If you’re a fan of both fast food and ketchup, you have undoubtedly cursed the poor design of the ketchup packet more than once. When you decide to sit down inside the restaurant you may or may not find little plastic or paper cups to put your ketchup in. But when you eat on the go, you have little choice other than squeezing the ketchup out onto a paper napkin. This brilliant invention aims to make the whole process of dipping fries in ketchup a simpler, cleaner one.

The Dipping Cover is a concept developed by Bae Su-kyoo and Noh Haeun. It’s a regular soft drink cup lid with the standard hole for a straw, but it also features an indentation for ketchup in the middle. You simply squeeze your ketchup packet right into this little indentation and you can then carry your sauce with you as you walk around. Life changing design it is not, but it sure could make lunch a lot more pleasant for french fry lovers.

The post Saucy Sidekick: Lid Design Lets You Take Ketchup on the Go first appeared on Gajitz.

Diners and restaurant critics seem to agree that the noise level in a restaurant can make or break the dining experience. But it’s a fine balance – too much noise and customers feel crowded and overwhelmed; too little and they feel like their conversations can be overheard by absolutely everyone in the place. A restaurant in Berkeley, California has come up with a high-tech solution to the noise conundrum.

Comal, a Mexican restaurant owned by ex-Phish manager John Paluska, is using a combination of microphones, speakers, a digital processor, and absorption materials to create a totally unique noise control system. The first step in transforming the space into a sound-friendly one was to install plenty of sound-dampening material: wood fiber acoustic panels, fiberglass duct liner and even some recycled denim jeans.

A network of 123 speakers and microphones are distributed all throughout the dining room, hidden by art and other design elements. The microphones pick up the sound from the restaurant and feed it through a digital processor. Then it’s spit back out into the dining room based on commands from an iPad. A restaurant manager walking around the dining room can decide what level of sound is appropriate and even designate different levels for different areas. So far, it’s kept Comal – the first restaurant to use this technology – at a calm and conversational volume.

The post Restaurant Quiets the Crowds With High-Tech Sound System first appeared on Gajitz.

The debate over whether or not to tip will soon be a thing of the past for diners in Jinan City, China. That’s where the country’s first robot restaurant recently opened. The eatery features a “staff” of more than a dozen robots that serve food and drinks, dance and entertain customers – and they never get tired or annoyed, or even try to manipulate a bigger tip with empty compliments or corny jokes. To balance out the robot staff, there are also some human hostesses and servers. Together, the staff can handle about 100 customers at a time.

It may seem dangerous to have robots running around in the same space as meat-based life forms, but the ‘bots all have sensors that tell them to stop when there is an obstacle (like a person) in the way. The actual serving abilities of the robots are a bit limited. They aren’t able to take down orders or refill drinks; rather, they offer trays full of food and beverages for customers to choose from. What they lack in agility and personality, however, they more than make up for in entertainment value.

The owners of the Dalu Robot Restaurant believe that customers will keep coming to their establishment because of the novelty involved in being served by mechanical minions. With each ‘bot costing around $6000 to build, the restaurant would need to serve quite a few trays of food to stay in the black. But as the company behind the restaurant points out, the robot waiters have much better attitudes than human ones, making them the perfect employees.

The post Steel Servers, Electronic Eatery: China’s Robotic Restaurant first appeared on Gajitz.

When we’re done with glass bottles, most of us simply recycle them or throw them away. But designer Doyeop Kim has a new idea for the bottles emptied at restaurants: turn them into server-signaling table lights.

The Re:fill Chime Bell and Light consists of a base unit with some buttons and a light that changes color based on the button you press. There is blue to signal the waiter that you’d like some water; pink to signal that you’re ready to order; and green to tell the server you’re ready for your bill. But the interesting part of the design is the empty, cleaned out glass bottle that you invert over the light. It acts to diffuse the light and create a dazzling display on your tabletop, doing so much more than a simple wave of the hand ever could.

Obviously, the concept wouldn’t be very effective with just-emptied bottles, but if the restaurant were willing to save empty bottles, wash them out and let them dry, then return them to the tables, they’d have an endless supply of Re:fill toppers. When one gets broken, they would simply have to clean up the mess and replace it with another.

The post No Waiting for a Waiter: Table Signal Gives Bottles New Life first appeared on Gajitz.