News

U of Memphis deploys self-order kiosk at FedEx Institute of Technology

February 29, 2012

According to The Daily Helmsman, the student newspaper at the University of Memphis in Memphis, Tenn., the school's dining services has deployed a new self-service ordering kiosk at the Cyber Café in the FedEx Institute of Technology.

The kiosk takes students' orders before they go on to pay a cashier, in an effort to reduce wait times and increase customer satisfaction.

Director of Dining Services Peter Groenendyk said the order stations won't eliminate any employee jobs, rather, the device is meant to increase customer service:

"In many of our locations, we're actually maxing out on how many people we can serve, so we saw this as a way to try and improve that process so people can stand in an ordering queue and their orders would go directly back to the food prep area. You could pay your ticket and speed that process up," Groenendyk said.

The kiosk has allowed Dining Services to increase service times at cafe, but there are no plans to install kiosks in other locations on campus.

The service was funded by investment dollars that Dining Services gets from its vendors yearly.

"Tiger Dining has a food service agreement with Aramark and (the company) is committed to investing a certain amount of money every year into the kiosks," Groenendyk said.

Students interviewed by the paper gave the new kiosk a thumbs-up for being easy to use and less time consuming.

Read more about food service kiosks.