What went wrong? At some fast food places the ordering machines definitely displaced some of the cashiers. I'm surprised customers wouldn't go for tablets if it meant they didn't have to pay the 15% tip.
To use a fast food example, I somewhat regularly go to a McDonalds when we road trip (I have kids, don't shame me) and they have ordering screens. It takes easily 5x as long to answer all of it's questions about permutations on the meal I want than to just say "gimme a #2 with Dr Pepper, no pickles" to a cashier.
Maybe if they put in a proper voice assistant it would be better. But the touchscreen is not in any way a superior experience.
It's not even clear that it would be efficient for the customer to learn it, even if they were willing, given how rarely most people eat out and how quickly memory degrades with disuse.
The UI for a POS is designed for efficiency (because the worker will get lots of practice using it) rather than accessibility (a customer won't use the UI so much, so it has to be easy to use).
I saw this issue with NJTransit ticket machines as well. They suck compared to NY subway.
NJTRansit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avNAwTJStwU
There are so many tiny improvements to speed they could do to make it a better experience, the tiny delays between menus add up, the printer is slow and has multiple delays. This all adds up and I have experienced the brunt end of then whenever I am rushing to catch a train.
NY Subway: https://youtu.be/jcrrb48vzfY?t=87
Notice how each screen transition is instantaneous. The money scanning is super fast and the ticket(card) dispensing is quite fast as well. If you are a frequent user, you can fly through this screen and this represents a real marked improvement over human interaction, there is no way you could replicate that speed with a human teller.
Try the app on your phone: you can just go into your previous order and order it again. Really, I like the kiosks, but they can't get compare to an app ordering experience because the latter benefits from history.
The prices werent any lower they just had fewer staff. Presumably the owner thought they could collect higher profits.
It seems to have become quite normalized to put tip jars out for all sorts of businesses that aren't really service-based. Setting the expectation. Or putting on a tip line on the credit card receipt -- sure, you don't have to tip, but we want you to think you're abnormal if you don't.
I don't think switching to tablets would do anything to reduce the expectation of tips.
And it hasn't been 15% for years.
They don’t have to tip to start with. And the ones with the most problem with it won't, or will tip less.
And people go to places that aren't fast food because, at least in part, of service, which iPad’s don't provide the way servers do.