Order A Drink By Texting

I just read an article titled, Text Message Your Drink Orders At British Pub. This article brought forth to my attention (even more) how far technology has come. How many of you have been at a bar before and have stood there forever waiting to get a drink? (that is if you are 21 of course) It seems that the British have made it very easy to eliminate this problem. If people at British pubs are tired of the lines all that they have to do is text message the order to the bartender and there beer will be right out.

I am not quite sure how this works but from my understanding it seems that one can get on the Internet from their phone, and connect to the pub's homepage to find the menu there. From that point all they have to do is find the drink they want, and then send it to the bar's computer. This seems easy enough, but I can't help but wonder if the process is really that simple?

I do not know about Britain but let's take the United States for example. I know for a fact that a lot of places are very strict on serving to underage people. It would be a big waste of time if underage people were playing jokes on these bars. (How exactly would they be able to check people's Id's if they are ordering through text message?) This could be a really big loss of profit for them, not to mention a big legal issue if they served to minors. Also, the article stated that if drinks are ordered through a text message 10% is added to the cost of the drink, not including the tip, or the Internet fees from the person's cell phone provider! At this rate one drink could end up being very expensive. (too expensive for this to even be worth it)

This new service will probably be in need of some serious PR over time. This type of issue is one that a lot of people could find to be unethical, or like I said earlier a lot of issues could rise from this (underage drinking, problems with the system, people feeling cheated in to paying so much). This could also use some PR to help promote the new service. Why I think that most new things happening in technology are very cool, I have to admit that this one is dumb. It really does seem like it is more work than it is worth.