Hey Zeus

I'm so excited to talk to you about Newcastle's newest lunch joint. Not just because I've wanted a place where I could walk into and grab a wrap or a salad on the fly, for a long time now. But because this place is frikkin' cool. The design, the set up, the entire concept of Hey Zeus is really rad, and after reading this you'll want to check it out.

Trust me.

Hey Zeus is funky in it's colour choices but at the same time super minimalist. There's not much inside at all, but it's just the right amount. Faux vertical gardens cover two of the walls, almost hinting at the overall low maintenance that the business requires. Two large LCD screens hang on the wall and point to where you order your food and where you pick it up.

Four ipads on stands are lined up against the side, underneath trendy rope hung lights.
Touch to start! The ordering experience is relatively smooth, if not a little touchy. As an individual who is familiar with all of the techy additions to the modern world, I'm not phased by this at all. But more on that later.

The home page shows a small amount of options. Two sizes of salads, a wrap and some drinks. I can't go past a good salad wrap so I tap the customise button under the photo of the wrap.
The next page is the beginning of the customisation of your meal. Do you want rice added? I love rice in a burrito so it's a sure thing! Next page, protein. A variety of meats, or black beans. I'm a full vegetarian now so it's straight to the beans for me.

The third page is a subway style variety of salads. The first four are included in the initial price, and it's all that I need. I go with grated cheese, mushroom, baby spinach and cucumber. The final page is for choosing a sauce. Which I skip, and later regret.

Josh orders his salad next and the process is the same. He gets chicken and a spicy chipotle sauce. A hot sauce which I end up dipping my wrap into.

To finish up I type in my name and pay by card with the attached eftpos, a little machine pops out a receipt and I'm ready to wait for my order.

There's a big LCD above the pick up area that says my order is currently being made a good way to keep customers updated on their order. Shortly after a cute paper bag with my name on it makes it's way around to me in the order area on a conveyer belt! I'm only a tad bit embarrassed on how excited I was to see my order.

Hey Zeus is strictly takeaway, there's no seating in sight. So we take our cute paper bag to the park and sit at a picnic table to eat. There's no need to grab anything yourself either, serviettes and forks are already in bag, and all the packaging is recyclable! Nice!

Let's talk food. My wrap was delicious. I generally don't use sauce with my own salad wraps, but as this one was almost more of a burrito with the beans and rice, I should have added some. The wrap was huge and very yummy, next time I wouldn't get mushrooms though as they were raw and I'm more of a cooked mushroom kinda gal.

Josh's order is more insta friendly

Concept wise? This place is rad, I want it to do so well, because I think that this kind of place is really nifty. Here's what I think will be a downfall for this kind of place. A bit of honest feedback from myself to Hey Zeus.

There's no staff on the floor, and no one visible that can help you. Yes you can ring the doorbell (that leads to the kitchen) for assistance, but would you? As someone who can work technology but also used to work on the self serve registers at Bunnings, a lot of people hate this kind of stuff. It's impersonal, and it's also kind of tricky. At a store self serve machine, someone is there to help you, and you also have the motivation that you would like to purchase the item you've already picked up.

In this case, you're on your own, and if it's too hard, well there's a lot of restaurants in the city to choose from. Case and point, a couple in maybe their mid 50's came in to have a look while we were waiting for our food. They were immediately confused, asked us what they have to do, to which I was like you order on the ipads. (duh) and (I've done my time working self serve, ya'll can figure it out yourself). I didn't pay much attention but they had a look at the ipads and left without making an order.

Final Word?

Awesome. Definitely go and check it out! Even as a bit of a novelty, order some food and grab a pic in front of the vertical garden I'll be back for another wrap in no time!

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