To Survive in Tough Times, Restaurants Turn to Data-Mining (nytimes.com) 175
An anonymous reader shares a report: The early diners are dawdling, so your 7:30 p.m. reservation looks more like 8. While you wait, the last order of the duck you wanted passes by. Tonight, you'll be eating something else -- without a second bottle of wine, because you can't find your server in the busy dining room. This is not your favorite night out. The right data could have fixed it, according to the tech wizards who are determined to jolt the restaurant industry out of its current slump. Information culled and crunched from a wide array of sources can identify customers who like to linger, based on data about their dining histories, so the manager can anticipate your wait, buy you a drink and make the delay less painful. It can track the restaurant's duck sales by day, week and season, and flag you as a regular who likes duck. It can identify a server whose customers have spent a less-than-average amount on alcohol, to see if he needs to sharpen his second-round skills. So Big Data is staging an intervention. Both start-ups and established companies are scrambling to deliver up-to-the-minute data on sales, customers, staff performance or competitors by merging the information that restaurants already have with all sorts of data from outside sources: social media, tracking apps, reservation systems, review sites, even weather reports.
Data mining not needed (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd rather eat at restaurants that were competently managed over restaurants that rely on spying on their customers in order to avoid having to be competently managed.
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Time to face the truth methinks: Most people want to be spied on.
They're got nothing to hide and it makes everything that happens to them more relevant and personalized. What's wrong with that? (shrug)
Re:Data mining not needed (Score:4)
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I don't wish to voluntarily give the corporates this type of information.
I also pretty much avoid chain restaurants where I guess this type of tech is the most prevalent.
I prefer the local restaurants...and living in New Orleans, you can go forever and not even see a chain restaurant which is nice.
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I also pretty much avoid chain restaurants where I guess this type of tech is the most prevalent.
I thought what you thought, and even started writing a comment about that, and then decided to see if I was suffering from confirmation bias. My feeling was that restaurants wouldn't want to depend on cash registers as a service, but I was wrong [techcrunch.com].
There's still plenty of old school restaurants around banging out orders on cash registers, but they seem to be giving up because you need to have computers in house anyway to support web orders. Web ordering is becoming very common now; virtually nobody is handling
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Well, most restaurants use a POS system - the waiter/waitress enters the order onto the system, and it's automatically zapped to the back of the house for them to prepare you order. Only very small restaurants still
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Amazon. Apple. Google. Indifference doesn't cause people to deliberately take out their wallets, and give large amounts of money to people who are actively, obviously spying on them. I agree with the parent. Most people want to be spied on.
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I'll be devil's advocate for a bit (mind you, I value my privacy but at the same time I try to remain objective even though I don't like what I see):
You say "people don't want to be spied on" and I agree, fully. there's a small problem though... most data mining isn't the same as spying.
I had to look up the definition, because I wasn't sure myself:
verb
verb: spy; 3rd person present: spies; past tense: spied; past participle: spied; gerund or present participle: spying
1.
work for a government or other organiza
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Time to face the truth methinks: Most people want to be spied on.
I even dance naked in front of my unsecured security cameras with whipped cream on my nipples.
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Time to face the truth methinks: Most people want to be spied on.
I even dance naked in front of my unsecured security cameras with whipped cream on my nipples.
You really should take the cheese spread off first.
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Why hide anything? Hell I broadcast a weekend-regular live porn broadcast.
Of course, I'm fucking my husband, which stops most of you (well, 60% of you, by site statistics) but hey, it gives me more play money (literally, in every sense of the word given our government.)
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Are you claiming that your husband is 40% of the members of this site which is why 60% of us are stopped from participating in the aforementioned activity?
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"whipped cream on my nipples." So not fully naked then. Stop hiding.
Re:Data mining not needed (Score:5, Insightful)
They're got nothing to hide and it makes everything that happens to them more relevant and personalized. What's wrong with that? (shrug)
Having something to hide doesn't enter into it (and that's a stupid argument any, since everyone has something to hide).
In terms of restaurants, though, if the restaurant is even halfway decent and you're a regular, you will get relevant and personalized service without the spying. It's called personally knowing your customers.
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>They're got nothing to hide
Nobody has nothing to hide. Nobody. I don't believe that your medical records should be available to anyone but your doctor or other medical professionals bound by patient confidentiality with a need to know.
Moreover, that's not really the point. Large data sets have immense power as has been proven recently. Just metadata can draw a detailed picture of your life, actual raw hard data is considerably more dangerous.
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"Most people want to be spied on."
No, they don't. They just don't KNOW, which is the whole point behind Podesta's "We purposefully created an ignorant populace" part of the leaked e-mails which you obviously refused to read and fucking comprehend so that you are aware of the situation we are in.
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Well, I have no problem with being spied upon--as long as I benefit from it.
In the above example, if I'm paying good money to go to such-and-such restaurant and I love duck, it might be worthwhile for the restaurant to actually have duck that night. So I have no problem with the restaurant keeping track of what I order when I come in--it ensures that they might have something I enjoy.
On the other hand, the restaurant sells that information to my insurance company which looks over what I eat and decides tha
Re:Data mining not needed (Score:5, Interesting)
No shit ... my favorite restaurant is a little local place where the chef/owner is in his presentation kitchen and looking out and waving to his regular customers and always willing to make a one-off dish ... the head waitress has worked in the industry for years (many with this chef), and also knows the regulars by name as well as what they like. And even the people who she doesn't know by name still get the same attentive service.
When we go there, we graze our way through a 4-5 course meal and a generous amount of drinks since we're walking anyway.
Almost without exception (not that they need to) they'll comp us a couple of things, because they like their regulars and by the time we've had a 2+ hour meal, they've more than made money on our visit.
When I dine out, I pay in cash because the wife and I put money into the dining out kitty and spend from that. I've heard of places saying they won't accept cash, and they just summarily lose my business.
I simply won't allow a restaurant to gather digital analytics on me. The place which knows me by name, knows my drink and food preferences, and will happily tweak a menu item for me? That place doesn't need analytics, and wins my business the old fashioned way ... by bloody well earning it and giving me a dining experience which is awesome from start to end.
A restaurant who is going to try to tie me to analytics with some asshole company who wants to track me through the real and digital world? That place will simply never get my business.
Even less fancy restaurants are more than capable of having competent wait staff who don't leave people sitting with empty drinks and can remember people's tastes. Hell, I know pizza places where the wait staff still all know us by sight and remember our drink orders ... because that's part of the job.
If your wait staff is that bad ... this is a management problem, not a data problem.
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A restaurant who is going to try to tie me to analytics with some asshole company who wants to track me through the real and digital world? That place will simply never get my business.
Mine either. But you know what? It doesn't matter, because we are outnumbered a hundred thousand to one in the marketplace. It will happen whether you and I like it or not.
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If you traveled though, couldn't you see the appeal of having new-to-you restaurants deliver a similarly awesome dining experience, if they wanted to?
Re:Data mining not needed (Score:5, Interesting)
They're not interested in waiters who leave people with empty drinks.
They're interested in grilling waiters who don't upsell enough alcohol.
Even if it's a guy/gal who has a natural talent for attracting clientele and had increased your business - or any other number of useful traits, which don't show up on a spreadsheet and therefore s/he's going to be "reviewed" onto the chopping block.
Metrics are usually genuine; the conclusions attached to them are usually voodoo.
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You know which chains are in on this.
Crapplebees, Chili's, Outback, Olive Garden, Red Lobster etc. Mediocre, at best, on their best day.
They are looking for success like the 'Happy meal' was. By providing a five cent toy, they drag the whole family in and feed them _shit_. Because the snot monkey makes the decisions.
There are no options vs buying a car made by a large international corporation. I don't understand why anybody gets food directly (Cisco notwithstanding) from a crappy corporate restauran
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I doubt these chains would be willing to spend the money on data mining. They can barely operate their restaurants, they have no budget for high-tech anything.
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Because not everybody feels the same way as you do. I would probably FAR more enjoy going to several of the ones you mentioned, rather than I suspect what you like - some snooty ridiculously priced place.... even if someon
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Try a good local ethnic family restaurant. Cheaper and _much_ better than the shit chains.
The franchise fees come right off the top. Perhaps they could hire competent cooks or even a chef if they weren't paying 10%+ to corporate to advertise the shit food and tell them exactly how to cook it.
The simple fact is that corporate restaurants set menus and recipes nationally. They don't hire cooks that know to taste the food and adjust for today's ingredients. Just for example: No two batches of tomatoes sau
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Suddenly the world shifts axis and Crapplebees food is good?
Yes. (Score:1)
It's reasonably good food.
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There is no accounting for taste. Apparently some people like bland, burnt hamburgers for $20. Just good enough, you don't send it back (when an employer is paying).
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Earlier this summer, I wound up eating at Applebee's. My dinner was delicious and not the usual restaurant fare, which surprised me, as I never expected that from Applebee's. I don't know if the chain changed or that one got the go-ahead to have good food, but it's my anecdote and I'm sticking to it.
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Those of us that have worked there overrule your bullshit opinion and statement. Crabblebees is 100% accurate.
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"I'd rather eat at restaurants that were competently managed over restaurants that rely on spying on their customers in order to avoid having to be competently managed."
You obviously never worked food service. If we don't watch you, how the fuck are we supposed to know when your glass needs to be refilled? If you come often enough, should we not know (excepting a new person hired between your last visit and this one) your fucking drink of choice?
Your very presence is fucking information. This is nothing new
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I want a restaurant to pay its employees enough so that they stay around long enough to recognize me and know what beer I want, not to store my preferences in a machine oh and hey by the way let's just sell that data up the river, eh? I dine with cash so I'm not particularly vulnerable to this kind of data collection, but I do find the whole idea offensive. Hence, cash.
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You obviously never worked food service. If we don't watch you, how the fuck are we supposed to know when your glass needs to be refilled?
I have worked a LOT of food service. I'm not talking about paying attention to, and getting to know, customers. Of course restaurant staff should be doing that -- that's not spying. I'm talking about sending data about those customers off to Big Data services. That's spying.
Wake up, millennial child.
You make fascinating, and laughably incorrect, assumptions.
Re:Data mining not needed (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a distinction to be made between paying attention and spying. Is the waiter just keeping an eye on my table? That's paying attention. Is personal information about my "experience" being entered into a database for further analysis, where it's shared and combined with data from other databases? That's spying.
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My favorite restaurants already know all about me, because they are my favorites and I frequent them to a degree that I am known by the owners and staff. They already know what I like because they talk to me and because I tell them, not because of a bunch of numbers being crunched.
They don't need data mining for people who go to same restaurants all the time and order the same dishes. They need it for people like me who go mix up different restaurants and different dishes as a matter of course. There is predictability in there but you need to crunch a significant amount of data over a long period to find it.
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I haven't seen a Burger King or similar run out of burgers but I have seen them run out of buns and other essentials and not so essentials. BTW, they do use software to track their inventory. I worked the delivery side way back (30+ years ago) when the tracking was all done manually in little books and I've watched the technology change as my wife has been involved on the restaurant side.
Restaurants frequently run out of certain dishes. The further from burgers and reheating pre-packaged a restaurant is, th
Could be many reasons (Score:2)
Are the other dining guests too noisy? Is there enough parking? Is the surrounding area safe?
Is the food served fresh? UK has a TV show with a famous chef helping diners solve their customer problems. Once place cooked everything fresh to perfection, then put in a deep freeze to last the whole week. Food was served half defrosted, or completely mushy.
This just in (Score:2)
The rest of the news from 2006 will be forthcoming shortly
No Duck? (Score:2)
Rabbit Season!
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or hassenpfeffer, whatever it takes.
How did you know...? (Score:5, Funny)
"How did you know I wanted a medium rare filet? I haven't even ordered yet."
"It was easy sir. Our sewer system is routed through the kitchen where we perform mass spectometry on your waste matter. Out of your last 73.4 feces samples you've provided, we calculated an 89.27% preference for medium rare filets on Tuesday nights before 8PM, especially after you've had sex in the missionary position."
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If only they would turn to (Score:2)
Offering good food, pleasant service and a nice atmosphere at a reasonable price.
If I have to go to any of these restaurants (probably in a group where I have no input) I wouldn't be paying in anything other than cash.
If they're data mining they're probably not bothering to fix the things that are really wrong...
Data miners can FUCK OFF (Score:1)
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What is all this faux anger about how you will deal with a restaurant that doesn't accept cash? I have never been in a restaurant or store (grocery, furniture, bike, book, adult) or garage or anything that didn't accept cash. I haven't tried cash at a hotel for a couple of decades so I'm not sure about them.
Where are you people at that you have lots of small retail outlets refusing to take cash?
I will not go to data mining establishments (Score:1)
Code that.
Have cash. Will pay where I want to, eat where I want to, and if you're "too full" there's another better restaurant on the next block.
The restaurant industry's in a slump (Score:3)
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Left-wing politics has good intentions, but their implementations of those intentions often have the opposite effects. It's the same thing with post-secondary education where subsidizing it has driven up costs and all manner of rules a
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The projects worked great (Score:2)
Another half-hearted attempt (Score:1)
Where are the chairs with built in anal probes? It allows to monitor the customers digestive track and, as a bonus, it makes sure the kids do not run through the restaurant.
Data mining will never save a bad restaurant (Score:4, Insightful)
Restaurants that serve good food and understand their customers and control costs and are in a sensible location will do fine. Restaurants that ignore these realities do poorly. Restaurants that chase the latest fad tend to die when the fad does. Running a restaurant in the best of times is a complicated, demanding, and low margin business. It's easy to get into but few last more than a year or two. Have food that people really like, cook and serve it competently, find a good location, and don't be stupid when it comes to costs.
Data mining will NEVER be a savior for a poorly run restaurant. People might try your place once but they aren't going to come back if they don't like the experience. At best it might help some chains identify poor performers and to compare between stores but to be frank, if the owner/chef of the restaurant doesn't already know this then they are pretty bad at their job.
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Thinking about the places we go to regularly, I can't imagine any of them data-mine. Why? Because they ask. And if the answer isn't, "That was awesome!", they try to make it right. One did an awesome whitefish cake patty. I found a single pinbone in it. Pointed it out politely, and said that it wasn't a big deal, but I wanted the cooks to know. Comped. Another we had a server who was new and bad. The shift boss that I knew well came over to say hi, and I said that she was not very good. Just wanted her to k
Data mining is (often) overkill (Score:2)
Thinking about the places we go to regularly, I can't imagine any of them data-mine. Why? Because they ask.
The reason is that it probably makes little sense financially. Data mining requires a large data set and unless you are a large chain most restaurants simply don't generate enough data to make the cost of getting it worth the bother. Their POS system captures plenty if it is reasonably modern and they should be having regular staff meetings to go over what happened each day. Data mining for a small local restaurant is like hunting sparrows with a howitzer. It's overkill and expensive overkill at that.
Slump in restaurants (Score:4, Insightful)
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Generally, but not always, the more you pay, the less you get. Sometimes stated as the fancier the atmosphere and presentation, the less on the plate.
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Alternate headline (Score:1)
"Data mining market so saturated that startups and established companies are now pursuing even the restaurant industry"
Awkward (Score:3)
As in Patrick McGoohan's The Prisonner: "I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered". That kind of innovation will drive me away from restaurant that use it.
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Too late, idiot. You've been numbered.
Following up on The Prisonner: "I am not a number, I am a free man!"
Not Going to Work (Score:2)
Data Mining only improves product not the service. Restaurant is about the mix of both.
It doesn't take a genius to see that a dirt cheap waiter/ waitress forgetting an order, too busy with their phone, or impatient with serving their customers result in fewer customers to the restaurant. Mining the customers does nothing to improve the most common underline problem.
If they want data from customers, they are already too late as they should have known their customers before starting the restaurant. Let's use
What could go wrong? (Score:2)
You: "Hi, I'd like to make a dinner reservation for Friday at 6:30."
Restaurant employee: "Sure, let me pull up the calendar." (The computer identifies you by caller ID and notes you don't drink alcohol, so it's a bad idea to let you take up a table at their busiest time.) "I'm sorry, we don't have any free seats then. We do have openings at 5:30, or after 7."
No possibilities for abuse here, none at all.
Yet another New York/Los Angeles problem (Score:2)
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You're just living in the wrong part of the country. Some areas have a surplus of vegan options.
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Yeah, but nobody wants to live in an area where the majority of people are vegans who actively want to pay twice the going rate at restaurants - just to show how gluten-free they are.
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Veganism and "gluten-free" are two different things. Gluten comes from wheat, not animals, Being vegan is a choice driven mainly by philosophical and ethical considerations. For most people, going "gluten-free" is just idiotic pseudoscience. Unless you have Celiacs disease or some other gluten related digestive disorder, there is no rational reason to avoid gluten.
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Yup. I have a friend whose life was almost ruined before she got her diagnosis (don't know if it's actually Celiac's Disease) to replace the earlier one of congestive heart failure.
I also have a friend, who I see more often, with a sulfite problem, and that's not on labels. I've gotten pretty good at reading ingredient lists, but it would be really nice to have some sort of labeling.
Re:Are you saying... (Score:5, Informative)
All vegans can say that.
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Humans are naturally omnivores. No amount of hand waving, supposing etc will ever change that.
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I know, right? Looking at our teeth alone proves that.
Just forgo the armchair, hippy, homeopathic schlock and just say you're vegan because you do not wish to support killing other animals (or you simply hate the texture or it gives you gas, or whatever personal reasons are). Case closed.
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Was vegan ever cool ?
(and if you're a vegan just because you think it's cool, you're a moron)
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You mean I can go to a restaurant and order a vegan taco filled with real vegans?
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You can get water at any restaurant, quit your bitching herbivore.
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"Good luck with that. You cannot do data-mining on clients you do not serve."
All I have to do is open my eyes and watch people in public.
Apparently your under-18 self never heard of 'people-watching' as a means of identifying new trends.
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All farming (not just animal) destroys natural habitat for wild animals so don't be so smug.
But growing meat requires a lot more.
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your restaurant only serves dead animal chunks like cavemen
I haven't been able to find a restaurant that has cavemen on the menu. Do you know of any in the Los Angeles metro area?
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Vegans can't eat from kitchens that cook meat now?
People are social creatures, unless they have normal, good food the Vegan place will go broke. Most people won't be pushed around by herbivores.
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"Vegans can't eat from kitchens that cook meat now?"
Outrage is so bad now-days that the smell of meat sends most vegans into an unconscionably-deep fit.
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unless they have normal, good food the Vegan place will go broke.
Not in California. My city (San Jose) have several 100% vegan restaurants.
Loving Hut [lovinghut.us] is a restaurant chain that serves only vegan food. They seem to be doing well. I have eaten there many times with my vegan daughter, and the food is pretty good.
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Try and follow along. How would that work in a town of 12K with about 100 (based on 0.5% pulled from GGPs dark smelly places) herbivores.
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"being specialized in vegan meals"
If you can't handle every fucking cuisine you can't call yourself a cook, let alone a chef.
That's 20+ fucking years of experience behind me talking. Maybe you weak millennials will accept a meager fresh out of culinary school 6-year student who can only do Wellingtons and Eggs Benedict, that won't fly with us born in the kitchen fire cooks who learned an entire swath of cuisine (in my case, Oriental, vegan or otherwise) through hard work and a real hands-on education.
You pa
Ummm. No. (Score:2)
ROTFL, 'Oriental' is a cuisine?
If you can even say that then you dont have a god damn clue about 'oriental' food.
I guess you cook 'both' types of food right? 'oriental' and 'western'? the difference is if the chilli sauce is sweet, right?
I am pretty sure the rather highly acclaimed pastry chefs (sorry, keeping the words simple for you here) I know don't do great 'Wellingtons and Eggs'..
My local Malaysian/Chinese chef does about 30 pretty damn fantastic and authentic dishes, but cannot fry a steak properly.
B
Re: Yeah (Score:2)
He sings racist songs while operating the fryalator at Burger King.
"Ting tong, something wong,
Gotta cook the fries.
Ching chong, smoke a bong,
Chinks have slanted eyes."
Management and customers put up with it because he's fucking retarded, and damned good at making fries.
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Oh stop talking economics and profit/loss to the vegan. They don't believe in all that mumbo jumbo anyway.
Re:This data mining shit creeps me out. (Score:4, Insightful)
Data mining is creeping me out. I constantly feel that I'm being manipulated.
Because you are. Manipulating you is pretty much the entire value proposition of consumer data mining.
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Data mining is creeping me out. I constantly feel that I'm being manipulated.
Because you are. Manipulating you is pretty much the entire value proposition of consumer data mining.
What creeps me out is the fact that the masses happily give away their privacy and allow themselves to be manipulated, which is the cutesy Millennial term for brainwashing.
The future is an entire generation of purebred social media narcissists who are sponsored from their synthesized test-tube birth, born to be a product and pre-programmed to maximize revenue. By comparison, a full frontal lobotomy would create a better human.
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The future is an entire generation of purebred social media narcissists who are sponsored from their synthesized test-tube birth, born to be a product and pre-programmed to maximize revenue.
But put that into perspective: pretty much the exact same thing can be said of every past generation going back, at least, to ancient Rome. The only thing that changes is the style of it.
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The future is an entire generation of purebred social media narcissists who are sponsored from their synthesized test-tube birth, born to be a product and pre-programmed to maximize revenue. By comparison, a full frontal lobotomy would create a better human.
...My pet theory is that it has been a slow decline over several generations, basically since corporal punishment was nixed from the socially acceptable parenting toolbox.
Your pet theory is nothing more than a bubble-wrapped PC-friendly way of describing or justifying our decline and what the future holds. Mine is not, because I see no value in presenting illusions.
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It's data mining, but also normal advertising, and any sales person.
I actually cancelled service because they check up on how I'm doing too much. Then I get a call about why I cancelled. Then another to offer a discount. No, this is why I cancelled. Do you see that anywhere?
Yes, the notes say you cancelled for this reason.
And?
We can offer you a discount.
Get fycked, never call me.
Re:Duck?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do people eat that much duck that this is a problem?
It actually works the other way around. Low volume dishes have more potential for volatility and that is problem when trying to balance between having too much (waste) and having too little (can't fill customer orders).