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Give me an application where only a Tablet will do?

Facing the problem of selling Tablets to a reluctant market, HP was challenged: "Go on, show me an example of an application where anything other than a Tablet PC would simply not work!"

The example they've come up with is a simple application PR story - but an interesting one. It's a case of wine. Well, not just a case: a four-storey wine tower.

The story is set in a restaurant - the Aureole - in Las Vegas. Vegas is a place where neither money nor restraint is an issue, and the only "good taste" is the wine itself.

They have, you might modestly say, "a choice of wine." The choice is impressive. Nearly 10,000 of the restaurant's total collection of 50,000 bottles can be produced at dinner. It has a low-key, unassuming, and inconspicuous "wine cellar in the sky." And a serving system to match.

Inspired by a scene from the movie Mission Impossible, Aureole's four-and-a-half-story Wine Tower houses nearly 10,000 bottles of wine inside a climate-controlled, glass structure. The wine is retrieved by "wine angels," which are mechanically hoisted up and down on cables.

"Which bottle would Sir like? Modom? We have a modest, unassuming 125-page book showing our selection. We will update it tomorrow." Not good, not good at all, especially if, after ploughing through all 125 pages, you found you'd picked the one bottle which had sold out.

Before the wine angels fly, however, customers have to choose their wine. That used to mean sorting through a bulky, 125-page book the restaurant updated every two weeks.

The normal solution to this might be print-on-demand. "What sort of wine, red? Imported? French? No, of course not, you're patriots, I can tell; how about South American? No? OK. Let me get the list of California Cabernet wines. It's just 20 pages ... "

"It wasn't very user friendly," said Aureole Wine Director Andrew Bradbury. "Not only was the book a major hassle and expensive to update, but it was also intimidating to customers."

Enter the Tablet PC.

Bradbury wanted to make wine selection fun and informative. He bought 25 Compaq Tablet PCs, commissioned his own software, and bought a server - a ProLiant ML370 - which also hosts the restaurant's web site. The Tablets are renamed: the eWinebook now exists!

Now wine stewards hand diners the e-Winebook - a Compaq Tablet PC TC1000, give them a quick tutorial and then let the guests search for their wine. "Customers can search by price, varietal, region, winery, year, bottle size or food pairing. So whether guests are in the mood for an $18 bottle of Merlot or a $36,000 bottle of 1900 Chateau Petrus, the Compaq Tablet PC can make their search quick, easy and enjoyable."

In addition to wine searches, guests can also look up reviews of thousands of wines, view video of the wine angels retrieving bottles and see live streaming video from four different cameras focusing on the wine tower.

A wireless LAN connects the Tablet PCs using the onboard 802.11b WiFi feature. Bradbury is a committed HP customer, and also uses an HP ScanJet 5400c for scanning images to add to the eWinebook and website.

"I can't quantify how important this is, but higher guest confidence leads to greater satisfaction, which leads to a better overall dining experience," said Bradbury. One reason it's better, is that there aren't those embarrassing "It's out of stock" moments any more: the Tablet PC can also do inventory management.

"When a wine is sold out, it is instantly removed from the eWinebook. Plus, when I receive a new wine, I can have it on the wine list in 30 seconds, so I never have inventory sitting around. The Compaq Tablet PC enables me to make much more effective use of my inventory."

His wine list is not only up to date, but there are no spelling errors, or wrong prices.

"I recently went to a wine conference and saw all of these wine directors running around, sweating, calling people on the phone trying to get their restaurant's wine lists reprinted," Bradbury recalls. "We have more than 10 times the amount of wine these guys had, and I was sitting back, nice and relaxed because this electronic system has made my life a thousand times easier. I know I could never go back to paper. That would be like dragging me back to the Stone Age."

But he can't quantify it? Well, maybe he can quantify it a bit; he can quote wine sales figures. They're up.

"Our wine sales alone have increased between $750,000 and $1 million over the last year," says Bradbury. "Even in a tight economy, more people have been coming through our front door just to look at the HP Compaq Tablet PC's electronic wine list and interact with it."

But it's at the tables that sales are made. "The Tablet PC is often passed around the table because everyone wants to look at it and put in their own ideas," Bradbury says. "One guest will say to another, 'Hey, after you choose your bottle, I want to take a look at it and choose my bottle.' It makes ordering wine fun."

Then there's the printed book costs - gone! No more updating and reprinting the 125-page catalogue of wines. Bradbury estimates savings of at least 100 hours in labour per month.

The Tablet PCs also are being used to file customer comments, to manage inventory and even to promote executive chef Charlie Palmer's other restaurants. Customers fill out electronic comment cards, allowing Aureole to create customer databases.

"It's quick, easy, intuitive and personal. Guests use the stylus to write their comments and press 'send note' — that's all there is to it," Bradbury says. "It's a quick way to get people's reaction. We're constantly trying to learn from our customers."

It's also a very Las Vegas solution. It looks costly, flash. Or, in the words of the boss: "The HP Compaq Tablet PC is the perfect ergonomic form factor to make the eWinebook happen. It is a very slim, sexy-looking device. Its very shape makes it look like an electronic menu. Once I saw it, it was an easy decision. If I were designing a Tablet PC for this type of application, I would design it exactly like the TC1000."

Also, no keyboard to spill wine onto. "The engineering and design are keys to the remarkable durability of the units," Bradbury says. "Considering that our Tablet PCs are sometimes used by hundreds of people in a day, they have held up wonderfully."

Aureole's goal now is to expand the application to food, cigars, spirits and "everything else possible," Bradbury says, adding that Aureole has implemented only about 10 percent of its vision with the Tablet PC.

"We have just scratched the surface of what the device is capable of in the food service industry," Bradbury says. "Restaurants from all over the world have called me about our eWinebook, but the eWinebook is just the beginning.

"Restaurants generally spend less than 2 percent of their budgets on IT. But over the next five years, devices such as the Tablet PC will change many facets of the industry, from the guests' overall experience to operating and data collection to improving efficiency. The Tablet PC will open a new world of possibilities for the food service industry. This thing is going to be huge."