Restaurants

San Diego restaurant taps facial recognition kiosk as part of COVID recovery

This San Diego restaurateur believes facial recognition technology will help him recover after being closed for 10 months on account of COVID-19.

Customers who enroll in PopPay can pay with their faces. Image courtesy of PopID.

March 31, 2021 by Elliot Maras — Editor, Kiosk Marketplace & Vending Times

What better environment to introduce facial recognition technology than a college campus in California?

Restaurateur Dennis Lee is doing just that at his sushi restaurant, Pokedon (Japanese for "Sushi Bowl"), near San Diego State University. The 35-year-old entrepreneur believes facial recognition technology will help his business recover after being closed for 10 months on account of COVID-19.

The San Diego restaurant reopened in January after being closed for 10 months.

Lee was forced to take on a lot of debt before reopening his 1,000-square-foot restaurant with a limited staff in January. When he got a call from a representative from PopID, a provider of facial recognition technology, he thought it would be a good time to introduce the technology.

Allowing customers to "pay with their faces" would make it easier, he reasoned, and the technology did not require a big investment on his part.

Several restaurants in California were already using the technology, which allows guests to be recognized at the PopID kiosk at the front of the store, view their previous orders and loyalty account and "pay with their face."

One tablet faces the customer and advises them to show their face to take their picture while another tablet faces the clerk to input the payment amount.

"All I do is type in the transaction amount and the customer shows their face," Lee told Kiosk Marketplace in a phone interview. "It's pretty much as fast as that. There is no contact. Instead of pushing 'cash' or 'credit card,' I push 'PopID,' If you leave your wallet and phone at home, you can still pay."

Competitive transaction fee

"Currently, our only fee to merchants is our processing fee of 1.5% plus 11 cents," said Tom Costello, a PopID senior project manager. "This fee is significantly lower than the vast majority of processing companies."

Customers must create an account on PopID and enter their credit/debit card information to use the payment system, known as PopPay.

"We have a 'pay as you go' system in place," Costello said. "PopID charges the customer's card after they have spent $50 using PopPay or at the end of three days, whichever occurs first."

A customer can sign up for PopPay anytime on their personal device. They can also visit the company website or scan a QR code present in any location that accepts PopPay with their smartphone. The sign-up process takes less than a minute. After scanning the QR code or clicking "sign up" on the website, the customer enters their phone number, name, a selfie photo and their card information.

Customers that have created a PopID profile for other facilities can pay using PopPay anywhere PopPay is accepted, providing they have entered their card information.

Less work for both store and customer

Dennis Lee is optimistic that facial recognition technology will become accepted by customers.

For the customer, the service can be faster than paying with a credit or debit card.

For Lee, the transaction costs less and is less work for the employee than using a cash register.

"I'm actually saving money per transaction," Lee said.

Since it integrates with his Clover POS, the customer can use their loyalty points when paying with PopID.

The only thing slowing some transactions is when people forget to remove their face masks while standing in front of the camera.

Educating customers will take some time, Lee acknowledged.

At this point, Lee gets a few PopID transactions a day out of his average 20 transactions.

"Most people don't know what it is," he said. To help educate people, he has been passing out flyers that encourage them sign up.

PopID promoted an afternoon information session at his restaurant which about 30 people attended. The company invited people who had already enrolled in the service to come to the restaurant to use the system.

A second, larger promotional event is being planned.

Only one customer to date has told Lee they did not want to sign up out of a concern for their privacy.

Meanwhile, the business is still recovering from COVID-19. Sales are presently about half what they were prior to COVID-19.

Lee, who has a stay-at-home wife looking after their three young children, got a PPP loan and another SBA loan during COVID-19.

"It's fairly convenient; there are more restaurants signing up for it," he said, explaining his optimism about PopID.

Lee hopes to eventually open more restaurants once his business recovers from COVID-19.

For an update on how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting kiosks, click here.

Photos courtesy of Pokedon.

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