Ziosk Responds to Covid’s Impact on Restaurants With More Point-of-Sale Technology Products

Though the restaurant industry has taken a hit during most of 2020 because of Covid-19 countermeasures, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t need new technology and services. That’s why Ziosk Inc., a Dallas-based point-of-sale technology provider, accelerated its development schedule this year and released a suite of new products.

Now, in addition to its first device—the tabletop Ziosk Original—the company has launched Ziosk Virtual, a Quick Response code-enabled service; the Mini, designed for use at upscale, polished casual locations; Pro, a handheld tablet optimized for curbside pickup and payment; and Tether, which enables integrating Ziosk devices to existing POS systems.

“These products were laid out for the next 18 months or so,” Jack Baum, Ziosk chairman and chief executive, tells Digital Transactions News. “We went into Covid with just our regular Ziosk Original.” Ziosk has been fortunate in that it has not laid off any employees, he says, though it was nervous as parts of the restaurant industry shut down early on. More than 180,000 Ziosk tablets are installed on tabletops across the United Staes, it says.

What Ziosk soon understood was that restaurants needed new technologies to help them weather the effects of the pandemic, especially once limited dine-in service returned and consumers adopted curbside service and delivery methods. Anecdotally, Baum says consumers may be favoring curbside pickup a bit over third-party delivery services because there’s an assumption they can control the quality better by eliminating the multiple stops the delivery service might have to make.

One such new and needed technology is contactless payment acceptance, Baum says. “In Covid, everyone is leaning on contactless,” he says. The new Ziosk Pro, which is in testing and will be broadly available in the first quarter, can accept contactless and card-present transactions, just like the Original device. While many consumers are comfortable tapping a contactless card or smart-phone wallet against a reader, some consumers don’t want to do that, Baum says.

Restaurant activity picked up as warm weather returned to most of the United States this spring. Even with that uptick, many restaurants are still doing just 78% to 82% of the business they did in 2019, Baum says. Now, as cooler weather approaches, restaurants will have to adapt again. “The restaurants that can afford heaters are going to buy them,” he says. 

One trend among diners is that more of them want to control when they pay, Baum says. “People are spending less time in restaurants than they used to,” he adds. “If we enable them to pay and go when they want that’s a huge benefit.” On average, diners at tables equipped with the Ziosk Original are using it 92% of the time, almost 30% higher than at the start of Covid-19.

Started in 2007, Ziosk now serves restaurants like Olive Garden, Red Robin, Smokey Bones, and Woodlands.