5 Reasons Self-Ordering Kiosks Are A Great Restaurant Investment

“For restaurants, kiosks have proven to be optimized to achieve key objectives, such as increasing check sizes, line busting, and improving the speed of service.” ~Tillster CEO Perse Failly

The use of self-order kiosks is growing at an unprecedented rate, and there are no signs of slowing down. In fact, by 2024, the self-order kiosks market is expected to reach approximately $30.8B, with a significant portion coming from food and beverage kiosks.

Despite the uptick in self-order kiosks usage and numerous world-renown QSR brands such as Burger King, McDonald’s and Wendy’s increasing their kiosks utilization over the last two years, one ever-popular question still emerges.

Are self-order kiosks worth the investment?

This post will cover the general qualifications to help determine if kiosks are suited for your brand and review the benefits that make kiosks a worthy long-term investment for your restaurant. Lastly, we will review the criteria you should evaluate when selecting a kiosk provider for your store.

1. Guests prefer self-ordering kiosks

2. Increases check sizes

3. Improves speed of service

4. Drives more automation

5. Captures important guest information

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Are self-orders right for my restaurant?

Understanding how much of your restaurant traffic is in-store is one of the most important factors to consider before moving forward with a kiosk solution. If, for example, 70-80% of your traffic is drive-thru, an in-store kiosk may not make sense for your business. Instead, you should consider online or mobile ordering or delivery as a suitable offering.

However, if most of your traffic is in-store, a self-order kiosk may be the competitive advantage that gives you a leg up in the market. Restaurants with high foot traffic have a higher probability of long lines and waits, which boosts the likelihood of guests being open to additional ordering methods such as kiosks.

5 reasons why self-order kiosks are a great restaurant investment

Guests prefer self-ordering kiosks

Want more customers to come through your restaurant doors? Kiosks can help make that happen. How? For starters, your guests WANT you to have kiosks in your store. In fact, 65% of customers prefer to visit a restaurant with self-order kiosks over those that don’t.

Why? Your customers want convenience.

Walking into a restaurant and seamlessly placing an order with total control is a dining experience your guests now expect you to deliver. The advances in technology have empowered consumers to be more self-autonomous in their decision-making through the control desktop and mobile devices provide. Customers can now place, manage, and track their orders all from the comforts of their devices and desire the same control in-store versus placing their trust in your front-of-house staff to get their orders correct without a hiccup.

By implementing self-order kiosks, you are meeting consumers where and how they prefer to dine. In turn, you can expect more positive customer experiences that will keep them coming back and referring more business to your brand, all positively impacting your bottom line.

Increases check sizes

On average, Tillster kiosk customers see a lift in check size by 10-15% with a self-order kiosk solution. With the ability to market high-margin menu items without your staff having to remember promotions or hard sell customers, and all based on your guests’ buying behavior (with the help of a powerful recommendation engine), increasing order values is a seamless process.

Creating a comfortable buying experience is one of the most effective methods to drive more restaurant sales. Kiosks enable you to continually upsell and cross-sell to your customers without overwhelming or pressuring them into actually buying the item. This allows guests to spend more time on your menu and evaluate additional items, increasing the likelihood of putting more food in their carts. 

Improves speed of service

Customers love long lines and wait times.

Made you look; of course, they don’t. This might not come as a surprise, but guests don’t want to wait to place and get their food. So don’t make them.

Fun fact, did you know if the line length is longer than four people, customers would prefer to order from a self-order kiosk rather than a cashier? And, if the line lengths were equal, 30% of guests would still want to use a self-order kiosk rather than place their order with a cashier.

If you find your in-store traffic is causing excessive lines and lengthy wait times, self-order kiosks are a suitable offering to improve your service speed, enabling you to serve more guests and produce more orders. 

Drives more automation

Anytime you can reduce the number of touchpoints to get a placed order from your customer to your kitchen staff, you should take advantage of the opportunity. In the wake of Covid-19 and amid the current labor shortage, you need to leverage every tool possible to generate more production out of your staff without increasing labor costs to service your existing customer pool. To do so, you need more automation in your operations’ processes to shift staff focus from order taking to more high-value tasks such as customer greeting and ensuring their needs are met in-store to create an experience that will keep guests coming back.

Kiosks are one of the primary methods to incorporating more automation into your restaurant operations, which help raises your brand’s overall service and KPI performance. With guests in control of order placement and kiosks integrated directly with your POS system, in-store orders can be sent directly to your kitchen and POS system without a single touchpoint with your guest. With complete visibility and control over your orders, you can spend more time overseeing order quality, inventory levels, and facility management to ensure you meet your customers’ expectations with every purchase.

From order accuracy to your speed of service, kiosks enable you to elevate your brand to a higher standard and continually meet the objectives you set for your restaurant, and deliver superior dining experiences for your customers over your competition.   

Captures important guest information

Last but not least, learning and marketing your menu and brand through data is one of the most valuable benefits kiosks can provide for your restaurant. With every purchase, self-order kiosks allow you to learn from your guests’ buying behavior to more effectively upsell and cross-sell items to your in-store traffic. Without an avenue to capture customer information, you are limiting your ability to generate more revenue per order, identify popular order combinations, and A/B test new menu concepts.

Leverage in-store kiosks and collected data sets to take the guessing out of your in-store marketing and upsell, cross-sell efforts, and drive higher margins with your on-premise customers.

Need help selecting a self-order kiosk provider?

Identifying and selecting the right kiosk provider is vital to ensure you create a successful kiosk program.

Here are four factors you should consider before moving forward with a provider:

1. Be sure your provider’s applications are all equipped with a customer data platform (CDP) to capture and transmit guest buying data across your entire ordering tech stack

2. Make sure your provider is an expert in UI/UX restaurant kiosks

3. Choose a partner that helps you make sense of the data

4. Pay attention to the strength of your provider’s digital ordering infrastructure

5. Find a partner that provides complete operational support

Have questions or ready to get started with a self-order kiosk program?

Contact Tillster today for a FREE comprehensive review of your in-store operations to help determine if kiosks are right for you. You will also receive a FREE demo of our self-order kiosk solutions that have helped some of the world’s largest brands drive more revenue for their brand and create customer experiences that retain more customers over their competition.