Restaurants set to dish up a surprise to customers with a thoroughly modern approach to ordering food, Zhao Yanrong reports.

Up until recently, the antique furniture at Qin Restaurant and Cafe in east Beijing, including the timeworn tea sets and the seven-string zither, called a guqin, gave customers the sense of eating in ancient times.

But that feeling of antiquity for diners has now given way to an attitude of hipness after the introduction of something very modern and sleek: Apple iPad menus.

At a time when iPhones and iPads are reshaping many industries, from telecommunications to retail, the catering business in China, which is highly labor-intensive and believed to be slow in adopting new technologies, is also embracing the change.

"The catering industry has a big market, but it is also one of the less-developed industries using technology. Most restaurants still depend on pen and paper, and managers yelling and waiters running," said Guo Jiasu, general manager of Pingxin Technology, a company that has developed tablet-PC software used to order food.

"The digital ordering system using mobile devices has existed for a few years, but it is the iPad that made the real change," Guo said.

The company ran the ordering system for 3,000 tablet PCs during the Beijing International Beer Festival from July 18 to Aug 17.

"I believe the wireless ordering system will become a core feature in the development of the catering industry," Guo said.

The restaurant inside the Red Wall Garden Hotel in Beijing's Dongcheng district started using iPad menus in April, even offering a version in English.

The tech-savvy restaurant manager said iPads will be an important tool during the next decade and the catering industry shouldn't be an exception.

"More managers or owners now were born in the 1980s and they want to use high-tech products everywhere," said Wei Jun, the manager of the Italian restaurant. "It's inevitable."

He also said the sleek product is a reflection of the high-end restaurant where customers, usually businessmen and businesswomen, typically spend more than 200 yuan ($31) per person for a meal.

At Qin Restaurant, their iPad menu sorts all of the dishes into categories, such as entrees and cold dishes. If the customer touches the photo of a specific dish, the digital menu introduces the dish and gives details of its ingredients and flavors.

"The iPad menus surprised me a bit, and I would love to recommend this restaurant to my friends and family for a little fun," said customer Wang Yatian, a first-time visitor to Qin Restaurant.

Wang originally came to the establishment on a recent Friday to hang out with his friends and have some tea and snacks. But he said that upon seeing the newfangled menu, they could not stop playing with the iPad.

"All the dishes look delicious on the iPad, which persuaded me to order some for an early dinner," Wang said.

Without consulting the waiter, Wang ordered four cold dishes, six hot dishes, rice and four plates of dessert with tea. The meal cost about 630 yuan for the dinner, which Wang said was a little expensive for his liking, but he added "it usually costs more to experience new things".

Zhang Lichang, manager of Qin Restaurant, said the new menu system has reduced costs since they started using the device in November. Zhang claims one full-color printed menu costs at least 1,000 yuan.

If the menu comes with special design aspects or materials, he said the cost of a menu could be more than 3,000 yuan. Restaurants often print new menus every year.

"But one iPad is only 3,999 yuan, which is the new fashion and can be used longer than a year," he said.

Prior to buying the iPads, Zhang was worried about making changes on the menu. He had been accustomed to printing out new pages and stuffing them into the menu. If a dish was no longer being served, he pasted a piece of paper over the photo of the dish in the menu.

"It did not look pretty in our menu books if we made changes, but it won't be a problem for iPads," he said.

The 10 iPads, which were bought in November, are still in use.

With the iPad menus, a waiter can serve six tables at the same time, while they could only handle four tables with regular menus.

"Customers won't get bored when they are waiting for their meals, because they can play games on the iPads. The new technology helps elevate our restaurant into a higher class," he added.

In addition to reducing costs and mistakes while placing an order, industry insiders also believe iPad menus are inevitable.

Xin Lei, marketing manager of Hangzhou Gravity Cyber Information Corp, which designs websites for hotels and restaurants as well as digital menus for tablet PCs, said the industry is still developing.

He said his company is creating a cloud computing system for iPad menus that will require less equipment and is able to use more data than the current iPad menu.

This expanding technology will encourage new restaurants to adopt the digital service and also lowers the initial set-up costs.

"The adoption of new inventions like the iPad menu can improve employees' capabilities, reduce costs and enlarge their profit margin," he said.

(China Daily 09/11/2011 page8)