I had dinner recently at a classic, traditional steakhouse. Anyone who has been to one of these types of places (Morton's, Ruth's Chris, Del Frisco's, etc.) knows that they are elegant and somewhat formal. So I was (pleasantly) surprised when the wine list appeared, loaded on an iPad. I like wine, but I'm certainly not a connoisseur, which means every time a wine list appears in a restaurant I start breaking out in hives over the pressure of having to comb through pages and pages of options. With the iPad, however, the experience was much more intuitive since I could browse by a host of criteria and learn a little bit about each of the wine options I was considering. It was a case of not using technology for technology's sake. They didn't present the food menu on an iPad - salad is salad and steak is steak. Not a lot of complexity there. But wine is different story, and the steakhouse made it much less intimidating.
It also served to make the steakhouse seem more modern without disturbing its old-school feel. Definitely a case where the technology added to the brand experience, but the absence of it wouldn't have detracted from the experience. (An "Excitement Attribute" in Kano Model vernacular.)
