Tech Check is a regular column on restaurant technology by Senior Editor Joe Guszkowski. It's also a newsletter.
One of the knocks against self-service restaurant kiosks has always been that customers already have a kiosk in their pocket called a cellphone.
The problem with that argument is that it’s hard to get people to actually use them. QR codes offered one possibility. But those pandemic-era lifesavers have fallen out of favor with many consumers, and the ordering experience they enable is not always smooth.
The other option is getting a guest to download your app. Most folks would rather go hungry.
In the absence of a better solution, kiosks have emerged as the go-to self-service ordering option in quick-service restaurants. They seemed to be around every corner at the National Restaurant Show in Chicago this week, promising to help operators ease employees’ workload in the front-of-house.
But my curiosity was piqued by a pair of smaller suppliers at the Show that were touting a new form of mobile ordering that they said could effectively make kiosks obsolete.
Both leverage a little-known iPhone feature called App Clips (or Instant Apps on Android devices), which are fast, lightweight versions of mobile apps that don’t need to be downloaded.
Provo, Utah-based Flash Order demonstrated the technology at the Show by embedding an NFC reader in a lamp. Tap the light with your phone, and it immediately opens a restaurant-branded app to begin the ordering process.
App Clips can also be accessed by clicking a link or scanning a QR code. There’s no need to go to the App Store or dedicate phone storage to a large app. But you may need a new-ish phone, depending on the format. My 6-year-old iPhone 8 was not able to open the app by tapping.
With Flash Order, customers can tap their phone to order from an app. | Photo by Joe Guszkowski
For Flash Order, these on-the-go apps are a step up from kiosk ordering, which it also sells.
“People have certain expectations with kiosks that it’s going to be easy,” said co-founder Jon Lund. “But unless you cross a certain threshold of simplicity, people aren’t going to do it.”
He believes that mini apps solve that problem because they give people the app ordering experience they’re used to, but in a more convenient way.
He compared it to the evolution of airline ticketing. Boarding passes went from being printed at the counter by an agent, to being printed at a kiosk by the customer, to being sent directly to the customer’s digital wallet.
“Ultimately we believe that the right way for things to be done is on everybody’s phones,” Lund said.
Pushing ordering to mobile could also save restaurants some money, said Grant Russell, CEO and founder of Curate, another mini app provider. “For in-store orders, restaurants pay $10,000 for kiosks when people already have these devices that they use every day,” he said.
But Curate’s main pitch is that mini apps are a sort of stepping stone toward getting people to download the real thing. They stay on the customer’s phone for 30 days, and 35% of guests who use one end up downloading the full version, Russell said.
“Nobody wants to download another app. It’s just such a universal problem,” he said. “We want to get people to download their app.”
Owning some real estate on a customer’s phone is a big deal. It enables push notifications, yields better data and gives the restaurant a chance to compete against the popular aggregators like DoorDash and Uber Eats.
Still, whether App Clips will ultimately be able to revolutionize ordering all comes down to friction. Is the extra step of taking out your phone and scanning something really easier than just walking up to a screen (or a counter) and ordering?
That’s the goal, said Flash Order co-founder Weston Hafen: “Let’s streamline the interface so it’s so user-friendly that you can’t mess it up.”