An Open Letter to Chicago Cut

Image borrowed from Mashable.

Dear Chicago Cut,

How are you? I hope you are well. I am fine. I went to your restaurant the other night with my British friend Ben, who was in town from London. I thought it would be nice to take him to a steak place because Chicago is famous for steak and Oprah said  you were “Phenom!!” And everyone knows who Oprah is, even British people. Plus, you dry-age steak, which is a big deal. I like big deals.

I took Ben to the John Hancock first. We had cocktails at the top, and I tried to remember everything I’d forgotten about Chicago history and architecture. I also showed him where Oprah used to live, because you can see it there, from the top of the Hancock. I’m not sure where she lives now though. Do you know?  Then we came over to your place for our steak and creamed spinach.

And we asked for your wine menu.

And you handed us an iPad, which is a cool idea in theory. I can imagine your agency of bearded wine-loving hipsters now. “THIS IS THE FUTURE OF DINING. THIS IS VISUAL. THIS IS INTERACTIVE. THIS IS…STRATEGERY.”  They probably talked about how soon, soon we will not need sommeliers. That everything will be CONTROLLED BY THE USER. WITH AN APP. That probably pronounced all this meaningfully and confidently (while scratching their beards) and told you this would all be so very, very cutting edge.

You probably spent a lot of money on this too.

So, let me tell you what I think.

In practice, your iPad wine menu? It really kinda just…sucks. Like really.

Let me tell you why:

• It crashed multiple times while your server was showing it to us.
• It crashed multiple times while we tried to use it.
• Your server had to explain how although there was an “Add to Order” button on every wine page, it didn’t work. It had never worked. She did not know when it would work. “Please don’t use it,” she told us. “It doesn’t work.”
• And then we decided that we should get some California wine, red, for under $80 a bottle. All of the filters are there on the screen. All of them. You can see them all in the screenshot above. BUT YOU CANNOT MULTI-FILTER. You can only filter on ONE THING. EVEN THOUGH THERE ARE MULTIPLE SELECTION BOXES presented at the same level of hierarchy  Whoever your agency is, they should be fired. They know nothing about usability. And they also know nothing about product development because filtering a database on multiple criteria IS NOT HARD. (Lovely readers, you can see what I mean about the Chicago Cut wine “app” over here. Try it for yourself.)
• And then our lovely server saw that we were frustrated and tried to help us. “Please,,” I begged. “Please, do you have a sommelier? Can you send the sommelier over?” “We don’t have a sommelier,” she replied, “But all of us here, we’re pretty knowledgeable so just tell me what you’d like.” “We’d like a California red, not too meaty, good with our steaks, for under $80 a bottle.” “Oh,” she said. “I’m not sure. I really don’t know the options that well…” (!!!) “But there is this one,” she said, and steered us towards a $60 bottle of Archipel Meritage 2007. It was really nice, so there’s a good ending here. But it took us a long time to get to this point. A long time. And your iPad app still sucks. I told her this, but I didn’t use the word “sucks,” I promise.

So in short, you’re doing it wrong. Like totally, totally wrong. You are all idea and no execution. (And I don’t just mean the iPad here. If you are going to forego a sommelier, schedule some regular wine tastings for your staff!)

Thank you for reading and I hope there’s a Version 2.0.

My best,

Krista

P.S. All this being said, our steaks were very nice and our server was nice. Also, I do appreciate that your wine markup in my case was “only” 100% of retail. I know this because my friend Andy Hayler makes a GREAT app called Wine Search that lets you easily search for wine and compare list price to mark up. You should check it out to see how the pros do things.