Ever heard of a self-service coffee shop? You probably have. Self-serve kiosks are rapidly popping up in restaurants everywhere and they can be a great asset for your coffee shop. Self-ordering kiosks may well be the magic wand or secret weapon that you need to tackle the high competition, and failure rates prevalent in the restaurant industry. Not only that, the kiosks can also help to increase your revenues and profitability.
Several restaurants have already found that customers spend more when they use self-service kiosks and apps. Taco Bell, has priced orders placed through its digital app 20% higher than orders made to human cashiers, mainly because people select additional ingredients while using the app. Similarly, Chili’s—the popular American casual dining restaurant chain, reported an increase in dessert orders after it installed self-service tablets.
Robust, scalable, and easy to use, the tablet or iPad POS has enterprise level features for all restaurant types, which includes coffee shops. A cloud-based enterprise POS system, the POS tablet can take your business to the next level with dynamic features to increase productivity, and sales. If you have clear goals in mind, then you can leverage self-service tablets and kiosks to deliver the best possible experience to customers who visit your coffee shop.
Why Using Self-Serving Technology at Your Coffee Shop Makes Sense
The self-service kiosks at your coffee shop will make things convenient for customers who are on a tight schedule. The technology will allow them to skip the line and choose their favorite coffee or savory items in the kiosk. Knowing that they can quickly get their favorite coffee at any time of the day from your coffee shop would make customers visit your café more often. However, you must make sure that everything your coffee shop offers is available for selection on the kiosk as well.
While a self-serve kiosk will encourage your customers to visit your coffee shop more frequently, the tablet POS will allow you to the customer experience to a whole new level. It will do this by eliminating the need for you or your employees to keep an eye on stock levels throughout the day to ensure your café doesn’t run out of stocks. Tablet POS ensures that you have the supply to meet the demand by letting you monitor sales data, and inventory on one platform.
A complete solution for your self-service coffee shop, the cloud-based tablet POS system provides integrated online ordering and automated solutions for inventory management and recipe control. Not only that, the innovative POS system also provides you with analytics and reporting capabilities. With these capabilities, you can cut down on expenses while increasing your revenues. Following are some ways self-serving kiosks can be a game-changer for your coffee shop:
1. Increase in Check Sizes
With self-serving kiosks, you will experience an increase your average check size. The kiosks make it less important to teach staff upselling techniques. This is because upselling is automated with a self-serving kiosk.
You no longer need your staff to identify pricey additions and high-margin items. Instead, the self-ordering kiosk can take care of this. Customers are displayed all available add-ons for each item on the menu. This increases the chances of customers adding the additional offerings to ‘make it a combo’. This increase their total check size.
2. Decrease in Wait Times
In a traditional coffee shop, a line building up is inevitable. With a self-ordering kiosk, you can allow customers to skip the long line at the cash counter. Instead, they can order and pay at their convenience. This will have a direct impact on your sales. This is because customer satisfaction will increase due to the speed in taking orders and decrease of in wait times.
Not only will the self-service kiosks provide customers with a fast and convenient service, it will make things less taxing for your staff during peak times. It’s a win/win situation!
3. More Accurate Orders
Will self-serving kiosks, your customer will be able to choose and place their own orders. This will drastically reduce the chances on error in your orders. There’s no better technology than a visual menu on a kiosk to minimize miscommunication in a restaurant such as your coffee shop. With this technology, you can ensure that what customers order is exactly what they want. They can’t go to the manager complaining that they have the ‘wrong order’.
With this increased accuracy in orders, there will be less time spent in preparing items to correct a ‘wrong order’ that has the customer fuming. This will result in an increase in productivity and a decrease in ‘avoidable’ costs that arise due to incorrect orders. Ultimately, all this benefits the bottom line.
4. Reduced Labor Costs
With customers in charge of your ordering process, you can be more flexible in your staffing. For example, you can move some of your staff at the front to the kitchen to meet the influx of orders coming in. You can also downsize staff that you don’t really need to cut costs. Put simply, self-ordering kiosks offer you with a great opportunity to save on labor. They also allow you to be more flexible with staffing to ensure a great customer experience, ultimately helping you increase revenues and profitability.
Add to the Experience at Your Coffee Shop with Self-Service Coffee Machines
Just like self-service kiosks and apps, self-service coffee machines are also popping up in coffee shops everywhere. Together with self-service kiosks and cloud-based POS systems, self-service coffee machines are adding to the experience at cafés by providing the following benefits:
- Speed of service
- Less queuing times
- Convenience of ordering
- And, more space to move around while placing order
For all the above reasons and more, you should equip your café with self-serving technology to keep your coffee shop hot.
by Bobby J Davidson
We love our company and we love what we do. Check out the ‘Why Percento‘ page to learn more: Love of Technology and Business! As the President of Percento Technologies International, I provide day-to-day leadership to the company’s senior management and I am personally involved in the strategy, business development and sales activities of the firm.
The company was founded in 1999 with the purpose of providing a one call source for organizations in need of Enterprise IT Consulting and Management. We also provide a line of products in the boutique Cloud Server space with a touch of high-end website strategy consulting and design services. We personalizes the IT Service experience with a team approach, working with clients from diverse sectors of industry, including energy services, financial, legal, entertainment, healthcare, hospitality, retail and general and/or corporate business. percentotech.com/contact