VeraSage

James Mason

Greetings.  This might be a novel application for RFID tags, but it’s hardly an innovation in pricing.  The ability to change pricing on the fly, particularly in a grocery store, has been around since the dawn of UPC codes, which is, of course, part of the reason they
were so quickly, and so readily accepted by grocers in the first place.  You don’t really think it was an accident that the very first ever UPC code was placed on a pack of Wrigley’s gum, do you?

RFID is great, and, depending on whether you’re using active or passive technology, it can do a lot of things, but changing prices on the fly isn’t made any easier by RFID technology than it was by barcoding, (of course, as delimited by the platform, the access point, and so on), and until you can point at an item and say “price change, increase ten cents” and go on about your business, it isn’t likely to get all that much easier. 

But won’t that be something?

Warm Regards,

James E. Mason

Ron Baker

James,

Good point, and you’re right it’s not really an innovation in pricing, but I do believe RFID tags could evolve in interesting ways to segment and price discriminate, strategies beyond just merely increasing prices, based on what I’ve heard being discussed.

James Mason

Ron:

Thanks so much for the reply.  I totally agree with you, and here’s what I’m waiting for:  Back in one of my thankfully forgotten lives, I used to be a waiter (they used to call us “food servers”, I guess to be more gender-neutral, or something, but a waiter I was, nevertheless).  It was a pretty fancy place, I guess, at least to the extent that fancy means a real chef and high check averages.

On busy nights the chef would “expedite” by which I mean he (yes, HE) would assemble orders for us, put them on a tray, and slide them to the side, ready to go out to the dining room.  Sadly way too often the wrong food server would pick up the wrong tray and take it to the wrong table.  Even more sadly, hilarity would rarely ensue.

Given the level of electronic sophistication available these days, I cannot understand why somebody somewhere isn’t combining electronic order-taking, production management, RFID, and order delivery in such a way as to ensure that, if the wrong waiter picks up the wrong tray, or starts to deliver to the wrong table, bells go off, whistles start to whistle, or cattle prods start to prod, so that, at Point Of Service, when it really starts to count, I can count on getting my Little Buckaroo Petite Steak For The Delicate And/Or Infirm, instead of the Monster Meat For Monstrous Meaty Men.

That would go a long LONG way toward improving things on the “Perfecting Service” front.  And it would ease, considerably, my relationship with my internist.  I’m just saying.

Warm Regards,

James.

James E. Mason
Managing Partner
Mason|McRight Legal Recruiting

Ron Baker

Hi James, Great point!  I did just recently see a show (on the travel channel I think) that showed a restaurant that has their menus on touch screens at each table, featuring tempting pictures of each dish, full descriptions, dietary information, etc.

But I guess that doesn’t solve your point about the waiter bringing the wrong dish, but it still looked neat and they claimed it turned tables much faster, less errors, etc.

Greg Lambert

I have read articles where fast food restaurants in Asia are using RFID and cell phone technology to speed up the ordering and paying process.  (http://www.gearlive.com/index.php/news/article/sk-telecom-brings-rfid-fast-food-11131228/)

Here’s another twist on this concept.  If my cell phone had a programmable RFID chip in it, then I could theoretically do this:

1.  Go to my favorite fast food restaurant’s website, order off the menu and program that order into my phone’s chip.
2.  Drive over to the restaurant (and either walk in or drive thru) and have my RFID chip read by the restaurant’s reader.  Thus, my order is placed as soon as I walk in. (Verification is sent back to my phone that the order was accepted.)
3.  Get my order at the “RFID Counter” and have it charged to my credit card automatically.

This is probably a little over-simplified, but this process could make it a lot more efficient to order and process fast food, in a truly “fast” method.

Greg Lambert