[K2h]

I was pretty impressed with the low tech solution in the article. I thought of the same thing as you at first, digital menus online, or on the table, or.. digital paper menus.

They instead just offer a discount up front. 10-30% if you book a particlular time. So most everyone except the fractional multiplier afraid will know how to adjust the prices on the fly.

as an aside - many cheap places that I end up at have menus posted outside for the foot trafic, that may be the perfect place to replace it with a digital sign for dynamic pricing.

[jhermsmeyer]

Agreed. There are low tech ways to achieve a similar result. But operators, servers and managers absolutely loathe anything that changes their steps of service.

The winning solution will be completely transparent to their current workflow, and will also be seamless to the customer. Until this happens I don't think we'll see widespread adoption of new pricing strategies.

For instance, a pricing increase when many/most seats are filled is probably best way to discriminate in a restaurant. Sophisticated pricing strategies like those could become commonplace with digital menus, and the staff wouldn't have to think about it - but they would see the effect in their tip total.