Believe-it-or-not time

The folks at Ripley’s are screwing with us again. Consider these hard-to-believe restaurant developments:

--Two out of three frequent guests—defined as consumers who dine out at least five times a week—would like servers to place orders through mobile entry devices. That’s one of the more surprising discoveries of a 1,277-person survey conducted for Pars, an industry supplier of POS components.

--Here’s a list of hazards that lawsuit plaintiffs are claiming they encountered in a chain restaurant: A needle in a ribs stack (at a Chili’s); a splinter (embedded in the finger of a Texas Roadhouse customer); and a fragile toilet seat (broken under a McDonald’s customer, who said she wanted $30,000 in compensation. The press coverage did not cite the woman’s weight.

--Ted’s Montana Grill is selling a new steak salad for $14, except in New York City. There you’ll pay an extra $3, a differential of 21%.

--About a third of consumers who visit a restaurant or bar tomorrow will choose the place because of traditional St. Patrick’s Day options like green beer, according to the National Restaurant Association.

Could it be a full moon?

‘You’re selling? Then we’re suing.'

Lawyers specializing in shareholder litigation must spend their days crouched like sprinters, the necessary court papers in hand.

Hours after the pending sale of the Rubio’s fish taco chain was announced, lawsuits alleging a breach of fiduciary responsibility by the seller had already been filed. Emergency-room doctors don't work that fast.

Suits accusing current owners for selling too low have now become as commonplace as the need to hire an army of lawyers to steer a deal through to its consummation. All those counselors involved for both parties, and there’s still room for their brethren of the bar to lodge a court challenge?

Sounds as if something’s not right there.

A pager pilferer sees the light

Many restaurateurs would identify with Sam Mercurio, co-owner of Domenico’s on California’s Monterey Bay. He’d see lost customers milling on the wharf outside his waterside establishment as they waited for a table at the nearby Old Fisherman’s Grotto, pagers in hand. So he decided to mount a conversion effort.

People with names on the Grotto’s wait list were invited to take a table immediately at Domenico’s. Mercurio would apparently escort them himself to a seat, and even offered to take care of their pagers. Then someone would go outside and fling the devices into the water.

Grotto owner Chris Shake must have lost enough business and pagers to suspect something was amiss. Surmising the problem, he hired divers to scour the bay’s floor. They found 10 of his pagers a stone’s throw, quite literally, from Domenico's and a few other restaurants on the popular Fisherman’s Wharf.

The police were alerted. Two undercover cops agreed to pose as Grotto customers who were waiting for a table. Sure enough, Mercurio reportedly invited them into his place and offered to return their pager. But Shake never saw it again.

Mercurio was charged with petty theft, a misdemeanor to which he pleaded not guilty. Shake told the media he would file a lawsuit to recover the $3,000 he lost in pilfered pagers.

But there’s a happy ending to the story. Local media reported yesterday that Mercurio apologized to Shake, shook his hand, and offered to pay nearly $7,000 for the estimated 40 pagers that the Grotto had lost. The charges were dropped.

“We’ll work it out,” Mercurio told KSBW, a local TV station. “Everything will be fine.”

What hath Al Gore wrought?

The complexities of the restaurant business continue to deepen, courtesy of the medium you're using to read this. Consider a few of the advantages and complications the fast-changing internet presented to the industry in the last few weeks alone, starting with the scandal of the naked-woman photos.

In case you missed the news reports, McDonald's recently found itself in the center of a controversy that would've been a slice of bad science fiction ("Flesh Gordon," maybe?) to Ray Kroc. A customer reportedly left his cell phone in an Arkansas unit and was contacted to come pick it up. The staff had apparently poked through the info stored on the phone to track down its owner. The patron apparently thought nothing more about it until his wife started getting e-mail messages about nude photos of her that had been posted without her knowledge on the internet.

It seems the woman had e-mailed the shots in a fit of naughtiness to her husband, who'd kept them stored on his, um, hand-held. According to the slew of coverage, employees of the restaurant found the pics, uploaded them, and never said a word about it to the phone's owner. Now he's said to be suing the franchise, the unit's manager and McDonald's Corp. for more than $3 million. McDonald's is certainly one of the more progressive chains in the business, but it's doubtful the operation has a section in its manuals about how to handle that situation.

About the same time that mess was starting to stink, news arose from Australia of another unprecedented development involving restaurants and the web. A fish house in Melbourne had reportedly been skunked on a $520 (Australian) bill by a party of five indulgent youngsters. According to the news coverage, proprietor Peter Leary remembered that one of the deadbeats knew a waitress at the place. Leary spoke with the woman, who provided the name of her acquaintance. It dawned on Leary that he might be able to find the young man by looking on Facebook, the social network that's all the rage with young people. Sure enough, after a few searches, Leary found a photo of the offender and the information he needed to track down the chew-and-screw group. He got his money--plus the tip.

Those might've been extraordinary, newsworthy events. Less noticeable but more profound is the change that's slowly taking place in restaurant marketing. Clearly a new internet medium is arising, and restaurants will have to master it if they want to stay competitive with places up and down the street. If you doubt it, consider a few of the "tweets" I fielded today from Twitter:

--From Dunkin' Donuts, at about 9 a.m.: Good time for a cup of coffee. It was followed up at 3 p.m. with, "Dare I say, it's another good time for a cup of coffee?" Talk about keeping a possible purchase top-of-mind.

--From Rickshaw Truck, the mobile version of Rickshaw Dumpling Bar, a popular concept in New York City, right before lunch: "RickshawTruck Is in the financial district on Wall and Williams Street. We've got those dreamy dumplings and a brand new addition to our sides, miso soup"

--From Riley's Cafe, an independent in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at about 3: "Twitter Tuesday Special: free coffee, pop, ice tea or lemonade with meal purchase"

Anyone familiar with Twitter and its competitors would probably agree that they're the new frontier in restaurant marketing. The key phrase there is, "anyone familiar." If you're not, I'd strongly suggest that you take the plunge and visit Twitter.com ASAP.