In a quick service or fast food restaurant, the need for a quick and efficient service is in the name. In recent years chains of all sizes have opted for an interactive commercial digital menu board to act as a self-service kiosk to support their counter staff.
The numerous benefits for self-service kiosks are clear, from allowing staff to focus more on customer service, reducing waiting times as well as improving and optimising the overall customer experience.
As a quick service or fast food restaurant owner are you ready to take the next step to self-service and remain competitive?
To help you decide here are some guidelines and consumer related expectations that might just help make your mind up.
Ease and accessibility
Consumers have the convenience and control over what meal choices they want and can take their time in whether to accept the up-sell or cross sell options on a digitally interactive menu screen. Self-service technology is now becoming more acceptable and more user friendly which plays an important part in satisfaction, confidence and comfort.
Momentum
Your customers are used to a fast service. We are all accustomed to ‘next day’ and sometimes ‘same day’ delivery for online purchases, making the speed of service critical. Ensuring that these transactions are smooth and intuitive is one of the strongest influences on the satisfaction of your customers.
Interaction
Our smart phones have opened us up to information by touch and this is none more so than with the rising level of consumer acceptance of touch screen self-service kiosks. With no barcode or swipe interaction required there is no need for an employee on standby incase of failure. A great benefit of any fast food self-service kiosk is that it can easily spark impulse purchases and offer up-sell opportunities through its digital menu screen.
Kiosk considerations
The beauty of working with an experienced provider such as James Hogg Display is that brands are able to customise their self-service kiosk to fit their brand guidelines, plans and requirements. This can include:
- Custom branding. Vinyl wrap or spray finish your kiosk to work with your restaurants interior decor.
- Use the digital menu screen for high impact digital messaging and promotions when in standby mode.
- Create a seamless integration of services with an installed POS system
- Integrate a payment gateway provider, QR scanner and receipt printer.
- Easy access for maintenance and cleaning
- Flexible language options
- Anti-glare glass to reduce annoying reflections created by external light sources.
Self-Service kiosk integration
Outside of the cosmetic considerations your new self service kiosk must function and integrate with your existing or chosen POS software to make an effective point-of-sale device. The three basic but important criteria for an effective solution are:
- An accurate and on demand reporting of sales data from the self-service kiosk to your POS sales data.
- Transmission of information to back office systems as well as Kitchen ordering monitors
- Compliance with the relevant payment gateway provider to ensure transactions at point of purchase are resolved.
Return on Investment
Although ROI is one of the biggest factors in decision making for any business, it’s a difficult thing to calculate.
Any return on investment is impacted by cost of hardware, software, network provider, license subscriptions, payment fees, loyalty programs and any software upgrades to existing back office applications. It is not simply a matter of comparing hardware costs with an increase in profits.
To help support and get to a clearer picture on your investment, look to improving your working standards, order accuracy, speed of service, dedicated and customer driven promotions and enhance the customer experience. This will all help to calculate a fair ROI.
If you found this article of interest and are keen to bring innovation and creativity to your restaurant, speak to James Hogg Display about your options today. We’ll be able to offer an expert opinion on your needs and suggest the best touch interactive self-service kiosk solution for you.