Ordering Your Meal from a Kiosk: Good or Bad for Central New York

How do you feel about ordering from a kiosk for your meal? Is it a better option or does it take away jobs and personal interaction that we should be trying to keep?

If you go to Panera Bread in New Hartford, you have the option to order your meal from a kiosk and have your food delivered to the table you choose to sit at. But you can also do it the "old-fashioned" way and actually talk to the cashier at the counter and order your food, then find your table and have your food brought out to you.

Panera Bread has been offering this service for quite some time, and in many cases it can be really handy, especially if you need a while to decide what you want to get. But other businesses are starting to introduce services like this. A friend of mine posted on their Facebook Page, a photo from a McDonald's they were in that had a kiosk. They could choose to go to the counter and order, or just order from the kiosk.

What do you think about these kiosks taking over? Are we heading down a bad road where there are no cashiers to help or answer questions we may have? Will we be losing even more daily interactions with others (that already seems to be lacking in our society)? Is it a great thing? It can save a lot of time, which we all seem crunched for as it is.

About a month ago, Dave (from the Beth and Dave Morning Show) brought up the tabletop tablets that are being used in some restaurants, asking if it was bad news for the waitstaff. Dave mentioned that one of the servers they had talked to said they were seeing tips in the 10% - 15% range with these devices (no more doing math to figure out a tip). And the devices allow restaurants to get more people in and out, which means more money coming in the door. But is more money for businesses enough to put these devices in place everywhere? And in the case of these tablets, waitstaff is still needed to bring orders, drinks, and to answer any questions, but more tables could be handled by a single person compared to before, so there is the issue of a loss of jobs.

If we were to see more kiosks at eateries throughout Central New York would you be happy about it? Would you be upset about it? Or would you just not care either way? We want to know where you stand on this issue. You can vote in our poll below (you can even put in your answer if you would like to add something):

You can tell us why you chose the answer you did - Leave us a comment or message on our Lite 98.7 Facebook Page. We would love to hear your reasoning behind it.