall of Saravana Bhavan in Mylapore. When we were there last week, I was piqued that the waiter at our table was ignoring our request for service at our table and playing with some device that looked like a Blackberry. That was before I realized that he was getting his Compaq’s (or HP’s) iPAQ* PDA ready for taking orders.

Yes! these guys now have a PDA and a small printer with them at all times. Once they enter the order, it is printed out in the printers attached to their hip and the order is also automatically transmitted to the chef in the kitchen. The waiters submit the orders printed out to the billing counter.

“Mylapore is the first Saravana Bhavan where this has been implemented”, our waiter Mr. Dheena Dayalan (in the photo) told us. There was an unmistakeable pride in his voice. “The PDA transmits information to the printer in my hip through bluetooth”, he added. We also learnt from him that this was implemented a week ago here.

I think the PDA is intended to serve two main purposes:
1. To enable the waiters spend more time with the customers (and probably attend more tables than they do at present); and
2. To reduce the wait time for customers
An added motive might be to help them forecast demand better and reduce wastage (but this they could do even without the PDA).

I must add that none of the above was evident when we dined there last week. There was no improvement in the time taken for service and also we had search for our waiter a couple of times. But these must be early days for the PDA.

* I was not able to confirm if these are genuine iPAQ’s or some fake ones. I couldn’t see Compaq or HP logos in them