| The restaurant business is tough: slim margins, high rents, fierce competition. It also might seem congenitally resistant to the kinds of efficiencies that technological disruption has brought to industries across the economy in the last few decades. Don't tell that to chef Eric Rivera. As Joe Ray writes this week on Backchannel, Rivera has deployed his Seattle eatery—and doing it with a creative flair and reverence for fun and hospitality that could be a model for the industry. At Addo, his joint in the waterfront Ballard neighborhood, Rivera is using digital tools for everything from optimizing reservations (you pay in advance so he knows exactly how much to buy and how much staff to have on hand for any given meal), marketing (Mailchimp newsletters and a dozen social media accounts), and entertainment (on some nights patrons can hop into a Mario Kart game already in progress). "This is the future," Rivera says. "This is how it's done." None of it would matter, of course, if the food wasn't first-rate. It is. (And no wonder: Among other credits, Rivera was the longtime director of culinary research at Chicago's ultra-high-end Alinea restaurant). The restaurant is also upending another hoary dining convention: serving the same food in the same style night after night. Addo's menus and prices run the gamut from affordable dive bar themes to 12-course chef's extravaganzas that run $200 a head. As a diner said on a recent visit while holding one sandwich and eyeing another, "I don't want to stop eating this, but I want to start eating that." And with that, the technology melts into the background. Mark Robinson | Features Editor, WIRED |
Post a Comment