Sitting on the patio, it becomes clear that the forward-thinking goes beyond the visual elements. There are placards at every table that explain their unique service method.
“You might notice that we don’t do tipping,” the signs read. “We think the tipping system is unfair to employees and customers alike. We make sure all of our employees are paid so don’t you worry about it.”
Customers at Wriggly Tin can order and pay for drinks using a QR code at the bottom of the sign, and order food at a kiosk. Employees bring out the food and patrol the patio for questions to answer and drinks to refill.
Wriggly Tin is one of many Dallas restaurants incorporating emerging technologies into their service method. QR codes, robots and even artificial intelligence are becoming increasingly present in the dining experience. Human employees, it may seem, are being seen and heard from less.
Aaron Garcia, who owns Wriggly Tin, says that his ideas may not work for every kind of restaurant (he singles out high-end restaurants as being more contingent on human interaction), but they are ideal for the kind of business he’s trying to run.
“We’re trying to kind of blur the lines a little bit between fast casual and traditional bar or restaurant service,” says Garcia, “It’s not like a traditional model where there's a waiter touching the table every so often. There's less of that because we're trying to do the same model with less people.”
Instead of the standard $2.13 serving wage, Wriggly Tin employees make $14 an hour. Garcia says that with the focus being shifted away from full service and vying for tips, the crew is free to work together to keep things running smoothly.
“We have a really awesome team that doesn't really care about the roles because they're not really coming up,” he says. “I love that we can do that. That's a huge win for us. Makes our team more agile, or when people need time off or are sick. Generally, nobody's bummed out about it just going to work. So that's a huge positive.”
The system at Wriggly Tin is new and is constantly being tweaked. Garcia is open about the fact that new customers are sometimes confused by his way of doing things and emphasizes that relying on technology is just an option. His human team is happy to step in if the app isn’t your cup of tea.
“We try to identify folks who are confused or put off by that, and we just take a handheld device and take their order,” he says. “We're not trying to force people to use the system.[..] This is the quickest way to order your food and drink. It's a shortcut.”
Dallas diners and drinkers generally seem to like Wriggly Tin, with Yelp reviews highlighting the QR code system as easy to use and the no-tipping model as refreshing. Unfortunately, not all visions of the future of restaurants are viewed as optimistic.
BellaBots are the controversial new staff members joining restaurants worldwide.
Lauren Drewes Daniels
Dining With Droids
Nir Sela, who owns a brunch spot in McKinney called Layered, is well acquainted with this backlash. At the height of the pandemic he was struggling to keep people on staff. To help keep his business afloat, he invested in a BellaBot, a robot that can wheel orders to a table.These days, however, Sela insists that the BellaBot is not a replacement for human labor. Rather, it assists his staff by carrying orders to the table and allows them to focus on the customers
“Instead of my server being in the back and be on the phone or talking about what they did on the weekend, they focus on the dining room,” he says.
While many of his customers are delighted by the robot, Sela has been told by some that they could never support a restaurant that uses a BellaBot.
“We didn't actually reduce staff,” Sela says in response to the backlash he has received. He’s clearly tired of explaining this. “It just helps us to focus more on the guests.”
In 2022, McDonald’s caused a stir by opening an almost entirely automated location in Fort Worth. Crew members are present to prepare the food, but customers order either at kiosks or ahead of time on the app. The food is delivered by conveyor belt. The customer can come and go without interacting with a person.
More recently, the fast food restaurant Rise Southern Biscuits & Righteous Chicken opened near Victory Park. Orders are placed either through an app, online or at a kiosk. Prepared meals are then placed in warm lockers with zero human interaction.
Innovation on the Menu
Dallas-based Velvet Taco says it is “embracing technology as a way to drive culinary innovation.” Like many restaurant chains, Velvet Taco has its own smartphone app where customers can order and pay ahead, earn rewards and share feedback.In the Apple app store, the Velvet Taco app currently has almost 15,000 reviews and maintains a rating of 4.9 out five stars.
Velvet Taco’s buzziest use of new technology is its Chat GPTacos, a series of products that lets chef Valencia Willis experiment with AI-generated recipes.
“She asked Chat GPT to generate a recipe for the perfect taco, officially creating the world’s first AI Generated Taco, which was one of our top performing WTFs [Weekly Taco Features] in 2023,” a spokesperson for Velvet Taco tells us.
Tech is so ingrained in the restaurant experience at this point that you’d think we’d be able to taste it. If mixed reactions are any indicator, however, it’s that good customer service will always require a human element to it — whether it’s the sense of humor behind the Chat GPTaco or the free hands of the servers assisted by BellaBot at Layered.
Garcia knows this, pointing out that Wriggly Tin is as socially interactive as any full-service restaurant.
“When it's really busy, at any place, human interaction goes down anyways. It's just part of it,” he says. “I think when we're having a normal, average day, we have a lot of good interactions with customers. It feels great.”
