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Comment by james_pm | Hacker News Reader

This is already happening at McDonald's in Canada. It's a far superior system with larger touchscreens allowing for multiple ordering stations. Staff concentrates on filling orders instead of struggling to take orders where language and noise is a constant problem.

For those who want to order with a human, there are a couple of registers for that. It won't be long before talking to a human to order seems old fashioned.

This is also a prime example of how speech interfaces are not the solution to everything. Ordering fast food on a touch screen takes seconds vs. talking to a human being. A chat bot would have been terrible in this case, although I'm sure some restaurants will experiment with it (perhaps at the drive thru).

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Yep. These would be faster than human beings even if the cashiers heard your order perfectly the first time. Sadly, more often than I’d expect, they would not. It’s like they have a series of questions in their head and they like to ask those questions regardless of what you say, e.g. I say “number 1 combo TO GO” and still they say “for here or to go?”.

The combo KFC/Taco Bell restaurants have had digital ordering kiosks for years ... so does the Sheetz gas station/deli ... the local Char-Grill chain uses old fashioned paper order slips that you drop in a slot ... and there are plenty more. Self-service ordering is not innovative in the least, and there's no reason it shouldn't be the dominant mode in short order dining.

>Ordering fast food on a touch screen takes seconds vs. talking to a human being.

Does it though? Verbalizing my order to a person who is highly proficient in using the ordering interface has always been quicker than having to manually find the items I want and enter them.

I can see how this could reduce error, but I think this has more to do with cutting costs than adding efficiency to the ordering process.

If...

- You have good eyesight and can see the menu behind the counter

- You speak the same language as the order taker or they speak your's

- The person behind the counter actually is proficient at the machine

Then you run into the situation where over time people get better at using the kiosk. And much like lines to get subway cards (something replaced by kiosks in Boston long ago), if you get stuck behind someone who is really slow at using it there are usually more kiosks you can move to.

It worked in...

- Subway systems

- Self checkout at grocery stores

- Bank ATMs

Especially that last one. Pretty much the only time I use an actual teller at an ATM is if I need a cashier's check.

I think in fast food it is a bit of a foregone conclusion.

It will eventually happen in fast food, but it's not an accident that reason human bank tellers were replaced before fast food cashiers. Menus are complicated things

>It worked in Self checkout at grocery stores.

It's still too soon to say those self-checkout machines are a success. There are a few stores (Albertson's, Costco) that have eliminated them entirely, a few large retailers have scaled them back.

Mostly, the assumption was that ringing up items is easy enough for even untrained customers to do it, and that assumption has proved only partly correct. Every time (and I do mean every time) I've stood in line to use them, 1+ customers have needed assistance from a worker (alcohol, voiding an item, price discrepancy, item won't scan, can't find the picture, weird detection on the bag-side...).

Maybe when the generation that grew up with iPads becomes the eldest we'll see full self-checkout implementation, but for now the average customer is not equipped to effectively utilize the technology.

That's interesting. Here if I'm waiting in line it's usually in a situation where the human checkout counters have lines as well. I like the Walmart model... here they have six self-checkouts but one line. So if you're first in line you go to the first one that frees up. Very much superior to having one line per self-checkout.

And in those situations if one backs up you still have at least one alternative that is faster.

I use a human teller because I'm charged less than the ATM.

Talking to a person is antagonistic to new users and non-native speakers, especially at restaurants (In-n-Out I'm looking at you!) where the printed menu doesn't contain all the available items. McD's had this problem, too, when they switched to all day breakfast but didn't have menu boards that could show both breakfast & lunch/dinner items concurrently.

I think it depends on the situation. Perhaps in a true fast-food restaurant, like McDonald's, it might not be quicker. On Wednesday, I stopped at a Sheetz -- a chain of gas stations/convenience stores in the U.S. -- where I ordered a sandwich. It was all done on a touch screen. I picked the sandwich, bread, toppings, condiments via pictures. I was able to add fries or onion rings to the order. It was the first time I had ever done this and it was a clear picture-based interface. When it was placed, out popped a receipt. while my sandwich was being made, I took the receipt to the counter with the cash registers -- for the whole place, not just food orders -- the scanned the bar code on the receipt and I paid. The person taking the money did not have to take my order and was able to handle other customers not ordering food.

> I can see how this could reduce error, but I think this has more to do with cutting costs than adding efficiency to the ordering process.

After using the touche screen at McDonalds only the first time was a little slower than going to the human. Now I can punch in my order super quick. As an added bonus I've seen the staff deliver the order to a person's table instead of being chained to a register.

Wish the Wendy's here in Canada would implement that soon. The human keeps try to rush through parts of the order. They're already asking about my drink when I haven't yet got the chance to tell them to hold the disgusting new pickels and red onions. Then it's the same conversiation about me not wanting to substitute fries for an extra item I ordered. Yes, I want them both.

Plus the fact that Wendy's here almost always has only one person on register unless it's exactly lunch or dinner time. And then they usually only have two registers anyways. During less busy times there usualy isn't anyone at the register and you have to wait for them to show up. So they've already cut costs on not having a dedicated register person.

That's a good point about language barrier. Whenever I'm in a country that doesn't speak English a primary language, ordering is always a chore and usually involves pointing at menus. And that is even with most countries I have been to everyone has at least a passing knowledge of English. I can't even imagine what it is like when someone is trying to order in the US where most of the population only speaks English.

Its all fun and games until some one puts skimmers / malware on the kiosks and appears on Brian Krebs site as the latest hack.

I am not putting my CC or DD card anywhere near a conatctless system - I keep a > 3£k balance on my Santander DD to get the good interest rate.

This guys puts a skimmer on your regular machine, no contactless needed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y83ZgzuFBSE

And the fear of contactless payments is almost funny - someone would need to go to ridiculous length to read a card via PayWave/PayPass(the card won't reply to a non-genuine key, so you would need to have an actual authorized reader or access to one), and the most you can spend is 25 pounds per transaction, and you can only do it 5 times before you have to enter the pin. In the meantime, you can anonymously buy thousands of stolen card numbers online - so why bother with contactless? I will always use it if there is an option to.

How do people use stolen card numbers without getting caught? Simply ordering things to be delivered to your home doesn't seem like something that you would get away with.

You order it to Amazon drop off point? Or an address that you know no one lives at? Or buy online goods that you can re-sell later - bitcoins, steam/battle net accounts, any virtual currency. Drugs. I know people who had their stolen card used to pay for $200 Uber trips - once you leave the car good luck getting found out, and the driver doesn't know if your card got declined or not. I'm sure there's a thousand ways to get money out of stolen cards.

Sure, but you could have it delivered sans signature to an empty house and grab it off the step. Or bounce the money through people who click on those "I made $234k last month working from home" ads.

Brian Krebs has written a few things about ways they (try to) get away with it: http://krebsonsecurity.com/tag/money-mules/

Not the same there are pics of scammers on a crowded tube trains (london) with a hand held contactless device harvesting.

Source? The contactless card will not surrender its information unless you have an actual authorized terminal, it's not like you can just read it with an NFC reader, it just doesn't work that way.

You don't want to keep all your money in a single account, regardless, and if you do, you definitely don't want a card on that account that you use in the wild.

Specific UK example that happened recently to a friend of mine, he had a single HSBC current account with ~£5000 in it. He had a debit card with that account, and used that in ATMs, at restaurants, etc. as his primary spending mechanism. His debit card got cloned and the account emptied.

There are protections in place, one of which that he still had possession of the card, that resulted in him getting all the money refunded to his account. However, the process took six weeks. For the duration of that time, he had no money at all.

Since then, he has a separate account that he uses for ATMs (never keeps more than £500 in there) and all other spending goes on a credit card, which gets paid off in full every month. If his ATM card gets cloned, he's out £500 at most for a few weeks until he gets it refunded. If his credit card gets cloned, he's not out a single penny, as disputed transactions are struck from statement balances due at the end of the month.

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