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London chicken restaurant goes 100% kiosk and app ordering

Chiktopia, a London restaurant dedicated to U.S. Southern chicken, harnesses 100% kiosk and app ordering options to offer a counterless restaurant environment, giving customers the best possible user experience.

September 24, 2019

It is one thing to create a restaurant in the U.K. specializing in U.S. Southern style chicken. But the founders of Chiktopia, in London, also believe that to provide the type of experience customers are seeking, an automated ordering process is needed.

Patrons customize orders at the kiosks.

Hence, the Chiktopia restaurant, at Intu's Lakeside in London, harnesses 100% kiosk and app ordering options to offer a counterless restaurant environment, giving customers the best possible user experience, according to a press release. The founders' vision is to be recognized as the "Home of Better Chicken in the U.K." and beyond.

As a better chicken concept founded and advised by a group of senior industry figures, and led by Alastair Gordon, formerly of Ole & Steen, the Danish bakery chain and Jamie's Italian in London, Chiktopia's mission is to marry outstanding taste with the latest technology to offer the value that customers crave.

A customizable menu

The Chiktopia menu offers fried and grilled chicken burgers, tenders, skinny fries, salads, wraps, house sauces, vegan "chicken" and thick dairy shakes. Chicken is hand breaded throughout the day, according to the restaurant's website, and chicken tenders are marinated for two hours. The chicken is also certified Halal. The menu is portable and customizable and has been designed to work equally well for eat-in, take-away, the fast-growing delivery market and drive-thru. 

Kurve, a Bristol, U.K. based provider of self-service solutions for QSRs, fast casual restaurants, pubs, theaters and attractions, provided a blended digital and traditional customer journey of speed, service and choice through a visually engaging kiosk and mobile app interface. Kurve's all-in-one platform is designed to provide Chiktopia with all the software requirements to enable a smooth and fast journey, and scalability and agility to support the operator's future expansion plans.

A customer adds a side dish to an order.

Total self-ordering, with the option to pay cash, Chiktopia's staff are fully focused on food preparation and table service rather than transaction.

"Chiktopia's new concept has demanded the highest level of design to ensure its core objectives of a smooth and quick user experience at all points of the customer journey whether in-store, mobile or online are met," Steven Rolfe, CEO of Kurve, said in the release. "The software was tailored to handle Chiktopia's meal deal ordering and upselling of its extensive selection of products for a truly quick and customizable order. Everything from drinks, portion size, sauces can be customised with no complications for the customer or kitchen."

Customers who want to pay with cash can print a ticket with a QR code and take it to the Kurve till point where the transaction is processed immediately.

Apart from the normal profiling and identification screen, Chiktopia has included an invite a friend feature, business feedback and transaction history, with all customer and transaction data ubiquitously fed into the Kurve PoS.

"From an operational perspective, the Kurve's built-in fast food kitchen management system offers multiple kitchen management screens together with bump bars, to manage the food, order packaging and manages the control point to ensure the right customer gets the right order," Rolfe said.

Photos courtesy of Kurve.