As an employee I do feel sometimes a bit overwhelmed working it, but I noticed other (Food court) employees get really frustrated with it and just take it out on the members 'for not following our made up procedures'.
I was pondering on what employees/co workers/members think about this Kiosk?
Posted Dec 19, 2018, 5:56 AM UTC
I’ve used it once at another location as mine does not have it. I enjoyed it and my order was ready before a single person had moved in the “old style” line.
I like it for the most part. I usually grab a fruit smoothie for the drive home.
Oddly, it was a complete fail one time I tried using it to order a whole pizza. I was able to order and pay at the kiosk but was immediately called the counter and told that, unless I'd phoned in my order, I had about a 30 minute wait to get a whole pie. The crew member was very apologetic and let me cancel.
Why was the wait longer for the kiosk order?
Maybe it was any whole pizza takes that long but the kiosk has no way of alerting customers.
I'm sure they had a rush or a large order. It would have been the same had they ordered it at the counter. Those point of sale orders get put to the end of the line, and it was probably a long line.
This is an issue, there's no wait time displayed anywhere on or near the kiosk, since it's the same wether you called or order at the counter. So some members assume as soon as they order or whenever they please to pick up, it will be ready but if they are busy, there's no way their pizza would be ready in 10mins.
What they are supposed to do is check before or ask after ordering, but kind of beats the purpose of convince of the kiosk.
It's going to take a while for them to add this kind of feature.
Don't get me wrong, I didn't expect a pizza 3 minutes after I ordered it. However, this was at like 1030am. I didn't expect them to have a backlog of called in orders.
I was grateful at their ability to notify me of the issue and quickly offer a refund. If I'd been left standing around 30 minutes waiting for a kiosk order, I would have been PISSED.
I was told 10 min not 30.
ok?
The best way to buy a whole pizza is to call ahead and arrive about five minutes prior to time mentioned on the phone.
Yes, I know. But this thread is about kiosk orders which is why I responded.
I use it because our food counter employees are usually scrambling to fill orders and I feel guilty making them stop to take my order when I could easily key it in myself. It’s so much faster for both of us
Works great and clears up a ton of congestion near the exit area.
As a customer, I love it.
Amazing! Wish we had one at our store
As a customer, I love it. But ours is almost always shut down. Our new store in Fairbanks opened a months ago, and the Kiosk worked for the first couple days, then it was constantly every item marked as "out of stock" and then a couple days later they just stopped turning them on.
I asked the food court workers what was up with it and no one could tell me until a few days ago one guy said, since the store was new and the workers were all inexperienced, that the kiosk made it too hard for the food court to keep up so they turned them off for a while and make everyone stand in the 20-deep line.
I hope that actually is the reason and they start using them again soon, I think they're great.
At first it was sort of a mess. Now i think it works out good.
As a customer I love it. But they recently changed the Custom Pizza choices and took the Veggie off the machines. Now I have to wait in line again, so I never use the kiosks anymore.
I'm curious....is there options to do half and half pizzas on the kiosks? Light cheese? etc? (I'm a food court employee in a store without kiosks..and we get a lot of strange pizza combinations).
No customization at all other than some Special Pizza like Pep/Combo, etc. Any requests for any item you have to let them know at the pickup Window.
I believe all Kiosk are the same, so I think they've just disabled the option for some reason, they can manually do this. Regardless don't wait in line, just order a Whole Cheese or any kind and walk up to the counter and let them know it's a Veggie instead.
If I did that, my cheese pizza would be half done by the time I got through the line. It would be too late.
I'm a guilty user, I'm worried that it'll take hours away from employees
Believe me, this will only help the food court. Hours (which are never enough) given to a department are based on sales, and there is so much to do in the average food court that a lot of stuff gets skipped over on the daily (at least in my building)...these will probably free up employees in a department where every minute has to be carefully utilized. I wish my building would get them.
Ooo, cool. That's kind of what I thought, my in law thought it was like home depot with fewer cashiers but I was saying they do more than just register and it actually looked busier inside. For a few weeks they had an employee just getting people to go from the line to the kiosk and helping people use it.
I don’t use it because I don’t want to screw humans out of their job. Costco employees make a HUGE difference in my book.
I’ve used it twice. The first time I had barely put my card back in my wallet and I hear my order being called out over and over. I loved how fast it was, but I felt like I was being rushed and that I was holding them up. They sounded so bothered that I was a little put off. There were four people standing behind the counter, so I’ve wondered if they were having some kind of training session on the new kiosks.
Second time I used the kiosk I paid, grabbed my receipt and walked straight up to the counter because that’s what they had me do the previous time. Apparently there was a line to pick up kiosk orders that I totally bypassed thinking it was the line to pick up pizzas.
I’ll get it right. One of these days. I promise. 😁
I love the kiosks and want them expanded to more locations in the US and to Canada, especially to locations with outdoor food courts. With the demise of chocolate frozen yogurt, a lot of the customization options which need to be discussed before making the product have disappeared.
The main issue I see is that it's now more difficult to request a specific chicken bake. Unlike most of the items, the chicken bakes can vary widely in terms of size and level of crispiness. The hope is that food court employees can now follow correct procedure for serving other items such as putting 2oz more frozen yogurt in the yogurt cup compared to the strawberry sundae now that they don't have to cashier as much.
Eventually, I could see the food court going card only and possibly eliminating the registers for all but large pizza orders. There is little reason why someone needs to write a check for a hot dog combo for example.
FWIW, people in the US would always be able to request an employee ring up their order due to the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
Costco food courts are a mess, and they could care less. Those kiosks probably make it worse.
Our Costco doesn’t have this yet, the Sam’s across the highway does. As well as the beloved Polish that Costco dropped. I love the self service kiosk ordering, I never have to wait in line.
At Sam’s if you know how to do it you can also place your order on the self serve register as you’re checking out. I prefer eating at Sam’s now for these reasons, unfortunately it’s still too early for lunch usually when we are at Sam’s (because they open earlier than Costco, Sam’s is always the first stop).
I love them. Crazy to see the regular line 15-18 people deep and the kiosks empty. You get your food pretty fast too.