Last week, the restaurant-loyalty app Blackbird introduced a new way to pay for dinner. Customers check in on the app on arrival, pick a payment source and tip percentage, and then eat. Ben Leventhal, one of the app’s founders, explained what he called the “best part” in an Instagram video shot at the Italian cafe Lodi.
“When you’re done, you just get up and go,” he said. Then he demonstrated how it’s done, high-fiving Lodi’s host on his way to the door without breaking stride.
I’m at the end of 12 years as a critic who ate in and reviewed restaurants constantly. Of those years, I probably spent two solid months just waiting for the check. I ought to be in favor of anything that speeds up the end of the meal, but Blackbird’s new checkless exit gives me the creeps. It is just the latest in a series of changes that have gradually and steadily stripped the human touch and the human voice out of restaurants. Each of these changes was small, but together they’ve made going out to eat much less personal. Meals are different now, and our sense of who we are is different, too.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/06/dining/pete-wells-how-restaurants-have-changed.html
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(Thread on his decision to retire.)