Friday, April 11, 2014

The .@Ziosk example - what if an NTN Buzztime Playmaker were on EVERY table?

Long-time readers of this blog are very familiar with NTN Buzztime's pitch to restaurants and bars - if you install the networked trivia system in your bar, your patrons will play the trivia, and will stay at your restaurant/bar longer, and will spend more money as a result.

Obviously, this idea is not unique to NTN Buzztime. On Thursday night, I went to the Montclair, California Chili's for the first time in a long while, and when I looked at the tables in the restaurant, I saw that there was a standing tablet on every table.

The tablets are manufactured by a company called Ziosk, and while there are some differences between the Ziosk devices and the NTN Buzztime Playmakers, both have similar goals - to get restaurant/bar customers to spend as much money as possible. I don't really want to go into detail about Ziosk; perhaps I'll write some more about it in my Empoprise-BI business blog at some point. In the meantime, you can read what Venessa Wong wrote last September about Ziosk.

But for the purposes of the Empoprise-NTN NTN Buzztime blog, I do want to highlight one thing. I've already mentioned it, but I'll mention it again.

The Ziosk devices were on EVERY table.

And that can be a powerful differentiator.

If you think about it, for a restaurant/bar to get the most out of the Playmakers, a patron actually has to request the Playmaker. In every establishment that I've visited, the Playmakers are stored in the back of the restaurant, or behind the bar, getting charged. Of course, you could also use the NTN Buzztime mobile app, but you would have to download the app first.

With Ziosk, or at least the Ziosk installation at the Montclair Chili's that is not a concern. The Ziosk device is already there. You don't have to ask for it.

What if NTN Buzztime establishments had enough Playmakers so that one could be on every table? Would that increase use (and restaurant/bar revenue)? Would they be too hard to charge? Would they look too ugly on the tables? Would they need more functionality than trivia to be compelling?

Something to think about.

POSTSCRIPT: After writing this post, I belatedly discovered that Buzztime has its own tablet, called Beond. However, it is only available in select locations, and I don't know if the locations have a Beond device at every table.