Apr 2 2010
Rob Woodward, having 25 Subway franchises and 20 years experience in the field, has added touch-screen based interactive drive-thru kiosks from NEXTEP SYSTEMS in restaurants located in Cheyenne, Wyoming, Loveland, and Colorado.
NEXTEP's Touch Screen Kiosk
These touch screen based kiosks that were developed by MRI and NEXTEP SYSTEMS, run the NEXTEP software. These kiosks incorporate an interactive 32” touch screen having an ambient light sensor, besides a display positioning system for adjusting the ordering screen to match changing vehicle heights.
Woodward has four restaurants that have such kiosks. Woodward explained that earlier the drive in based subway restaurants used to position a dedicated employee who interacted personally with clients driving into the restaurants to take orders. This method proved cumbersome and expensive. Woodward revealed that the only way to address such problems was to install an interactive kiosk in drive-ins to take orders from customers.
Woodward further explained that the NEXTEP interactive kiosks are more profitable, accurate and faster as compared to customary drive thrus and result in larger orders. He estimated that an average store that uses such a kiosk will be able to earn sufficient profits to facilitate pay back for the investment incurred on the kiosk within six months.
Tommy Woycik, NEXTEP’s president, further elaborated that once customers are able to make payments at these unmanned interactive kiosks, it will further increase customer satisfaction and throughput speed. He added that NEXTEP’s barcode scanner and credit-card reader will be to identify a particular customer for displaying their preferences during their previous orders.
Woycik further clarified that his company’s enterprise management suite, known as ‘Mynextep.net’ enables restaurant franchises to remotely modify menu choices for any given location. Woycik added this is an important capability as every subway location can be provided with exclusive menu items, prices, and hours.