Self-Service Kiosk

The flow of a self-service order

The Self-Service Kiosk is running, and the screen saver image is being displayed.
The customer touches the screen to start ordering. A screen appears that shows:
- a language selection (if configured)
- a sales type selection (if more than one is offered).
If the customer selects a language, the kiosk texts and product texts change according to the language translations.
The customer selects which sales type to order (if there is more than one sales type to choose from).
The system picks the hierarchy that is valid for that date and time and sales type.
The restaurant's menu hierarchy is displayed as a menu to order from. The customer selects items from the various categories. These can be:
- Normal retail items
  - allow the user to select from item modifiers if they are set up for the item.
  - can have a selection of different units of measure.
- Recipe items
  - allow you to skip ingredients from your recipe.
  - allow you to add item modifiers if they are set up for the item.
  - can have a selection of different units of measure.
- Deals
  - display the default selection of the fixed deal items.
  - allow the users to select from modifiers to the fixed deal items, if they are set up for the deal item.
  - allow you to skip ingredients from your fixed deal items, if they are recipe items.
  - allow the customer to select modifiers to the deal, such as sides and drinks according to the deal modifier setup.
- Current Availability is displayed if set for items, recipes, and deals.
Note: The customer can also use a keyboard scanner to scan in items that are not included in the hierarchy and add them to the order.
Every time an item is added to the cart, it is displayed on the right-hand side. The My order column and the Pay button are updated with the total price.
If there are cross-selling infocodes assigned to the selected item, the cross-selling items are displayed after the user adds the selected item to the cart. The user can choose to add one or more items from the list.
When the Checkout button is pressed, a preview (checkout view) of the whole order with all modifications is displayed. The order can be edited from the checkout view.
If there is a cross-selling infocode assigned to the checkout process, the cross-selling items are displayed after the user presses the Checkout button. The user can choose to add one or more items from the list.
When customers decide to pay for the order displayed in the checkout view, they press the Pay button. At this point the system displays the LS Central POS in Payment mode. The payment is set up to accept payments by credit card directly at the self-service station.
After processing the payment, the system prints a receipt with a queue counter. You can also let the queue counter show on the screen for a few seconds.
The paid order is sent to the kitchen according to the KDS routing settings, and it can be viewed in a POS terminal that is set up to view the same sales type as the order has.
Customers wait for their order to be called out or displayed on the customer-facing KDS displays.

Canceling the order

During the ordering process, the customer can cancel the order. When an order is canceled, the system voids the ongoing transaction.

Order not completed

If the Self-Service Kiosk is left unattended when an order has been started, it will time out with a notification to the user, stating that if the screen is not touched, the order will be canceled. This notification has a timer counting down, and when the timer reaches 0, the transaction is canceled, and the Self-Service Kiosk returns to the idle screen.
If the Self-Service Kiosk is left in Payment mode and the Autologoff After (Min.) is set for the Kiosk POS terminal, the system voids the transaction, and the Self-Service Kiosk returns to the idle screen.

Paying at the counter

The customer can also pay for the order at the counter instead of at the self-service station. They press the Pay at Counter button instead of Pay. The system prints a pre-receipt with a queue counter and the customer goes to the counter to pay for the order.
At the counter, the staff searches the Order List of the corresponding sales type for the order with the customer's queue counter. On finding the order, the staff opens the Sales POS for the order and finalizes the order with the desired payment. The order is sent to the kitchen.

Performance issues

Hierarchies can be large and the json text that is processed can be thousands of lines. To ensure that the menus are displayed as soon as possible after the customer selects the sales type, the system loads all hierarchies, including images, for the restaurant in memory when the POS is started. When the user selects the sales type (after possibly selecting a language), the program updates the language descriptions, if needed, and the current availability for the selected hierarchy.

Note: Prices are not updated after the POS starts. Prices can be specific for a sales type. To implement, for example Happy Hour prices from 17:00-19:00, you can set different prices for the Happy Hour sales type and schedule the Hierarchy for Happy Hour to be valid from 5 - 7 p.m. (with high priority). Since all hierarchies are loaded at the start, the Happy Hour hierarchy will have the happy hour prices.