The Benefits of Self-Serve Kiosks in Schools and Businesses
In many businesses and schools, retail food service is becoming a vital revenue stream.
A study by Director Magazine, a food service periodical, found that retail occupies 60% of all industry revenues. Furthermore, this figure is only anticipated to grow over time. Most of the time, this revenue can offset many other costs that businesses and school services incur. Given this rising significance many schools and businesses are looking into improving their retail operations with self-service kiosks being a glowing route to take. Below is an assessment of why self-service is such a boon.
Cross-Sector Revenue Growth
Kiosks tend to encourage spending. McDonald’s installed kiosks in several locations and reported a 30% increase in order prices. Cinemark noted a similar uptick at concession over the span of 8 years. This growth is caused by two issues.
- Training employees to upsell is taxing; kiosks can reliably do it through programming, resulting in larger orders. The case of McDonald’s involved 20% customers deciding to buy a larger drink.
- Restaurants can adjust what items they promote, either for a promotion or highlighting under-ordered items, likely leading to more purchases of those items.
Cut Costs and Raise Efficiency
As people become more concerned with healthy eating, food services must manage costs and accountability while keeping up with the slow annual increase of food. This is where the quest for new models of efficiency comes into play that can also maintain quality and service. Self-service kiosks can cover this ground on two fronts.
- They call for less laborers, meaning orders can go faster and just as consistent while per-employee sales rise.
- Placing multiple kiosks in one area expedites service speed and cuts down on lines.
Improved Customer Satisfaction
Sometimes tech may bolster revenues and cost-efficiency at the cost of happy customers. This is not the case with self-serve micro market kiosks; most customers tend to prefer using a kiosk over a human, if only because it means shorter lines. There are other reasons why a kiosk can be appealing to customers.
More Accurate Orders
Kiosks never make mistakes and customers can always customize their orders with a touchscreen.
Visuals
Software Advice discovered that 25% of customers prefer to see photos of the food at kiosks. When combined with meal customization, this preference rises to 55% of customers.
Focus on the Customer’s Experience
Customers who place their own orders allow staff to better serve customers, making them better able to attend to customer needs.
Ultimately, self-serve kiosks offer a true win-win for food service providers and their customers.
Encourage Healthy Eating
People want to eat healthy if only to avoid costly and unhealthy medical conditions but food availability drives customer demand; removing their favorites from the menu results in unhappiness. The ideal path is to educate consumers to make healthy, informed choices.
Nutritional Data
When customers place their orders, the kiosks can allow them to see the nutritional content of their meal. Once they know what they want, the kiosk can then do a tally of all the nutritive content for that meal. If the provider wishes, this program can be displayed to prioritize healthier fare, items that are notable to people with food allergies or even outright filter out menu items to the customer can only order what fits within their diet. This level of specificity is far more efficient than a human employee and also reduces the risk of giving false information to the customer. All of this customization ultimately gives a gentle judge for people to eat healthier.
Changing the Game of Good Services
As schools and businesses look to up revenue, cut costs and keep customers as happy as possible, self-serve kiosks continue to light the way. Just by streamlining order flow and optimizing customer experiences, kiosks can meet all three goals and then some. Done right, they can be the ideal path for your operations.
