Self ordering kiosk: the sums behind the screen

Walk into many fast food restaurants today and the first thing you meet is not a person but a screen. Guests tap through the menu, add extras, pay by card and collect a ticket, while staff who once took orders at the till work in the kitchen or bring food to tables. For the right venue, a self ordering kiosk shortens the queue, frees staff and lets guests order at their own pace.

For the wrong venue, it is an expensive screen that guests walk past to find a person. A kiosk changes how guests order, what staff do and how the kitchen receives its tickets, and it costs more than its price tag. This guide sets out the sums behind the screen: what a kiosk really costs, the labour it does and does not replace, what it does to the queue at the till and to spend, and the kinds of venue where guests prefer it. Every figure in it is an example.

A self ordering kiosk is a screen, usually a large touch screen on a stand or a wall, where guests build their own order, choose options, pay, and receive a number or a receipt. The order goes straight to the kitchen, and the guest collects their food or has it brought to them.

Kiosks are a kind of interactive kiosk, the same family of machines as self-service checkouts and ticket machines. In hospitality, they are most common in quick service restaurants, fast casual chains, food halls and cafés with high volumes and simple menus.

A kiosk replaces one specific job: taking orders and payments at a counter. It does not cook, clean, greet or look after guests, and understanding that boundary is the key to whether it pays.

Kiosks work best where three things are true: many guests order in a short time, the menu is simple enough to navigate on a screen, and guests are used to ordering for themselves.

Quick service and fast casual venues fit that description well. At lunchtime, queues build quickly, the menu is a list of items with options, and guests are happy to tap through it. Several screens can take orders at once, so a queue that would stretch out of the door at a single till can move much faster.

Food halls, cinemas, stadiums and transport hubs fit too: high volumes, short visits and guests who want to order and go. In these settings, a kiosk can be the difference between a queue guests join and one they walk away from.

Kiosks fit poorly in table-service restaurants, where the experience is the service: being greeted, guided through the menu and looked after. Guests who come for that experience rarely want to order from a screen at the door.

They fit poorly with complex menus too. A menu with many dishes, long descriptions and detailed options takes far longer to navigate on a screen than with a server, and guests who get lost give up or order less.

And they fit poorly with some guests: those who are less comfortable with technology, those with visual or physical difficulties using a touch screen, and those who simply prefer to talk to someone. A venue that relies on kiosks needs a way to serve those guests too, or it will lose them.

The price of a kiosk is only part of what it costs. A full picture includes:

Spread the upfront costs over the life of the kiosk, perhaps three to five years, and add the monthly costs, to get a real monthly cost per screen. That is the number to weigh against what the kiosk saves.

A kiosk replaces order taking at the till. In a busy quick service venue, that can be a significant amount of labour: one or more people at the counter through every service, taking orders and payments.

But it rarely replaces a whole person on every shift. Order taking is one part of a counter job that also includes greeting guests, answering questions, handling problems, preparing drinks and serving food. Many venues that install kiosks move counter staff to other work, such as preparing orders, running food or keeping the dining area clean, rather than reducing the team.

Count the labour honestly. If a kiosk lets a venue run one fewer person at the till for four hours of the lunch peak, that is the saving, not a full salary.

Everything except order taking still needs people. Food must be cooked and assembled. Orders must be handed over or brought to tables. Tables must be cleared and cleaned. Drinks may still need making by hand.

Kiosks also create some work of their own. Guests need help when they get stuck, when a card is declined or when they want to change an order. Screens need cleaning, many times a day. Printers need paper. Someone must watch for problems and fix them quickly, because a frozen screen at the busiest moment of lunch makes the queue worse, not better.

Many venues keep a member of staff near the kiosks at busy times for exactly this reason, which is part of the cost.

The main promise of a kiosk is a shorter queue at the till. With several screens, several guests can order at once, and guests who take a long time to choose no longer hold up everyone behind them.

That promise holds when there are enough screens for the peak and when the kitchen can keep up with the orders the screens produce. A kiosk that takes orders faster than the kitchen can cook them simply moves the queue from the till to the collection point.

Measure the queue before and after. How long do guests wait to order at the peak? How many leave the queue without ordering? How long do they then wait for their food? A kiosk earns its place if the total time from arrival to food falls, not just the time to order.

Kiosk ordering is often said to raise average spend per head, because screens suggest extras consistently, guests feel less rushed and some guests order more when no one is watching. Vendors often quote large increases.

Treat those figures with caution. They come from particular venues, menus and guests, and they are often measured against a busy till where staff had no time to suggest anything. The effect in your venue may be larger, smaller or close to nothing.

Measure it yourself. Compare the average order value at the kiosk with the average at the till, over the same hours and days, for a few weeks. Our guide to average spend per head, split properly covers how to measure spend fairly, and our guide to upselling that does not sound like selling covers the person-to-person version.

A kiosk menu is a different design problem from a printed menu. Guests stand in front of it, often with a queue behind them, and need to find what they want in a few taps.

Keep categories few and clear, with large buttons and good photographs. Show prices on every item and every option. Keep required choices to those the kitchen needs, and make extras clearly optional. Show the order total at every step, so guests are never surprised at payment.

Keep it in step with every other version of the menu. A dish that has sold out must disappear from the kiosk at once, and a price change must reach the kiosk on the same day it reaches the till and the website.

Not every guest can use a touch screen easily. Screens at a fixed height can be hard to reach from a wheelchair. Small text and low contrast are hard to read for guests with poor sight. Some guests do not read the language on the screen well.

Design the kiosk to be usable by as many guests as possible: screens at a reachable height or adjustable, large text, strong contrast, simple language. And always offer an alternative: a person at a till or a member of staff who can take an order by hand. A venue that offers only kiosks risks excluding guests it should be serving.

Train staff to notice guests who are struggling and to offer help without making them feel awkward.

Most kiosks take card payments only, which suits guests who pay by card and excludes those who pay with cash. Decide how cash-paying guests will order: at a till, with a member of staff, or by ordering at the kiosk and paying at the counter.

Card payments at a kiosk carry the usual fees, and they need the same reconciliation as payments at the till. Make sure kiosk payments appear in the same reports as everything else, so the day's takings can be checked in one place.

Make payment failures easy to recover from. A clear message, a chance to try again and a way to get help keep a guest who has just spent two minutes building an order.

A kiosk changes how orders reach the kitchen. Orders arrive faster at the peak, because several screens take orders at once, and they arrive complete, with every option chosen, rather than as a server's shorthand.

That is good for accuracy, but it can strain capacity. A kitchen that coped with orders arriving one at a time from a single till may struggle when four screens send orders together. Plan for the peak: enough cooks, enough space at the pass and a clear way to show guests when their order is ready.

Kiosk orders should appear in the kitchen exactly as other orders do, on the same screens or tickets, with the same layout, so cooks do not have to read two systems.

Take an example quick service café thinking about two kiosks. The screens, stands and card readers cost an example 6,000 in total, spread over four years, which is 125 a month. Software and support cost an example 150 a month. Card fees are the same as at the till. Total: about 275 a month.

On the other side, the kiosks let the café run one fewer person at the till for three hours over each weekday lunch, worth an example 40 a day, or about 880 a month over twenty-two weekdays. If the kiosks also shorten the queue enough that a few more guests stay to order rather than leaving, that adds more.

On those figures, the kiosks pay for themselves comfortably. Change the assumptions, fewer saved hours, more expensive software or a menu guests find hard to use, and the answer can reverse. Our guide to software ROI, the sum before the subscription covers how to make the estimate carefully.

A kiosk is not the only way to let guests order for themselves. Many venues let guests order from their own phones, by scanning a QR code at the table or the counter. That avoids buying hardware, puts no limit on how many guests can order at once and lets guests order from wherever they are sitting.

Each suits different venues. Kiosks suit venues where guests order before they sit, at a counter or a door, and where a large, clear screen helps. Ordering from phones suits venues where guests sit first and order at the table. Our guide to QR ordering, where the table orders and the kitchen cooks covers that approach.

Some venues use both, or neither. The right answer depends on how your guests arrive, order and eat.

Before buying several kiosks, test one. Many providers offer a trial, and a single screen in a real service shows quickly how guests respond: whether they use it, how long they take, whether they need help and what they order.

Watch closely in the first weeks. Note the guests who walk past the kiosk to the till, the ones who give up partway through, and the questions staff are asked. Measure the queue, the order value and the time to order, and compare them with the till.

Only when a trial shows guests using the kiosk well and the sums adding up is it worth buying more. A kiosk that sits unused is an expensive way to learn that guests prefer a person.

Touch screens are touched by every guest, many times a day. Guests notice a smeared or sticky screen, and some will not use it. Clean the screens regularly through service, not only at the start of the day, with a cleaner suitable for the screen, and keep hand sanitiser nearby.

Build cleaning into the routine of whoever looks after the kiosks, at set times and after any spill. A clean, bright screen invites guests to use it; a grubby one sends them to the till.

Every screen fails eventually: a frozen display, a lost connection, a card reader that stops working. At the busiest moment of lunch, a failed kiosk can turn a short queue into a long one.

Plan for it. Keep the till ready to take orders whenever a kiosk fails, make sure staff know how to restart a screen and who to call for support, and put a simple sign on any screen that is out of order. A failure handled in two minutes is barely noticed; one that takes twenty becomes the reason guests remember the visit.

An invented sandwich shop in a busy business district has a single till and a lunchtime queue that often reaches the door. Staff estimate that a few guests leave the queue every day without ordering. The owner considers kiosks.

The shop trials one kiosk for a month. Guests take to it quickly, and the queue at the till shortens on the busiest days. Comparing the same weeks, the average order at the kiosk is slightly higher than at the till, mostly from extras and drinks, though the owner treats the difference as modest. The kitchen copes, but the collection point gets crowded, so the shop adds a screen showing which orders are ready.

The shop adds a second kiosk and moves one counter worker to sandwich assembly over lunch. A till stays open for cash and for guests who prefer to order from a person. Over the next quarter, fewer guests leave the queue, lunch throughput rises and the kiosks cover their costs within the first year.

servearound does not offer a self ordering kiosk. Its screens are a point of sale, a host stand, a kitchen display for each station and digital menu boards. Guests can order for themselves from their own phones, using the menu they open by scanning a table's QR code, when the venue turns ordering on; orders from the phone and the point of sale are for seated tables, so this suits table service rather than a walk-up counter.

Those orders reach each station's board on the kitchen screen like any other, oldest first, with every option chosen, and before sending, guests confirm they have reviewed the allergen and dietary information. Order analytics show the average check, items and lines per check and what is ordered together, which is how the effect of guests ordering for themselves can be measured. See Order Fulfillment and pricing.

A touch screen where guests build their order, choose options and pay, with the order going straight to the kitchen.

In quick service and fast casual venues, food halls and other high-volume settings with simple menus and guests used to ordering for themselves.

They replace order taking at the till, which may save part of a shift at the peak. Cooking, serving, cleaning and helping guests still need people.

Hardware, software, card fees, installation, maintenance and menu upkeep. Spread the upfront costs over the kiosk's life to see a real monthly cost.

Sometimes, through consistent suggestions and unhurried ordering, but vendor figures vary widely. Measure your own over a few weeks.

If there are enough screens for the peak and the kitchen can keep up. Otherwise the queue moves to the collection point.

Keep an alternative, such as a till or a member of staff, and design the kiosk for accessibility: reachable, readable and simple.

Yes. Guests ordering from their own phones needs no hardware and suits venues where guests sit before ordering.

Yes. Trial one screen in real services and measure queue times, order values and how guests use it before buying more.

A self ordering kiosk replaces one job, taking orders and payments at the till, and it pays where many guests order quickly from a simple menu, as in quick service, fast casual and food halls. It fits poorly where guests come for table service, where the menu is complex or where guests prefer a person.

Count every cost, hardware, software, card fees, installation, maintenance and menu upkeep, against the labour it genuinely saves, usually part of a shift at the peak rather than a whole job. Make sure the kitchen can keep up, design the screen for every guest and keep an alternative, measure spend and queue times yourself rather than trusting vendor figures, and trial one screen before committing to more.