Exclusive Restaurant + Tech Predictions for 2015

Favorite illustration of the year, by April V. Walters

As we (and by we I mean every food journalist on the internet) look back at 2014, certain headlines in restaurant technology stand out: the new pay-for-reservations services; mobile payment technology; food photos on Instagram; new services that deliver restaurant-quality food to your door. If you care about food and restaurants, you either love this or are currently rolling your eyes. As such, here are Chefs+Tech-exclusive predictions of what we might expect in 2015.

• There will be a run on the new, trendy 3pm lunch special as Chilis introduces “surge pricing” in an effort to mirror its business model after Uber.
• Instagram will add “burgers with bites taken out of them” and “half-eaten plates of pasta” to its list of inappropriate content.
• The New York Lottery now offers a new scratch-off ticket whose prizes consist solely of reservations at Mission Chinese.
• A San Francisco brogrammer buys a Tesla entirely with profits made from selling his reservations at Flour+Water.
• A hostess tackles an unsuspecting 60-year-old mother after she fails to tap “pay” on her mobile restaurant payment app, inadvertently dining and dashing because it was too damn dark in the restaurant.
• One fed-up restaurateur at a small place in the outskirts of Sacramento dumps pitchers of water on cell phones placed on tabletops during the meal, claiming they ruined the restaurant’s ambiance.
• After purchasing fake tickets to Alinea from a non-reputable internet site, an angry mob surrounds the restaurant chanting “we want Hot Potato Cold Potato.”

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