2 Richmond area Hardee’s locations try touch-screen ordering

By GREGORY J. GILLIGAN
RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH
Published: April 7, 2008

Customers at two Richmond-area Hardee’s restaurants can use touch-screen kiosks to order and pay for their food.

The kiosks are part of a test for franchise operator Boddie-Noell to see whether customer service improves.

“It is really all about speed of service, ordering accurately and giving customers another way to get their order quicker,” said Jerry Allsbrook, senior vice president of marketing for Boddie-Noell, the largest Hardee’s franchisee in the U.S. It operates 346 restaurants in four states, including Virginia.

“In our business it is all about speed of service and convenience and shorter lines, and that is really what the kiosk does for us,” he said.

The kiosks are in the store at 8211 Brook Road in Henrico County and at 13737 Hull Street Road in Chesterfield County. Boddie-Noell is testing the devices at one other restaurant—in Rocky Mount, N.C.

Each store has two machines.

The kiosks accept cash, credit cards, debit cards and gift cards for payment. More than 60 percent of the transactions so far have involved cash, he said.

The units present the menu items and options and make suggestions.

Another plus, Allsbrook said, is that users can operate them either in English or Spanish.

Boddie-Noell installed the units in late February and will test them for about six months, he said. The company could expand the test to more stores.

“From the numbers we have seen so far, there has been a good acceptance of people using the machines,” Allsbrook said. “So far the signs are encouraging.”

The store managers and other company officials believe the kiosks have helped improve store operations, he said.

“We did this to see if operationally we could re-deploy labor to other parts of the restaurant,” he said.

For instance, an employee who worked the counter and took orders could now help out with the drive-through operations. Or that person could deliver meals to the table.

“You can’t really delete a person with this kiosk. We have to redeploy the person,” Allsbrook said. “It helps to increase the number of people we can get through the restaurant.”

About 60 percent of a restaurant’s business is with the drive-through. The remainder is generated inside.

Other fast-food chains, including McDonald’s and KFC, have tested similar kiosks, but none has installed them permanently.

Some of those machines, he said, took orders only and didn’t allow customers to pay at the same time. Convenience-store retailer Sheetz has kiosks in most of its stores, but customers also can’t make payments there.