Customer Service

An inventor in Nuremberg, Germany has just opened a fully-automated restaurant, Baggers that delivers meals to diners via a gravity-powered rail system. No surly waiters or snobby sommelier, and you don't need to leave a tip for the machine. The kitchen is intalled directly beneath the roof of the multi-story restaurant. Customers order their meals using a touch-screen system that is placed at each table, and the entire restaurant is networked via a computer system. Customers' orders are registered upstairs in the kitchen and a computer in the cellar keeps track of supply stocks. The system also calculates the likely delivery times for drinks and meals at every table and keeps customers informed.

Breakfast Bar

Cereality is more than a place to get cereal. It's a new way of thinking about cereal. A new choice in fast food. And an idea whose time has come.

At Cereality, customers choose from their favorite brands and toppings and pajama-clad Cereologists fill the orders. And customers choose and add their own milk, just the way they like it.

Although mainly located in the midwest, I think this make-your-own cereal bar might just be the next big fast food franchise, now that Cold Stone has acquired Cereality.

Minnie Me

Bucking the trend of ever-expanding dining portions, Chicago-based Minnies is out to prove that bigger isn't always better. Featuring a wide selection of bite-size gourmet burgers and sandwiches, including traditional favorites such as grilled cheese and Reubens, alongside the more inventive Mykonos (roast chicken, tzaziki sauce and kalamata tapenade) and Thanksgiving delight (roast turkey, cranberries and wild rice gravy) Minnies applies nouvelle cuisine portions to casual dining. Besides serving waistline-minded eaters something to nibble on, the fifties-style diner gives hungrier customers the mix-and-match pleasure of tapas restaurants. Are you big on little food?

Reservations about Reservations?

For planners like me, when I go on vacation making restaurant reservations is as important as making flight and hotel reservations, but that's just me. I know for many people trying to figure out what they are going to have for dinner is stressful enough, let alone trying to figure out where.

In New York City, reservations are serious business, or I shall I say a new business. Allow me to introduce you to TableXchange, a new website devoted to scoring you New York's hard to get reservations at the hottest restaurants in town. Wish you can eat at Nobu or PerSe, no problem! The only thing you have to decide is for how many and what time. Think of TableXchange like a concert ticket broker, but instead of two tickets to The Blue Man Group you get a table for two at Blue Water Grill. Procrastinators, eat your heart out.

Hand Tossed

Naughty pizzerias have popped up in NYC and Canada. If you live or plan to visit the NYC area, you'll be surprised to hear that Cordato's in the Financial District is now offering illegal lapdances for only $10. According to a hidden camera investigation on New York's CBS 2 HD news, Cordato's is a popular pit stop just blocks from ground zero, where construction workers and Wall Street traders frequent. Can you blame them really, because what guy doesn't want a piece slice of the pie...