By Kathryn Roberts

Table for two? Your tablet will be right with you.

Technology is changing the way we dine as it earns a place in the restaurant industry.

For the first time, franchises like Applebee’s, Chili’s, Bareburger and several others are taking the service experience into the customer’s hands by adding convenient tabletop devices.

Instead of ordering from the server, customers order appetizers, desserts and beverages from tablets placed on their table. The tablet allows a guest to browse menu options and add a dish to the cart. When they are ready, they can click “send order,” which will place their order the same way the server would have sent it to the kitchen.

Many tablet devices have color indicators at the top of the screen that blink a color with a specific meaning. Ziosk tablets, one of the most popular tabletop devices in restaurants, blink red to notify that the table needs their server, blue to notify that they have placed an order, green to demonstrate they have paid their bill via credit card, and so on.

Applebee’s Bar & Grill is projected to have a tablet on every table by June of 2016, according Queens Director of Operations, Sharon Valzer, 37.

This drastic change, however, incites a question for servers and customers; what’s at stake in the dining experience?

Tablets have emerged in the same year of the pending increase in tipped wages in New York. By the end of 2015, tipped wages will increase by 50 percent, from $5 an hour to $7.

“The wage increase is going to seriously diminish our profit- so yeah, some people might have to get cut,” said Alfonso Lopez, manager at Outback Steakhouse in Bayside, New York, a location in which tablets have still not been employed.

Restaurants are now looking for effective adjustments to cut cost. These devices, which give the customers the convenience of ordering and paying when they’re ready, and entertaining games in between, help businesses to do just that.

Allowing guests to preoccupy themselves with these devices, which gives them the opportunity to do much of the employee’s job, allows servers to take more tables at a time.

Corporations like Bareburger say these tablets make working more efficient and therefore actually enhance the quality of service, according to Mike Gervais, 32, manager at Bareburger Port Washington.

In this way, businesses can use less staff to afford this wage hike.

Many insist that cutting down labor costs is not the sole purpose, but merely one of the tablet’s great benefits.

According to Andrew Keys, 29, Applebee’s Bay Terrace, New York General Manager, the tablets bring in at least a 1.8 percent increase to the total cash revenue. The wage hike, however, increases the labor budget by 3.7 percent.

“We did not implement tablets because of that, however because of that increase, we are going to utilize them in a way that will not hurt the cash flow as much,” said Keys.

Hungry guests are also more likely to order food impulsively once they sit and browse through photos of food, rather than those who browse a menu and wait for their waiter. And who can resist delicious looking desserts advertised on the tablet throughout their meal?

Games for guests and their children are also a great source of profit considering they cost the company nothing to offer them at a rate of about $1-2.

Despite the extra time it may take for a waiter to explain the systems, extra ordering, and games, tablets are getting diners out an average of seven minutes sooner, according to the Ziosk website.

Since customers are ordering faster and paying once they are ready, without waiting for a server, tables are getting turned that much quicker, which means more bucks for the corporate chains.

This has caused employees in the food industry to seriously question the security of their jobs; speculating tablets will eventually render servers useless.

As for day-to-day changes, most servers agree that spending less time with their guests will lead to lower tips.

The prompted gratuities on many of these tablets intend to increase tip percentage for waiters but servers aren’t convinced.

A poll of 100 servers in New York restaurants Bareburger, Applebee’s, Chili’s and Buffalo Wild Wings, showed 67 percent agreed that tablets are more likely to lower their tip percentage because it not only devalues the service experience, but also allows people to pay on their own.

“Thanking a guest one last time can really impact their tip – if they’re prompted a 20 percent tip on a machine and you haven’t even said goodbye to them, good chances are they’ll lower it,” said Lia Wolkshok, 19, a server at Bareburger Port Washington.

The other percentage servers disagree with that concept, as some feel that the gratuity prompt is helpful and, “people don’t want to decide how much to tip, they’re lazy, isn’t that why we have tablets in the first place?” said Roberto Velasquez, 23, a Glendale Chili’s server.

Servers aren’t the only people with mixed reviews about the tablets. Customers are still making up their minds as well.

While younger clients seem to adapt to these devices well, more old-fashioned customers are averse to them.

“There is something so special about eating with your family, and that has been diminished over time with technology,” said a regular at Applebee’s Bayside, David Carino, 45. “All this does is dehumanize an otherwise very personal interaction.”

Carino is not alone in this thought. Some adults say that even though the tablets occupy noisy and distracting children, distraction may not be a solution.

In a poll of 100 Applebee’s guests, near 40 percent attested to the same notion: technology is so ubiquitous, what other experience will it drastically change?

Michael Lembo, 32, the Technology Information person of Applebee’s, located in New York, said tablets are a necessary evolution in the dining industry.

“Restaurants aren’t timeless,” he said. “They need to adapt with a constantly changing modern society.”