Terminals, kiosks and production screens
Between the marketing brief and the screen the customer sees, there is manual data entry, a network of restaurants, and no one to check. We are rereading the whole park before opening, and we say what differs.
Make an appointmentWhat's really happening
A brief arrives in a spreadsheet, dated and versioned. Someone re-enters it into the POS system for each point of sale and each configuration.
This data entry misses things. A price that wasn't included, an item on the menu but without a price, a promotion active in one restaurant and not the next, a label that doesn't match the one on the receipt. None of this is visible from an office, and none of it is visible from a single restaurant.
We realize this late: during kiosk testing the day before, or on the morning of the opening, when a customer approaches a terminal that offers a product it doesn't know how to sell. The cost isn't the problem; it's the timing of when we find out about it.
Our Approach
We query the configuration of all retail locations and compare them with one another. No screens to open, no terminals to use.
An automated agent operates the kiosk just like a customer would and checks what is actually displayed, not what the database claims it contains.
Data says what the system contains; the screen says what the customer sees. The two diverge more often than people think—and that gap is precisely what costs money.
How it looks
The figures below come from a fast-food chain, covering its entire estate. These are recorded data, not commercial estimates.
What this automated scan found—and what a manual check would not have detected: Four items from an ongoing promotion listed on a restaurant menu without any prices — and therefore unsellable, the day before they were to be featured. Elsewhere, fifteen items, of which only the package price was different: everything on the menu was just right, and that was exactly why no one had noticed it.
A principle we won't compromise on: The tool points out what is different, never what is wrong. Local promotions have a right to exist. Only the operator can decide between intention and oversight—our job is to bring the discrepancy to their attention before opening, not to make the decision for them.
What equipment is needed?
The same need goes by several names — ordering kiosk, touch screen kiosk, kiosk in international retail chains, self-ordering among software vendors, or simply the supplier's name. It is the same equipment and the same risk.
Automating a touch kiosk does not involve simulating a finger: our PLC controls the kiosk directly in terms of what is displayed, not through a proprietary interface. As a direct result, it is not tied to any particular brand. A kiosk consists of a screen, a user flow, and product listings; that is what we verify.
In practice, we have implemented it on Acrelec terminals deployed in fast-food restaurants, along with the point-of-sale system and associated production screens. The same principle applies to other vendors on the market without any code changes—only the step of connecting to the equipment changes.
A standard we adhere to everywhere: nothing is installed on the terminal itself. No source code, no development tool on operational equipment. The PLC runs on a dedicated machine and controls the terminal via the network.
How far do we go
Customer journey, product availability, promotions, codes, personalization, dine-in or take-out mode.
The order as recorded: lines, applied discounts, taxes, payment methods, order number.
The kitchen ticket and the production screen: does the order arrive on the right channel, at the right station, in the right order.
It is the entire chain that makes the promise to the customer, and every boundary is a place where an order can become distorted or disappear. We handle it from end to end rather than in pieces.
Frank questions
No for reading the fleet status: it goes through the configuration interfaces, in read-only mode, without affecting operations. Yes for screen control, which requires a lab terminal or an out-of-service restaurant terminal. We always start with reading the fleet status: it costs nothing to operations and pays off the fastest.
We work through the application interfaces of your POS software vendor and by controlling the screens of the kiosks, regardless of the supplier. The integration work is done once; after that, campaigns run one after another.
Allow two to three weeks between interface access and the first complete scan of the fleet. Value comes quickly because the first pass over a previously uncompared fleet always finds something.
Not through the POS system, and that's an important point to know: across the dataset we reviewed, not a single one of the 756 items referenced an allergen in the POS system—the information comes from the kiosk supplier. An allergen check must therefore be done on the screen, not via the POS data. This is a regulatory issue, and it deserves to be clearly stated.
Yes, the PLC was commissioned on this type of equipment, along with the associated cash register and production screens. Since the control is handled at the display level, it applies to other kiosk suppliers without being rewritten: only the connection to the equipment changes.
Yes. Ordering kiosk, touch screen kiosk, kiosk, self-ordering, ordering terminal: the vocabulary varies depending on the brands and software publishers, but the equipment and the risk are the same. Our reports use your vocabulary, not ours.
It remains displayed as a difference, not as an anomaly. A zone pricing, a local operation, a price test: these are decisions, and the tool does not challenge them. It simply ensures that no one discovers them by surprise.
A no-obligation audit of your testing process to find out where you really stand.
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