Finding, sustaining and ultimately proving kiosk ROI can be tricky. Karl Goodhew, the chief technology officer at QSR BurgerFi, has come up with a very repeatable method of bringing home the kiosk ROI.

BurgerFi, with 124 U.S. locations spread across 20 states, uses kiosks for faster ordering. The science comes from location, store selection and timing.

The first step, Goodhew argued, is to have a very explicit performance goal in mind before any kiosks are installed.

“We went in with a defined goal with the kiosks. Changing the technology too many times is bad. Micromanaging the experience kills your ROI,” Goodhew said. “You have to let it play out. It costs money every time you change. Give it three months, at least. Then you have a decision: Kill it, keep it or grow it.”

Even though Goodhew targets three months for a kiosk trial, he said that he “wouldn’t change the vendor for at least a year, unless it’s really identifiable that it’s a vendor problem. Some (other merchants) test kiosks side by side, using multiple vendors. That is simply not a good use of everyone’s time. The issue is that you have to spend twice the amount of time, doing twice the integration. Your loyalty, your payments, your menu–all of that has to be integrated twice.”

A better approach is to add time and talent to the evaluation process, selecting your top vendor and then only using one vendor’s kiosks. “Do more of your work upfront. Don’t do a bakeoff,” he said.

Read full article, watch the video

Video Transcript

KARL GOODHEW: BurgerFi International has 120 stores internationally. It’s a family-run company. We recently took it public last year. And we have grown and since acquired Anthony’s Coal Fired Pizza.

We go as far west as Alaska and as far east as Saudi Arabia.

The recipe of success at BurgerFi is really about the great food, the customer service that we provide. It’s great hospitality.

We decided to really focus on Simphony as our number one and only POS so that we could streamline our operations, roll out new features quickly. It’s not a lockdown system. There are APIs available. So that means we can partner with the biggest vendors on the planet to provide customized solutions for both online and in-store experiences.

The Simphony solution is really seamless for our employees. So as the orders are rung in, the tickets are printed out, that is a flow that naturally occurs. As they’re building the burgers and the orders, it follows the order from the POS through the make line to the bag and out the door or to the restaurant floor. BurgerFi International is all about innovation. We try to test and learn from new vendors all the time.

The backbone of our integration with online is with Simphony. So as we update the menu and update prices in Simphony, they roll up through our online services provider, which then roll out to our mobile app, our website, our delivery service providers. And it’s one place where we can manage our entire menu for the entire enterprise, which includes both corporate and franchise.

At BurgerFi International we’re looking at two major points. The first is how do we drive top-line revenue growth.

So it’s really good that Simphony is payment agnostic and I can integrate with any payment provider that we choose to use.

Simphony, compared to other providers, is a low-cost solution, compared to building out a POS that you then have to have many integrations on the back end or manage Enterprise Solutions. So from a holistic perspective, Simphony has great expense-saving capabilities. And I believe that Oracle provides the best solution for our needs. That includes hardware, software, and the partnership’s support through both APIs and the integrations that are built out of the box.

We believe that the Oracle relationship is a valued relationship. We get immense value out of it because we have access to the resources of Oracle, with the size, breadth, and experience the Oracle has. And we leverage their knowledge and abilities to execute on a daily basis.