I suppose it began with gas stations. Once Jack jogged out of the Clark station in Berea, pumped the gas, cleaned the windshield, joked with my mom and gave a stick of gum to us kids in the back. Now you hop out of your car, slide your credit card into a slot, take off the gas cap, jam the nozzle in, and pump the gas yourself, while a screen cheerily hectors you and some unseen person slouches in a bulletproof booth a dozen yards away.
Then self-checkout at drug stores, and grocery stores. My wife and I resisted, for a while. Solidarity! But during COVID, when the practice came to Sunset Foods, I yielded to what suddenly seemed like a strategy to address the staffing crisis. And I discovered there is an advantage to checking your own groceries — you pay closer attention to the prices ringing up, and have an easier time catching the chronic pricing errors, discrepancies that before tended to only be noticed once you were unbagging back home, necessitating a grumbling trip back to the store to recover that dollar or two.
Last week I met a longtime reader for lunch in Elmhurst, at Zenwich, an intriguing "Asian fusion" sandwich shop. Where I had a new experience at a fast food restaurant, one that seemed worth recounting as an augury of the future. We walked in at 12 noon to find an entirely empty restaurant. No customers. Nobody behind the counter. Only a screen. We worked our way through the various prompts, ordering a pair of sandwiches and a pair of sodas. I got a Thai BBQ pork belly sandwich and a Diet Coke. He paid, kindly, despite my protestations that the columnist is supposed to pay, we grabbed our beverages from a case and had a seat. Eventually a tray — a wooden board, idiosyncratically, perhaps supposed to be redolent of nature or some such thing — arrived up front, I heard his name called, and I jumped up — I was closer to the counter — turned, retrieved the board, noticed out of the corner of my eye a person of some sort, whose features, to be honest, were not arranged in a friendly greeting of warm hospitality and who soon fled back into the kitchen.
The sandwich was ... alright. Fresh bread, at least. Very wet with their "sweet and tangy" sauce which was more "meh and mayonnaise" in my view. I kept going for my napkin. And the meat ... well, take a look. It only covered half the sandwich, though they do say "thinly sliced" on the menu, so, points for candor. Still, human attention isn't the only thing in short supply at Zenwich.
I get why it's called Fusion. That sandwich is part with meat and part vegetarian. Nice concept.
ReplyDeleteBut does the price reflect it’s mostly veggies on a piece of bread?
DeleteI ran across this in St Louis at a Korean chicken place. I was required to scan a code and the menu was to appear on my phone, where I would complete my order. My phone, apparently steam powered, would not comply. I got frustrated, I got angry, I got curt. I tracked down a hidden human, who pointed out I could use an iPad stashed in a corner. The user interface was awful and I got frustrated and angry again. I finally completed the order. I should mention that, while I tried to get my phone to work, the restaurant filled up with young people, who navigated the app based, employee free process like it had been that way since the beginning of time, the smug bastards. In a few minutes a bag with my name on it appeared on a counter. We left to eat in a nearby park, this being the era of the plague. It was somebody else's order.
ReplyDeleteFine post, Dennis, with a wonderful kicker. We experienced this system at a brewery / restaurant in Niles (Une Année, for those scoring at home). We were outside in the patio area (see: "era of the plague" above) so it certainly made sense in limiting the number of times someone had to scurry out to wait on us. At first, the code thing wouldn't work on the phone, but a work-around via a website was also offered, which did work. Despite being an old-school SOB, I actually thought it was fine. Plus, you could order additional things after your first round, and put it on the same tab, which was convenient.
Delete"I was required to scan a code and the menu was to appear on my phone. My phone would not comply. I could use an iPad stashed in a corner. The user interface was awful. Finally completed the order while smug young bastards navigated the app-based, employee-free process. A bag with my name on it appeared on a counter...somebody else's order."
DeleteExactly why I don't...and won't...do any of that shit. Phones. Apps. Codes. Surly or non-existent employees. Smug youngsters chattering away and staring at their screens. Weird meatless fusions. Wrong orders. Screw all that noise...literally. I'd rather go hungry...and I have.
I'm so old-school that if I WERE a school, I'd have been torn down a long time ago. My wife and I shared a succession of flip-phones...one phone for both of us...for twenty years. We finally got ONE smartphone, right after Joe won. She said she'd never get hooked on it. the way everyone else has. Yeah, right. When she can't sleep, she's playing games on the phone. I barely touch it. She can navigate it...I can't. I don't like phones.
Hell, I can barely use the ordering kiosk at Mickey Ds without her help. I hate them. Never thought I'd miss the snarky teen-agers who screwed up your order. I do now. When this old out-of-touch geezer would get pissed off and throw a hissy fit, at least they had ears to hear it with. The kiosks...and that surly employee...don't give a damn if I'm frustrated and angry. And just what the hell is he so surly about? It's not like he was performing a TASK.
Zenwich used to be really good, it's still fairly solid, but not quite what it was.
ReplyDeleteIt was at one point on the somewhat abandoned but still fairly handy lthforum Great Neighborhood Restaurant list ( https://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewforum.php?f=28 ), but back when it was being maintained, they would also remove things from it. And it was.
Zenwich expanded some and is now in some ghost kitchen type setups at multiple locations these days, so there's one convenient to me, but we don't go to it much all the same because children balk at the various items.
Hi Neil. Here's the package we did on Chicago's Best about Zenwich waaaaaaay back in 2012: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iECGJFr08kU
ReplyDeleteI hope you enjoy. I looked good then, and its great to hear they're still going strong.
Turner Classic Movies recently broadcast a documentary called “The Automat” about a chain of self service cafeteria style restaurants in New York and Philadelphia that originated in the early 20th century, and presaged the kind of place you described today. In the Automats, whole cooked meals, sandwiches, desserts etc would be served in a sort of vending machine, each meal compartmentalised in a little box with a glass door. You’d drop the required number of nickels in, slide the glass door open and voila, you got your breakfast, lunch or dinner. The documentary features interviews with celebrities like Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner and Colin Powell, all recalling their memories of the place with nostalgic relish, and although I would expect that the cuisine at an eatery of this sort would be of the kind of middling mediocrity you described at Fusion, they all insist that the food was great (Brooks makes a point of the Automat coffee being the best he ever tasted, far better than cups that he’s spent $35 for in other parts of the world).
ReplyDeleteExcellent tie-in, Bruno. We watched "The Automat" on TCM and loved it. I'd long heard about the Automats and seen them in old movies and always wished I had had a chance to experience one. Just watching that doc -- well, it wasn't exactly the next-best thing, but it was enjoyable. The same concept being addressed by Neil today-- you get your food, but nobody has to wait on you -- many decades ago. One of the nice things about the show was that it pointed out how egalitarian the place was: integrated, when that was rather uncommon, and drawing folks from all walks of life. Even to the extent of strangers sharing the same table when the place was crowded. I also loved Mel Brooks' participation -- he was such an unabashed fan, it was hilarious to me. It was sad that increased costs contributed to bringing them down. Interesting that, when they raised the price of coffee, they had to *double* it to 10 cents since the machines only accepted nickels, and folks didn't like that at all...
DeleteI saw that TCM documentary, quite a while ago. Loved it. The Automat was great. They were still operating in '68, when I went out of my way to find one in Manhattan and drop the coins right into the slots. I had a wonderful time eating there and the food was GOOD. The experience was like being in an Edward Hopper painting.
DeleteThe Automat worked out well for me and my buddy, because we were longhaired college students hitching around the country that summer, and money was not plentiful. We even slept near the famous arch in Washington Square Park and saw junkies shooting up in an East Village crash pad, just like the one on "Mad Men." But those are other stories for other times.
There was a fusion take out place (featuring a Korean/Mexican mix) in my neck of the woods (Midway Airport)...briefly. I think they were counting on people drifting over from the half dozen hotels on the other side of Cicero -- didn't happen. A straight out Asian restaurant (Wok This Way) on the wrong side of Cicero also didn't last long, even with the catchy name.
ReplyDeletejohn
I would say some businesses lend themselves to being employee-free (as regards interacting with the public) better than others. HassleLess Mattress has been advertising the bejeezus out of the fact that they have no employees in their showrooms, which I don't see as much of a bragging point, as I've never felt pressured by a mattress salesman in the first place. More likely the company got fed up with the constant turnover of salesmen going crazy sitting around mattress showrooms for 8 hours a day.
ReplyDeleteSomething as... intimate?... as food preparation is not a business where I yearn for less contact, assuming it's anything more than a fast-food drivethru. Even the Automat had employees running around who could converse with you. (I was impressed to see that the Marvel series "Agent Carter" had several scenes in a very good recreation of a 1940s Automat, showing it as the everyday environment that it was in those days.)
I don't know why Zenwich seems so determined to hide their employees. I wonder what problem they are trying to solve.
I actually was one of those mattress salesmen working 8 (or 10 or 11) hours a day in a showroom by myself. I didn’t mind it because I always brought an ample supply of books, magazines and papers to read, so in many ways it was like getting paid to hang out at a library all day. One could make a surprisingly decent living doing it too, at least twenty odd years ago. Maybe not so much now.
DeleteAs for the reason that a place like Zenwich would want to conceal their employees from their clientele, it might have something to do with the difficulty that there seems to be in that business of finding people to work for you that you wouldn’t be thoroughly embarrassed to have representing the face, mumbling mouth, and piss poor attitude of your company. Sullenness, detachment, and “quiet quitting” seem to be the prime directives of the slacker throngs that comprise the fast food industry workforce. The only exception is Chick-fil-A, where, no matter which one you go to, the employees are always so consistently courteous and polite that it can feel like your in a parallel universe. They obviously know what they’re doing in their hiring and training processes there because I doubt that they’re paying much, if any more than the other places.