I have a friend who owns a restaurant and he offers an astounding number of sushi and sashimi dishes. It's often difficult, with so many offerings, for a server to know the ingredients of each offering and it's also difficult for the customer when he or she wants to look at and determine which offering to choose.
The owner wants to purchase several tablets that can be used for information purposes by both the server and the customer. He wants to put 500 to 1000 pictures on the tablets, with the ability to add a descriptive text for each picture. If this can be achieved by use of the tablet alone that's fine, but each tablet will have to have the same information and he doesn't want to have to configure and at times update the pictures and text on each one individually, which would be time consuming to say the least. He also plans to place a larger monitor at the sushi bar that would display the same information, possibly on a continuous, automatic rotation. The restaurant uses Windows computers at several locations throughout the restaurant so if the information will have to be composed on one of his computers before transferring it to the tablets the tablets and app will have to be able to connect with and be compatible with the Windows OS. Needless to say, these tablets must be user friendly for the server and customer.
I would appreciate it very much if someone could let me know which tablet and app would be the best for doing this. I suppose he would want a small tablet that is easy to use by both the server and the customer. He wants each observed page on the tablet to display only one picture and one description to make it easy for all involved, similar to how a digital photo album displays only one picture at a time and he wants to be able to progress from one page to the next by swiping the page, tapping the page or using an arrow embedded in the picture. I need the recommendation on a tablet for ease of use with the app.
Thank you in advance for your time and any assistance provided.
C. B.
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I would recommend the information and pictures be stored on a machine in the business that each tablet and other pcs can access. Each webpage would be a picture and a description of the picture and it's ingredients.
Each tablet would need WiFi access to the local network and read access to the website files. In that the webpages would be on a single machine rather than each tablet maintenance would be rather simple, one machine, one set of files to maintain.
Each tablet would need an OS, WiFi support and a browser. I suspect a Linux OS would work just fine, one with a Kiosk option would be perfect.
hth
Ed
I agree with Ed_P that this could be handled by hosting a website on the local restaurant's PC. You would need server software on the PC, I think, such as LAMP or WAMP, etc. You could use a general html editor to build the site, or even install WordPress on it, if that looks easier. I don't think the tablets would need to be anything special - would just need wifi access to the local server and a browser with a decent display. Could probably get by with a very inexpensive tablet if cost is an issue.
An alternative would be a website hosted on the web. If the information for all of the locations is the same, then it's only one site to maintain. If public access from outside the restaurant is something that's not desirable, then I think it could be password protected. Obviously there are some hosting costs with this route, so you have to trade that off against mutliple local installations.
HTH