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 UK residents, 41% stated that given a choice, they would use a self-serve kiosk over a cashier. Privacy and control of kiosk self-ordering are two principal consumer attractions, along with convenience, order customisation, accuracy and queue avoidance.
The research was commissioned by Bristol based Kurve Kiosks, whose CEO, Steven Rolfe said:
“Self-serve tech and kiosks have been a hot conversation for a while now. Everyone has witnessed the success of McDonalds and knows the American QSR, fast-food and casual dining sector have gone full steam ahead due to customer acceptance and demand.
“What has been missing for our operators, is concrete research into the British market to enable them to make strategic decisions and investments. 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 UK is on the brink of self-serve kiosks going mainstream for food ordering.”
The research showed Brits are happier to use kiosks than most operators realise. 13% of operators think less than 10% of their customers are willing to use self-serve compared to 2% of all UK consumers. Whilst 56% of operators believe 50% or more of their customers are willing to use self-serve compared to 66% of all UK consumers.
65% of British operators cite staff productivity as the number one benefit for kiosk deployment, enabling re-purposing of staff to increase operational efficiency and the 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 (62%) and to a slightly lesser extent current EPoS limitations (52%), cost of installation (48%) and cost of re-designing existing store layout (42%).
To read the full report visit https://kurvekiosks.com/self-service-kiosks-in-uk-hospitality/
