Retailer Uses iPad as Deli Line-Buster

SN STAFF

MOKENA, Ill. - Three-store retailer Brookhaven Marketplace has deployed a line-busting iPad-based “face-2-face” order-taking system, used by employees for taking orders in fresh food departments, at its location here.

Supplementing conventional kiosks, the web-based system, called the S4G Mobile Fresh Foods Kiosk, from Adusa, Hoffman Estates, Ill., was deployed at Brookhaven on an iPad using the Safari browser. An employee taking orders from customers on the iPad is also equipped with a wireless, belt-mounted, micro-thermal printer from Zebra Technologies.

The printer produces the order ticket, which the associate hands to the customer. With their deli order being prepared, the customer can continue shopping and return to pick up the finished order in the same location where completed kiosk orders are staged.

“The kiosk at our test store in Mokena has been really well received by our customers, so we decided to try to build on that and install face-2-face order-taking, as well,” said John Peter Bertakis, general manager at Brookhaven Marketplace, in a statement. “While many customers are now placing orders on the kiosk, we still have times where long lines develop at the deli. When that happens, we can now send an associate out with the iPad and effectively do some line busting to help shrink the line back down and enable customers to get back to shopping the rest of the store.”