The Blind Mans Arms
I just created my first website, The Blind Mans Arms, without code or help from a sighted person. It’s simple, but shows how easy it is to spin up the digital side of a business today. It even has a conversational voice agent. Running a great gastro pub, though, still takes real human skill.
Last week’s clutch of Black Friday spam did include a much more personal marketing email from our local gastro pub The Hop Pole Inn, full of festive craft workshops and enticing holiday menus.
This community-led enterprise in Limpley Stoke fills me with uncharacteristic good cheer. In a world of pseudo fine dining restaurant chains, mass market alcohol brands and celebrity endorsed experiences there is something very precious about local people creating and sharing their own craft with other local people.
The marketing email prompted me to build a website for a hospitality venue of my own; The Blind Mans Arms. It’s quite remarkable what anyone can create online these days without any knowledge of HTML, graphic design or how to go about hosting their own website. I obviously cannot see whether the website ChatGPT created for me looks good, but the layout seems clear and the menu looks more appealing than many of the alleged gastro pubs in Wiltshire. The biggest challenge was getting AI to create the pub sign image. Both ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude firmly declined my request for imagery of a farmer’s wife cutting the arms off 3 blind men with a carving knife. For example, Claude said: “a person attacking disabled individuals, severing limbs […] falls outside what I can help with, regardless of the nursery rhyme reference.” “Put like that, I can see their point, although helpfully both ChatGPT and Claude had good alternative suggestions around the heraldic shield theme’. Aside from the image shenanigans, building the entire website took no more than an hour using a one paragraph prompt and 2 follow up clarifications, and the only guidance I gave re menus was the price point and the importance of locally sourced ingredients. To see how ridiculously easy it is now to build a website, even if you’re blind, please do take a quick look at The Blind Mans Arms.
I’m particularly pleased with the conversational voice agent widget at the bottom of the home page. Do try clicking on it to find details of the menus and event or make a reservation. You will probably have to accept some terms and allow access to your microphone, but if you get through that crap you can then enjoy a conversation with my cloned voice (I haven’t quite managed to clone my personality yet, but working on it).
This AI assisted website creation is very impressive, allied with readily available services to host websites, manage bookings (including answering the phone with a conversational voice agent), collect payments and even create companies. That just leaves the minor details of cooking exquisite food, building unique supplier relationships and running a tight ship while all the time appearing to be just as relaxed as your happiest customer. In other words, doing all the really tricky embodied and interpersonal stuff which AI, robots and digital technology will not do well for many years to come.
I remain convinced that artisanal and boutique hospitality careers will be amongst the last to undergo AI erosion. Having said that, the challenges in delivering high quality, high end hospitality were nicely highlighted by two recent dining experiences (neither at The Hop Pole Inn). The price point of the two restaurants was very similar, but the experiences were starkly different. At The Circus Restaurant in Bath the fish was excellent complemented by prompt, professional and charming service – this place consistently delivers and remains one of our absolute favourites. At the other venue, the meal disappointed, culminating in the following exchange:
Restaurant Manager: “Did you enjoy your meal?”
Shirl: “The fish was delicious, but rather marred by the alleged roasted Mediterranean vegetables comprising 3 large potatoes on a bed of indistinguishable grey mush”
Restaurant Manager [pause]: “I don’t know what to say to that”.
Chris: “Well if you didn’t know what to say, probably best to have never asked the question in the first place.”
Even in the world of tricky inter-personal communications, Large Language Models have a lot to offer. If the restaurant manager had typed Shirl’s response into ChatGPT, here’s the model answer she’d have been given:
“ Thank you for telling me — I’m glad the fish hit the mark, but the vegetables clearly went on an unexpected holiday of their own. I’m really sorry they let the plate down. I’ll remove the vegetable portion from your bill, and if you’re considering dessert, allow me to offer one on the house. It’s important to me that you leave satisfied, not remembering grey mush”.
OK, it’s a tad obsequious but definitely on the right lines. Whatever charm school the manager attended could do worse than offer a few hours of free tuition from ChatGPT.