Enter Marx Bagels and look to your left. On the counter there to the left, conspicuous and sleek, is a touch-screen panel a bit larger than a cookie sheet. It’s a kiosk! And this kiosk has special value for those to whom time is of the essence. That’s because this kiosk now allows you to skip the line at the register, place an order for anything on the menu, pay for it, and have the order filled — faster than an Elly De La Cruz dash round the bases. Well, maybe not that fast, but faster than waiting in a line for sure.
While the general idea of a self-service kiosk was that of Y.Y. Davis, Marx Bagels owner/operator, key members of the staff at Marx fleshed out the kiosk system to make it work easily for you and me. They utilized their knowledge of how the order process works to add small refinements that customized the whole order experience at Marx Bagels.
The newly expanded self-serve kiosk entry screen at Marx Bagels
Dining Out spoke with two of the three staff members who provided much of the input. The third member, GM Shane Holtz, was off the day we visited. The three incorporated ideas which led to a silky-smooth system that is efficient, convenient, easy to use, and a time-saver for customers who need to get in and out with less waiting. “It’s the same process as when you order at the register. A ticket gets printed up, and one of the staff (behind the counter) picks it up and fills the order — it’s the same process at the register, but with the kiosk you are skipping the line and if it’s a long line, you get your order in way faster and get your food faster,” said Cresna Adams, a GM at Marx. He added that there are two registers at the bagel counter to take orders at busy times, but even then, the lines can be several people deep at each register. The kiosk allows users to skip all that and get the ticket for their order into the queue sooner than if they had waited in line.
The display kiosk for selecting menu items
Ok, but how hard is it to use the kiosk? “It’s really easy to use, and we have pictures of everything on there, which is something we don’t have up here (at the registers). So, you can see everything — see all the sandwiches and the bagels and types of drinks and everything. The pictures are really helpful for people who have not been here before, but really for everybody, because you can see what you want all right there,” Adams said.
Adams is correct. If you are like me, kiosks can be intimidating — think airport boarding pass, for instance. So, we tried it, and ordering a sandwich such as the one seen here was a snap. My sandwich was a tuna salad on an onion bagel, with lettuce, tomato and onion — easy-peasy. I’m figuring if a tech-challenged person the likes of me can do it, then anybody can. And early returns bear that out, since the feedback has been positive. People especially like the straightforwardness of the order process, making it easy to get exactly the order they want, even down to the type of bagel.
A typical kiosk order of tuna salad on onion bagel with lettuce, tomato and onion
“If you order a sandwich, a bag of chips, and a soda at the register, the ticket prints out and one of the team members grabs it and starts filling the order. The same thing happens with the kiosk, but you are just doing it yourself,” said Boruch Bordoff, another GM at Marx. He added that ordering of menu items from the kiosk began only a week ago, so patrons don’t really know they can order a sandwich or other menu items at the kiosk. “We have been using the kiosk for our Grab ‘n Go ordering for about six months now, and that has worked really well. And we are getting signs made so people will know they can order from the menu now,” he said.
Grab ‘n Go at Marx Bagels is a section at the counter where patrons will find tubs of tuna, egg and whitefish salad, along with cream cheeses and 6-packs of bagels. These items are designed for take-out and allow the customer to order, pay for, and fill the order from the shelf. The process is similar to the self-checkout at a supermarket, except that instead of scanning the product by a barcode reader, the user chooses the product by touching the screen and the kiosk then tabulates the amount of the items selected and scans the credit card for payment.
See you at Marx Bagels (perhaps at the kiosk)!
