Why would anyone buy an Ipad?

brian said:
Hmm thats a good idea.. Plus you can argue that you can cut the amount of waitresses needed because they can order right from the device and pay for it too.

The down side, no one wants to loose their job over technology, and they can be stolen*.

But I do like that Idea. I would love to go to a restaurant that has that setup.


On another note. I also was thinking of an ipad for flights. Living in Cali and going to school in Virginia means a lot of travailing. Planes also have the worst setup for laptops and makes it hard to watch a movie or do anything. an I pad would be powerful yet small enough for me to do what I want on a plane..
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I have a set of friends that all work for the same company. Their jobs require them to travel, and they travel to Korea and Germany as well as all over the USA all the time. They all own iPads. On a 10 hour flight your battery isn't going to last that long, but on an iPad it will. A few of them are comic book fans, and have the Marvel app, or whatever app it is that allows them to download and read new comic books.

Of course it doesn't replace their laptops at all when they are actually working, but they all seem to love their iPads.
 
tlarkin said:
Lets say, that they decide to get an iPad for every 3 people they can seat, that means they would need 200/3 ipads, which is roughly 67 rounding up. At $499 each that runs out to be $33,433.00.
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I was thinking one ipad per table, or dining party, so if your math is correct on the menus, then, in my scenario, I suppose iPads would be cheaper. Still find it hard to believe that menus would be so expensive but I'm sure it's possible.

tlarkin said:
I have seen places that actually install LCD screens near your table that just show the menu in an interactive power point.
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Dude, back in 07, MS told us we'd all be using Surface technology for this by now. :p

Still haven't seen a Surface in any restaurant, bar, hotel, shop, etc... I know they're out there... somewhere. Well I suppose that device you used was prolly running windows if it was a powerpoint. that's close I guess.
 
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Real leather is not cheap. Expensive paper is not cheap. A long time ago when I was a teenager I worked in a copy center. Not one that printed high end menus, but just mass copies of anything you wanted. For us to print, fold, bind and staple something cheap it was like $5 bucks per an item. That is small print, a few pages, but if you ordered in extreme bulk you could knock it down to like $3.

I have no clue what a fine dining menu costs, but I am sure by the time you add in all the costs, plus labor to have it made I can see it costing over $100 per a menu. I mean if you meal is going to cost $200, then having the menu cost that, doesn't really surprise me.

I guess it just really depends on the menu you are going after. The leather menu covers by them self seem to be at least $30.

http://www.restaurantequipmentsolutions.com/RSCH-LTH-3V55X85.html

http://www.restaurantequipmentsolutions.com/RSCH-7005-12X8-12.html

Paper can range from anywhere from a fraction of cent per a piece up to 10s of dollars per a piece. Depending on weight, quality, texture. Do you have something raised on it, to make it look fancy?

http://www.menushoppe.com/home/mnu/page_124/blank_menu_papers.html?rid=base

I would assume the fancy parchment paper which is $18.00 for 100 sheets when purchased 20+ sets of 100 sheets. Say the menu is 5 pages, so 5*200 is 1000 total. Plus the drink menu (now this can be very long if they have a huge wine selection, it will categorized by type, and by year) is lets say for just argument's sake also 5 pages, which is 500 more sheets needed. So, 1,500 sheets total, does not even begin to scrape the 20,000 sheet price drop, which puts the price at $22 per 100. So, 1500 x $22 is $33,000.

So, 300 leather binders is going to run you @ $40 each $12,000, plus $330 for paper, now we need to figure out printing costs, ink cost, and any thing else. Like having the restaurant logo embroidered on the leather bound menu.

I don't have access to the costs of these things handy, but lets say gold foil printing is going to cost you $10 per a menu, the actual print job itself will be $1 per a sheet, to have the logo stamped on the leather binding is another $10, the labor cost of printing them is (guessing here) $500, and of course since these are fancy menus with fancy fonts there needs to be some sort of design done to it, like in Adobe Illustrator or something, so the labor costs go up. Plus commission an artist to design something fancy for the menu. I am going to say, $500?

300 logos stamped on the leather = $3,000.00
gold foil print $10 per a menu = $3,000.00
$1 per a page 5 pages * 300 menus = $1,500.00
labor to print = $500.00
artist commission = $500.00
300 leather bound binders for menus = $12,000.00
cost of fancy paper = $33,000.00.00
Total = $53,500.00
cost per menu = $178.33

67 iPads = $33,433.00
100 iPads = $49,900.00

Trust me, when you are spending 150 to 400 per a meal per a person at a fine dining restaurant they are going to buy the most expensive stuff to make their menu look good. The high end critics will judge them on such things. With millions of dollars invested at times it doesn't surprise me menus for a 200 person restaurant can cost over $50k.
 
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Heh, I thought these IPads were just created for reading online/digital books. :0) Hmm, if you have excess money, one will probably buy one though it can not replace the use of a good laptop. Bottom line, I'm not thinking of buying one either.
 
I could buy a small car for the price of an ipad in New Zealand, it's around $1,014.53 USD. That's pretty expensive for something the cat would probably sleep on and you would think with all the billions Steve Jobs is making he would buy a decent pair of pants instead of turning up to conferences in poor fitting jeans ;)
 
Dramen said:
I could buy a small car for the price of an ipad in New Zealand, it's around $1,014.53 USD. That's pretty expensive for something the cat would probably sleep on and you would think with all the billions Steve Jobs is making he would buy a decent pair of pants instead of turning up to conferences in poor fitting jeans ;)
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Where are you looking? The iPad starts at $799 NZD which is about $590 USD...
 
that is nasty.

back to the ipads as menu's, that reminds me of (and i know im going on a tangent here) microsoft's surface idea. The coffee table, i think that would be a cool thing to have in a restaurant. order from your table, pay at your table, play games while you wait, request refills etc... it would take away from the waiter but i think it is a good idea... I see that being the best environment for that product, however it would be cool to have one in your house as your actual coffee table..i cant see the price being right.

tablets as waiter pads would be a good idea; though not one for menus those would get stolen so fast. all the waiter would have to do is click the table... click what they want and send to the kitchen and then when the food is ready it can "page" his tablet.
 
I wouldn't. I love my iPod touch and use it for email and like a portable computer sometimes, but if you are going to spend that much and have to carry around something that large, I would by far prefer to just buy a nice laptop.
 
brian said:
On another note. I also was thinking of an ipad for flights. Living in Cali and going to school in Virginia means a lot of travailing. Planes also have the worst setup for laptops and makes it hard to watch a movie or do anything. an I pad would be powerful yet small enough for me to do what I want on a plane..
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There are two people I know that have iPads, and both have to travel quite frequently interstate for work. Generally Melbourne to Sydney, also to Canberra, Brisbane etc. One works in sales, the other is a technical consultant. They've each said yes, you can do more proper content authoring with a laptop, but for plane travel, the iPad is far more convenient, and has been noted the battery lasts longer too.
 
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Why did I buy an iPad? Because I have the money to burn on one for the hell of it and it appealed to me at the time of wanting a new gizmo.

Quiltface said:
back to the ipads as menu's, that reminds me of (and i know im going on a tangent here) microsoft's surface idea. The coffee table, i think that would be a cool thing to have in a restaurant. order from your table, pay at your table, play games while you wait, request refills etc... it would take away from the waiter but i think it is a good idea... I see that being the best environment for that product, however it would be cool to have one in your house as your actual coffee table..i cant see the price being right.
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Another great way to eliminate high volumes of employment positions across the globe. And, of course, to make people yet more anti-social in society. I quite like the fact that when I go out I have a person wait on me. Makes for the whole experience of eating out at half decent places. Now, it would be cool to have the table at home with the ability to fine tune it to control the lights, TV, fire and what not.
 
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At the end of the day its a giant ipod. That is what i tell everyone. It does do more and you can see more than the average ipod touch but is it really worth paying $500 more than a ipod touch for a bigger screen?
 
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