Last big news about pizza was at the Oscars, where the famous Brad Pitt gobbling down on a slice entered history. This time the national chain posted a video of a new prototype they are working on that would replace the plastic tables we so well know. The Pizza Hut table PC is a kind of interactive smarttable. It’s a very high-tech piece of gadgetry as it’s shown in this video, where 2 customers use this tablet table to make their own pizza by pinching and swiping (just like with a real smartphone or tablet). They choose the size of the pizza and favorite toppings and complete the order by all by themselves without talking to a Pizza Hut server. Pretty futuristic, huh?
The Pizza Hut table PC even has an NFC, visible in the video when the customer puts his smartphone on the table top. This concept is a project between Pizza Hut and the Texas based Chaotic Moon Studios. None of the parties revealed any further details on the table PC like availability or price of the Pizza Hut interactive “smarttable”.
From what we know, PC tables aren’t something new. Bill Gates introduced an early model 10 years ago during the International Consumer Electronics Show. Also, Lenovo and HP have some smarttables on the market right now. They were developed as an all-in-one PC that sat flat on a table. Pizza Hut is not even the first restaurant chain that wants to introduce this serve-yourself technology since Applebee and Chili both have tablets in their establishments. This solution is quite controversial because some believe that taking out the human factor out of these family restaurants could make the eating experience less fun and it also eliminates jobs.
Pizza Hut Table PC – The Future of Restaurant Serving?
The new serving concept might prove to be faster, which leads to more orders, which leads to more money (for the restaurants, of course). As for the serving staff, the company claims that the tips will go up because of the faster service the Pizza Hut table PC will provide.