Self-service Coming To Fast-food (1/2)

Technology Trend Self-service Coming To Fast-food Soon, you'll be ordering Big Macs without ever talking to a human The cashier at your favorite fast-food joint may be replaced soon by an order-taking kiosk. But don't worry. It's been programmed to ask, 'Do you want fries with that?' Ending years of flirtation, the fast-food industry finally appears ready to take the plunge into self-service ordering with kiosks, some restaurant technology experts say. Taking a page from banks and airlines, major chains including McDonald's, Burger King and Subway are field-testing machines that allow consumers to order and pay for their meals without any human contact. None of the companies has announced a system wide launch. Still, experts say the growing use of self-service at the grocer and the gas pump has chains thinking more seriously of joining the do-it-yourself generation. RON BASELICE / DMN After an order, the machine gives a receipt, which is exchanged for food at the counter. "I think you'll see the initiation of ... a rollout next year," said Jerry Leeman, food service and hospitality manager for IBM. Mr. Leeman was one of more than 2,000 restaurant industry professionals and techies in Grapevine this week for the 10th annual International Foodservice Technology Exposition, which ended Wednesday. He and others see a fast-food industry that is facing a staffing crunch. At the same time, consumers are becoming less tolerant of time-wasting queues. Enter The Kiosk. The touch-screens on the kiosks now being tested are almost identical to the display terminals used by workers behind the counters. With them, people can browse menus with multilingual text and eye-popping color graphics and touch a box to select the items and quantity wanted. Nearly all of the models in test accept credit and gift cards. More sophisticated ones add debit cards, and the most elaborate – and expensive – also take cash. After paying, the customer collects a receipt, and the order is sent electronically to the kitchen. The receipt is then exchanged for food at the counter. Vendors say the machines can shave minutes off a transaction time – the fast-food equivalent of finding the Holy Grail. Robert Grimes, whose Accuvia food-service consulting firm is co-hosting the trade show, said the 10 companies promoting kiosks this year represent a 50 percent increase from last year – a measure of the growing restaurant interest. Georgia-based NCR, known historically as a cash register company, is likely the current leader in fast-food kiosks, Mr. Grimes said. NCR is doing "controlled deployment" of kiosks and has about 60 of them running at franchised McDonald's locations in cities including Houston, Orlando and Denver, said Peter Charpentier, product manager in the NCR retail solutions division. He and other tech vendors see the benefits of self-service as clear. It shortens the customer wait and improves order accuracy because it removes the language barrier (an NCR machine can include up to 26 languages). Plus, it is programmed to always suggest that the consumer buy something else (called up-selling), which means higher check averages. On one kiosk model, the "large drink and fries" option virtually bursts out of the screen in 3-D fashion, while the other options are static. The technology's most obvious savings would be labor costs. But the vendors were careful to use terms such as "labor redeployment" and "repositioning" when talking about the kiosk's ability to cut crews. "They can have more labor in the kitchen and less labor up front," said Mr. Charpentier, of NCR. RON BASELICE / DMN Labor is a growing concern for an industry that predicts it will need 1.8 million more workers by 2015. By comparison, health care, which often pays more, will need 3.5 million more workers in that same time span, said Hudson Riehle, senior vice president for research at the National Restaurant Association.