A kiosk is a bigger decision than it looks, because it is furniture. Once one is bolted down by the door it changes how the room queues, how the counter is staffed and what the average order looks like. The case for it is real and it is narrower than the vendors suggest: it is about a specific kind of queue at a specific volume.
What it does to the queue
A kiosk does not serve people faster; it serves more of them at once. One counter is one queue, and two kiosks plus a counter is three, which matters at lunch and is irrelevant at four in the afternoon. The rooms where kiosks pay are the ones with a compressed rush where the constraint is the till rather than the kitchen. If the kitchen is the bottleneck, a kiosk moves the queue rather than shortening it.
What it does to the average order
The consistent finding operators report is that a screen upsells without embarrassment and never forgets to ask. It offers the larger size and the side every single time, which a person at the end of a shift does not. Whether that is worth the hardware depends on your margin per order and how many orders go through it, which is arithmetic worth doing before the demo rather than after.
The parts nobody mentions until later
Allergen information has to be on the screen and it has to be right, because there is no member of staff in the conversation to ask. Somebody has to clean it, several times a day. It will be down occasionally, and the counter has to be able to take over without a queue forming. And it takes floor space that was doing something else. None of these kill the case; all of them are absent from the brochure.
A lunch rush, counted
Twelve to two, one counter, a hundred and forty orders, so a queue that peaks at about twenty and a wait a customer notices. Add two kiosks and the same hundred and forty orders arrive through three points: the peak queue drops to about seven at each and the wait to something nobody remembers. The kitchen still plates a hundred and forty orders in two hours, so the kiosks moved the queue from the till to the collection shelf, and the collection display is now the thing to get right. If the kitchen was already the constraint at a hundred and forty, the kiosks bought a shorter line to a longer wait, which is the case to check with your own numbers before the furniture arrives.
Questions people ask about self ordering kiosk
How many kiosks does a small restaurant need?
Usually one, positioned so its queue does not cross the collection point. Two makes sense when one is visibly queued during the rush, which you can measure in a week with a stopwatch.
Do kiosks replace staff?
They move them. The counter still needs somebody for payment problems, allergen questions and the guest who will not use a screen, and somebody now cleans the kiosk. Rooms that bought one to remove a person have generally been disappointed.
Is a tablet on a stand a kiosk?
For a small counter, effectively yes, and it costs a fraction of a purpose-built unit. It is less sturdy and less obvious to a guest walking in, which is the trade. Trying it that way first is a cheap way to find out whether the queue behaves as you expect.
Does a kiosk change how the kitchen receives orders?
It should not. The order arrives in the same queue as the counter, on the same printer or screen, with the same modifiers and a number for the collection display. A kiosk that needs its own tablet on the pass has doubled the kitchen's screens, which is the trade nobody mentions until the first lunch.