In Japan, I’ve encountered a restaurant that leverages on vending machine to take orders and payment! pretty cool!
There are 2 vending machines in the restaurant
once paid, the machine will output a thermal paper indicating your order number and it will send an electronic message automatically to the kitchen telling the cook your order number and what you’ve ordered.
after a few minutes, someone will bring the food and match the customer and the food by order number
Very creative and efficient, the restaurant doesn’t need to hire a lot of staff, since the vending machine takes care of the front end.
The con side of this restaurant, are first customer won’t be able to change orders. Once he/ she pressed the wrong button, that’s it!
Second, the order number that they produced is just a piece of thermal paper, it is hard for the waiter to see and match the food and customer by order number, specially if there are a lot of customers.
what they can do is announce the order number and ask the customer to get the food instead
or there is a holder where you can place the thermal paper that can easily be seen by the waiter
Overall, this is a brilliant idea
Vending machine business model has been around in Japan for more than 100 years already, now they’ve different types of vending machines, some of the machines are selling beverages, ice cream, noodles, snacks, non food items and other products
A great business model indeed