October 23, 2003More McDonalds TestsYou could already get airline tickets, cash and groceries from a machine instead of a counter clerk. Now you can get a Big Mac. McDonald's Test Self-Service Kiosks at Raleigh, N.C.-Area Sites By Mark Minton, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C. Oct. 23--You could already get airline tickets, cash and groceries from a machine instead of a counter clerk. Now you can get a Big Mac. McDonald's is testing kiosks that allow customers to place orders by touching food and drink icons on a computer screen instead of telling a clerk at the register what they want. A recorded voice from the machine prompts them as they make their choices. After ordering, customers pay at the kiosk instead of the register. They put a $1, $5, $10 or $20 bill into the machine. It prints a receipt that the customer takes to a designated register to get change and pick up the order. McDonald's has installed the kiosks at six Triangle restaurants as part of a national test of automated ordering, said Darnell Crews, McDonald's field-operations manager for Eastern North Carolina. The machines resemble the ones now common in grocery and airline-ticket lines. While banks and gas stations have long offered their own version of self-checkout -- automated teller machines and pay at the pump -- retailers of other descriptions are eyeing automation for its potential to cut labor costs while delivering speed and convenience for customers. Home Depot has put self-checkout machines in stores, including a couple in the Triangle. Taking a different approach to automation in the checkout line, Home Depot said Wednesday it is introducing cordless scanners to allow cashiers to move down a line of customers and ring up purchases while they wait. McDonald's is using its touch-screen kiosks near the register counters and in the play areas of selected restaurants in Cary, Durham and Apex, Crews said. With a machine in the play area, a mother hauling a vanload of children can disembark, punch in an order on the machine and never get tangled in a checkout line, he said. McDonald's theory in testing the machines is not only that they will prove more convenient, but that some people would rather deal with them than with a clerk, Crews said. Not Mike Michel. "I use it when somebody's standing in the line over there," the 41-year-old computer engineer from Apex said as he tapped the screen of a machine Wednesday at the McDonald's on U.S. 64 in Apex. Michel said the machine is "actually slower" than telling the order to a clerk. "And it sort of bothers me, because I know people are going to be out of work now," he said, punching in an order for a two-cheeseburger value meal. Crews said clerks displaced by the machines are reassigned to other duties. And if the devices are no faster than a person, they can reduce the human-to-human miscommunication that all too often turns two cheeseburgers into a double cheeseburger. It's no small point for McDonald's, which lags its competition in speed and accuracy of handling orders, industry and internal surveys show. But the company reported resurgent U.S. sales Wednesday due in part to the success of entree-sized salads and McGriddles breakfast sandwiches. Third-quarter profit rose 12 percent to $547.4 million on sales of $4.5 billion, the company reported. The Triangle is one of two markets where the chain is testing the kiosks. The other is Denver, where the machines take debit cards and give change, Crews said. "Kids take to this stuff like a duck to water," said Claire Watkins of Raleigh, while her sons Daniel, 13, and Michael, 10, punched in their orders. All three said they liked using it, though technology doesn't cure everything. "Michael, what did you order?" Claire Watkins asked her 10-year-old, as she checked the completed order printed on the screen. It was the 10-piece Chicken McNuggets, prompting one last order from Watkins: "Hit 'Delete'!" ----- To see more of The News & Observer, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.newsobserver.com.
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