In what we can expect to be a trend rolled out nationwide, Caesars Entertainment is using its Atlantic City casinos to experiment with cutting back on waitresses. It’s not like we didn’t have fair warning of 
this: One of the big arguments in favor of server-based slots was that you could make your drink order without waiting for a waitress, all thanks to the machine. That is what is happening now. If the time-and-motion boffins at Caesars like what they see, any outpost of the Roman empire could be next. But it’s not as though the waitstaff is taking this lying down. Local 54 of Unite-Here is protesting, partly because the new regime prevents waitresses to gauge a patron’s level of intoxication before bringing him another drink. (Customers, incidentally, love the new policy.)
Said union research analyst Ben Begleiter, “God forbid that someone is intoxicated and gets in a car and hurts themselves or someone else. Not only is there a liability on the company, there is a potential liability on the server.” The local is taking the matter so seriously that it’s petitioning the Division of Gaming Enforcement to have the policy reversed. No doubt the DGE will hear testimony like that of waitress Eve Davis: “My job is to sit by the bar and wait till a tray has 10 drinks on it, and then I have to run out and deliver them as fast as I can. And I’m timed.” Let’s hope this doesn’t catch on; with the rise of robotic dealers, we’re in serious danger of the casino floor becoming a near-totally depersonalized experience.
* Golden Entertainment is doubling down on its trophy property, the Stratosphere. Golden will invest $140 million in capex improvements. These include a renovation of roughly 1,200 rooms, converting space that was laying fallow into a convention center and adding a pub to the sports 
book. (Does one’s betting acuity improve whilst inebriated?) CEO Blake Sartini told stock analysts that “the population in the Las Vegas Valley continues to grow to new highs while local unemployment of 4.9 percent is at its lowest level in quite some time and wage growth remains healthy.” While revenue rocketed up, year/year, Golden reported a loss for 2017, blamed upon the costs of assimilating American Casino & Entertainment Properties, the Strat’s parent. The Mandalay Bay Massacre didn’t help business either.
A new bar catering to Millennials will be added to the Stratosphere pod, signage will be changed, as will the check-in desk. Eventually, a new steakhouse, Starbucks, revamped Top of the World and Millennials-targeted gaming area (“Adrenaline”) will be part of the three-year package. Golden continues to sit on 16 nearby, vacant acres but that isn’t meant to imply passivity. We just don’t know what Sartini’s thinking is at the moment. As for Golden’s cash-cow — slot routes — the company is working on a single loyalty card that would unite all its properties. Imagine earning loyalty points at Rocky Gap Resort in Maryland that could be redeemed in Vegas,
* “They’re all just sort of circling around the opportunity and getting ready to pounce,” says H2 Gambling Capital analyst David Henwood, speaking of legislatures in the United States, who are fairly licking their chops at the idea of legalized sports betting. New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Mississippi and West Virginia have already enacted enabling legislation. Henwood’s firm forecasts conservatively that 18 states will ultimately act, over a seven-10-year period, raking in as much as $8 billion. A more liberal estimate is that of Gambling Compliance, which places the number of participating states between 21 and 37, over a five-year timeline, for a $6 billion haul, 
tops. In the middle is the projection of Eilers & Krejcik Gaming, which predicts 32 legalizations over five years, with $6 billion up for grabs.
Among the companies jockeying for position are Scientific Games (which bought William Hill PLC‘s software provider) and Churchill Downs, which purchased Presque Isle Downs explicitly to get in on the Pennsylvania sports- and Internet-gambling markets. International Game Technology, provider of choice for MGM Resorts International, has experience in Italian sports betting to its credit. Of course, DFS operators can’t be ruled out either. Once the U.S. Supreme Court overturns the Bradley Act it’s going to be Katie, bar the door.
Uh, ordering drinks from a slot machine is not new. They have had this feature on the slots at Caesars Windsor for at least 5 years now.
They’ve had drink orders on the machines at Horseshoe Southern Indiana, Harrah’s Shreveport, LA, Harrah’s Ak Chin in AZ and their casinos in Biloxi, MS I believe. Personally I think it’s a great idea, I’ve never been served very fast at any casino, and usually the waitresses are carrying way too many drinks to serve people in a timely manner. As far as checking to see if they are inebriated, you should be able to tell when you take them their drinks. Just out of curiosity how many times has a casino cut someone off from drinking unless they’ve fallen out of their chair. My point is you just don’t see it that often.