Let's not lose the human touch

During my early teenage years, my mother and I used to venture down from Yorkshire to London for regular lunches at some of the city’s smarter restaurants, which used to perplex my mates who couldn’t understand my unusual interest in eating at boring old, linen table cloth-ed restaurants. 

They thought I was odd, but my argument was that they would eventually recognise the delights of eating top-notch food in comfortable surroundings while receiving extremely personal service. I’d simply chosen to do it at a younger age, which sensibly gave me more years to partake in one of life’s greatest pleasures.

I’m hoping my hypothesis came true and that they are all now middle-aged gourmands regularly perching their elbows on thick, white table cloths. But I’m not sure whether this scenario would play out today – even with my own children, who are well versed in smart venues – because there is a growing disconnect between the rich face-to-face personal service in many of the better restaurants and the preferences of younger diners today, who very much prefer the human-light touch.  

This could potentially pose an existential threat to many restaurants – from the mid-stream operators through to those at the very high-end – that don’t adapt their propositions and embrace more technology to satisfy the younger audience. 

However, it would appear that these establishments are indeed increasingly making gradual changes around the edges of their offerings, judging by the number of high-profile food critics who have recently bemoaned the way a growing number of restaurants are losing their human touch. This is the primary characteristic that ultimately makes them worth visiting, they all argue.

In their parting shots to their regular restaurant review readership, Marina O’Loughlin and Pete Wells, formerly of The Sunday Times and The New York Times respectively, penned their final columns, highlighting how technology now meant that a growing part of the experience of dining out no longer involved actual people. It’s all been de-humanised – from booking online as there are no phone lines anymore to using QR codes for viewing menus, using apps for paying via mobile devices and leaving feedback online rather than actually telling the server face-to-face. 

Wells states: “I thought of restaurants as one of the few places left where our experiences were completely human [but there have been] a series of changes that have gradually and steadily stripped the human touch and the human voice out of restaurants." 

Tim Hayward, in the Financial Times, has also riffed on this very issue recently and has linked the demise of personal service to the dire situation in recruiting people from outside the UK. But that’s another story. Meanwhile, in Country Life, Tom Parker Bowles extolled the virtues of the restaurant proprietor, now an increasingly rare breed, who is the face of the restaurant and is present on the premises every service, welcoming guests across the threshold.

I agree with the sentiment of all these respected individuals in hospitality but there is one underlying problem. None of them are youngsters – including, sadly, myself. We all have exactly the same opinion, it seems, about the beauty of having personal interactions throughout the dining experience. 

But this is very much misplaced today. Youngsters simply don’t want it. They actively want the opposite, in fact. This has been apparent in the quick service restaurant category, where kiosks, drive-thru and digital ordering now reigns supreme – but it is also spreading up the food chain. 

Casual dining chain Bill’s is now rolling out self-service kiosks and QR codes, having found that more than 50% of its customers now pay digitally at its London sites. Tom James, MD of Bill’s, says: “It’s definitely a way that a big portion of the market would like to go out and eat. It goes against hospitality and, as a sort of old-school hospitality veteran, it’s different. But we have to adapt.”

Will Beckett, co-founder of Hawksmoor, is a very smart operator who recognises the problem and is working hard at balancing a move towards delivering a faster and more convenient service for [no doubt younger] customers while also retaining the human touch and hospitality in his smart restaurants.

This high wire act of retaining personal interactions while integrating impersonal technology into the mix is undoubtedly a major challenge facing restaurants across the land. The moves some are already making have clearly riled experienced reviewers and commentators who, like myself, have luxuriated in the old ways of dealing with actual people when eating out. 

But that’s not the future. It’s instead over to the likes of my pair of youngsters, who will be increasingly determining the future of service. Hopefully they will be following family tradition and taking me along with them to some smart restaurants. And also, most importantly, dealing with the digital payments bit.

Glynn Davis, Editor, Retail Insider

This piece was originally published on Propel Info where Glynn Davis writes a regular Friday opinion piece. Retail Insider would like to thank Propel for allowing the reproduction of this column.