*Editor's note: This article is part of a series that profiles recipients of the Self Service Excellence Award. For a complete list of Excellence Award winners, click here.
Judged by a panel of experts in the self-service and kiosk industries, the winners of the Self Service Excellence awards were announced during a ceremony April 25 during JD Events' Self-Service Expo (formerly known as KioskCom) in Las Vegas.
In the Best Food Service category, Gilbarco Veeder-Root took the prize with its Express Ordering Kiosk. Gilbarco, which acquired Intermedia Kiosks in February, also was nominated in the Best Retail category. The winning application, Express Ordering — installed at roughly 900 convenience stores, 12 universities and 360 supermarkets — allows customers to order food at kiosks, wall mounts or over the Internet.
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Several of the kiosks are installed at about 30 Buc-ees c-stores in Texas. At Buc-ees, the kiosks are used at the pump as well as inside the store. Buc-ees also uses the kiosk for a kitchen-management system, which passes completed orders back to the kitchen.
Finally, the enterprise-level kiosk facilitates Web-based pricing and program changes, and delivers the ability to monitor performance from the head office.
"One of the most time-saving uses for customers of the Buc-ees kiosk is that you can order your food while you are pumping your gas and then go inside to pick up your order," said Chris Montergomery, general manager of Intermedia. "With this kiosk, you have a blurring of the lines between restaurants, gas stations and supermarkets."
Montgomery said that these kiosks also will improve store traffic at gas stations and c-stores, since many of the customers who now pay for their gas with credit cards never step foot in the store.
Freedom Shopping's RFID self-checkout kiosk declared an innovation
Marketed as an "all-in-one minimarket," Freedom Shopping LLC's RFID self-checkout retail kiosk captured the Best New Innovation award at this year's expo. Freedom Shopping uses RFID technology to market goods, facilitate self-checkout and reduce theft within all types of retail locations.
"We started out by solving the problem at the checkout by eliminating the barcode and placing an RFID strip in its place," said Freedom's senior managing partner. "At the end of the checkout, the strip is detected and automatically checked."
The retail kiosk incorporates a variety of payment features, including a biometrics reader for identification. It also comes equipped with built-in digital signage for product promotion. When products are placed on the scanner, the RFID tag is read and promotions for that product or similar products are displayed on the screen. And should any customer try to walk off with unscanned goods, the security gate, also RFID-enabled, sets off an alarm.
The system can be remotely managed as well.
T-Mobile's Fave 5 named a tradeshow ‘fave'
T-Mobile USA and Livewire International teamed up earlier this year to create an innovative promotional campaign, the Fave 5. The Fave 5 calling plan allows customers to call up to five people for an unlimited number of minutes. The success of T-Mobile's campaign resulted in T-Mobile receiving the Best Other Industry deployment award at the expo.
Using street-level cross-promotions, in addition to traditional advertising methods, T-Mobile sought to sell customers on its Fave 5 calling plan by placing kiosks at basketball-focused events staged at mall and NBA arenas.
Livewire created a custom solution for these events that allowed consumers to enter into a basketball-shooting competition in which the winner had a chance to win one of several giveaways from T-Mobile's marketing partners.
The solution consisted of four wireless kiosks housed within large basketball-like enclosures. The kiosks were integrated with a central computer and four remote display controllers.
Livewire's software enabled participants to enter contact information and choose from different icons that represented them in the shooting competition. These icons were then displayed on digital screens about the baskets. Players faced off against one another in a 30-second competitions, and the person with the most baskets won. At the completion of the 30 seconds, an NBA-like ticket would be printed for each player with offerings from T-mobile. The winner's icons would then display on the cell phone and the player could push a button to have its icon spin until it randomly selected a displayed prize.
"We were pleased to be involved in such an innovative project," said Dave McCracken, president of Livewire. "The feedback has been extremely positive."
Tracy Kitten, editor of ATM Marketplace, contributed to this story.
