The Inamo restaurant in London’s Soho district has taken high-tech ordering to a whole new level. Gone are the days when picking up a phone at your table was the techiest gig in town. Sure, some restaurants call themselves high-tech because their servers have wireless pads for taking orders. Inamo takes it even further: touchscreens built into the tables and illuminated with images of menu items from an overhead projector.
The ordering system took some pretty heavy duty programming to create. That’s because all computers are built to only have one mouse pointer. Unfortunately, solo diners are a relatively rare thing, and since people want to select and order at the same time, one mouse pointer wasn’t going to do it. So Inamo developed a system that has multiple pointers.
Guests come in and have their table “activated” as soon as they sit down by their server. Using their fingers, they flip through menu items on the touchscreen and place their order. Drinks and food are brought out by a real person, but everything else, including payment, is handled by the touchscreen. Add the trippy interior design and cool images coming out of the projectors, and this little restaurant makes the act of ordering food a fun, futuristic experience.