News

Self-service to be mainstream at UK QSR, casual dining markets in next year

February 5, 2020

Within the next 12 months, kiosks will be mainstream in U.K. quick-service and casual dining restaurants, according to research commissioned by Bristol-based, Kurve Kiosks, regarding consumer views and hospitality sector plans. The study projects that by October 2020, 58% of hospitality operators in the food sector will have adopted self-serve technology, with kiosks being the most frequent type used. 

In a consumer poll of 2,000 U.K. residents, 41% said that, given a choice, they would use a self-serve kiosk over a cashier. Privacy and control of kiosk self-ordering were seen as two primary consumer attractions, along with convenience, order customization, accuracy and queue avoidance.

"Everyone has witnessed the success of McDonald's and knows the American QSR, fast food, and casual dining sector(s) have gone full-steam ahead due to customer acceptance and demand," Steven Rolfe, CEO of Kurve Koisks, said in the release. "The research results reflect very much the conversations we have had with both small and large hospitality operators over the last year, which strongly indicate the U.K. is on the brink of self-serve kiosks going mainstream for food-ordering."

Sixty-five percent of British operators cited staff productivity as the number one benefit for kiosk deployment, since they can allow staff to be re-assigned to increase operational efficiency and customer experience, without increasing salary headcount. Other benefits cited included reducing customer waiting times (62%), revenue generation (58%) and increasing product sales (54%). 

In contrast, the integration with existing IT infrastructure was cited as the greatest challenge (cited by 62%), followed by EPoS limitations (52%), cost of installation (48%) and cost of redesigning existing store layouts(42%).