Forget everything you knew about the restaurant experience, because the game has officially changed: This cafe modeled their payment system after healthcare billing so chefs, waiters, and dishwashers can invoice you separately for completely random amounts weeks to months later.
Whoa…how has no one ever thought to do this before? Going out to eat will never be the same!
Lucy’s Luncheonette isn’t just a beloved staple of downtown Fayetteville, NC: it’s the future of how restaurants bill customers. At Lucy’s, instead of flagging down a waiter to settle your bill before leaving, you’ll receive separate invoices from every employee who took part in your meal experience—including but not limited to chefs, waiters, busboys, dishwashers, and hostesses. These invoices will come in the mail at some unspecified point in the following six months, or possibly later, requesting arbitrary amounts of money that were not disclosed up-front for services itemized either as vaguely named items like “Misc. Carbohydrate,” or numeric codes with no description.
If you ordered a sandwich and coffee at any other cafe, you’d settle the entire bill with a server before leaving, and never think about it again. At Lucy’s, you’ll receive that server’s invoice in the mail three weeks later, with a line item for refilling your water listed as “Oral Hydration Replenishment Procedure – $32.09”, among a dozen other charges. Cut to four months later, and you’ll receive another invoice from the line cook for services including cooking chicken (“Protein Thermal Processing Treatment – $6.22”) and chopping lettuce (“Vegetative Component Structural Reduction – $3.34), and so on and so forth, until the restaurant’s wait and kitchen staff have all individually charged you for every distinct action they undertook during your dining experience, from clearing your table to giving you a new napkin, that they can legally bill for.
Lucy’s unique payment system is the brainchild of its owner, William Dumas, who left a career in medical claims processing to open the cafe, inspired by what he saw working in the U.S. healthcare system.
“Knowing generally what the service is going to cost ahead of time, and paying one straightforward bill on the spot instead of numerous invoices sent sporadically over time—that wouldn’t fly in healthcare like it does in the restaurant business,” explained Dumas, who had the idea for his luncheonette’s pay model after sending a cancer patient’s unpaid bill to collections, and imagining a busboy being able to do the same to a restaurant customer.
“I thought, ‘what if you took the drawn out, over-complicated process of medical billing, and applied it to going out for a meal?’ It’s been a very validating experience, watching our customers find themselves in credit score-tanking restaurant debt after failing to pay a thousand dollar invoice that a hostess sent them for reasons that hours and hours on the phone with our management do not help clarify whatsoever.”
Needless to say, the dining experience is about to be revolutionized in a huge, huge way.
Don’t be surprised if the entire food industry adopts this cafe’s healthcare-inspired pay model soon, from fine dining establishments to coffee shops. Props to Lucy’s Luncheonette for daring to think outside the box!
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