Restaurant Encourages Patron To Surf The
Net as they dine; Remodel at Dal Rae includes addition of wireless online access

By Debbie Pfeiffer Trunnell, Staff Writer

PICO RIVERA - Customers at the Dal Rae restaurant can now go online without fuss, muss or cables all while dining on steak and sipping martinis.

Thanks to a wireless router mounted on the lounge wall that sends and receives signals through the air, all patrons need to do is load a wireless card into a wireless compliant laptop computer, open the browser and send or respond to e-mails.

"What's nice is, I don't have to use a phone system, I can use their system," said Dan Schrock, a vendor for the restaurant, who used his laptop there Tuesday. "For me, personally, I can set up my laptop and take orders for my business, then transmit them."

Brothers Kevin and Lorin Smith, the second generation of the same family that has run the restaurant for 44 years, own the restaurant with Kevin's wife, Sindy. They said they came up with the idea three years ago, while doing an extensive remodeling of their establishment.

"While we added patios and redid the kitchen, we were planning for state-of-the-art technology at the restaurant, because we wanted to complete the area of technology with hotel restaurants, our main competitor", Kevin Smith said.

For the installation, the Smiths hired Eddie Ferreira of Wired 2 Wirelessnet.com, a wireless company in Garden Grove. Setting up wireless access cost the Smiths $4,000.

Ferreira said some Starbucks Coffee locations, other coffeehouses and some hotels already offer wireless access, but customers typically have to pay for it.

"They are the first of their kind to be offering this free of cost, as far as I am concerned", he said. "And the best part of it is, it allows people to get free of their desks."

Because people are accessing the Internet in a public place, the restaurant has some guidelines, including not doing any banking or e-mailing of sensitive documents and requiring patrons to shut down their computers or inform the management if they feel something or someone is impacting their equipment.