What QR Code and Kiosk Ordering Are Worth to a Restaurant
Self-service ordering used to be a fast-food thing. Then labor got expensive, guests got comfortable ordering from a phone, and the numbers the big chains report started to look relevant to a 60-seat independent. This post walks through those numbers, what they mean for a full-service or counter-service restaurant, and where the two formats, a QR code on the table and a kiosk at the counter, each earn their keep.
The labor number behind all of this
Start with why the question is on the table at all. The National Restaurant Association's 2025 Operations Data Abstract puts salaries and wages at a median of 36.5% of sales for full-service restaurants in 2024, up from around 33% in the association's 2010, 2013, and 2016 reports. Limited-service restaurants sat at 31.7%, up from roughly 28%.
That last part is what makes this worth your time. Food cost is set by your suppliers and rent is set by your lease, so labor is where the room to move is. Take a restaurant doing $30,000 a month. At the median rate, about $11,000 of that goes to labor. Cut one point off it and you keep another $300, and you keep it again the following month.
Nobody is going to find that by cutting servers. The realistic move is to hand the guest the parts of the job that never needed a server: reading the menu, keying in the order, and paying the check. That frees your staff for the work only they can do, and guests get better service because someone is finally available to give it.
Guests are more willing than you think
The worry most owners voice is that guests will hate it. The survey data says otherwise, at least for the majority. In the National Restaurant Association's State of the Restaurant Industry research, 67% of adults said they would order and pay using a tablet at the table, 65% would use a self-service kiosk, and 62% would pull up a menu from a QR code.
The counterpoint is real too. A 2023 survey covered by Restaurant Dive found 47% of consumers were not comfortable using QR codes in restaurants. Read together, the two findings say the same thing: a majority will use self-service, a large minority would rather not, and the restaurants that win offer it without forcing it. Keep taking orders at the table. Put the code there for the guests who prefer it and the moments when your staff is stretched.
What the chains report from kiosks
The chains publish their kiosk results on earnings calls, which makes them the most honest numbers available. From a Restaurant Dive roundup of late-2023 calls:
| Chain | What they reported |
|---|---|
| Shake Shack | Kiosks carry over half of in-restaurant sales, with checks at least high single digits above cashier orders |
| Burger King | A majority of in-restaurant tickets go through kiosks |
| Taco Bell | Kiosks in every company-run US location, driving a higher check and higher margins than the front counter |
| El Pollo Loco | Test stores cut restaurant-level labor hours per day |
The check lift is the part worth understanding. It is not magic. A kiosk asks every guest the questions a rushed cashier skips: do you want a drink, do you want to add guac, do you want the larger size. It never forgets, it never feels awkward, and the guest never feels the line building behind them. A digital menu with photos also sells the items that a printed menu buries.
What pay-at-table data shows for full service
Kiosks are a counter-service tool. For a dining room, the equivalent is QR ordering and payment at the table, and the largest data set here is Toast's. Their published figures, drawn from roughly 15,000 restaurants using their pay-at-table product, show guests tip 3.8 percentage points more when they pay from their phone, and that phone checkout saves servers about 2.5 minutes per table.
Take those figures as a direction rather than a promise for your room. They come from restaurants running Toast, which skew larger and busier than a neighborhood dining room, so scale them to your own checks before you count on anything.
Scaled down, they still hold up. On a $35 check, 3.8 points is about $1.30 more in tip, and across 45 checks on a busy night that is roughly $60 more for the floor staff. The lift comes from the same place as the kiosk check lift: the screen presents 18%, 20%, and 25%, and the guest taps one, with no mental math and no rounding down.
The 2.5 minutes is a turn-time story. A server working five tables spends about twelve minutes a shift walking checks back and forth. Give that time back and the table turns sooner, and so does the next one. In a small room, where one server covers a bigger share of the floor, those minutes are a larger slice of the night than the same minutes at a hundred-seat restaurant.
Where QR ordering fits in a dining room
The full-service case for QR ordering is narrower than the kiosk case for counter service, and it pays to be precise about it. QR ordering does not replace your servers. It reduces the friction to order extras in real time, or the check when your patrons are ready to go.
The second round. Few guests will flag down a busy server for one more beer. They wait for eye contact, and on a packed night it never comes. A code on the table turns that dead order into a ticket. Drinks carry the best margin on the menu, so these are the orders you least want to lose.
Large parties. One check for twelve people means a server negotiating who owes what while three other tables need her. When each guest orders and pays from their own phone, the split happens on their side of the table.
Patio and overflow. When you are a server short, the seats farthest from the kitchen sit unordered the longest. The code takes the order while the floor catches up.
Bar and counter seats. Guests at the bar already expect to order and pay quickly, and a code lets them do it without waiting for the bartender to finish a shaker.
The QR ordering post covers how this works on bavoli in detail: guests scan, order, and pay in the browser with no app; orders from the same table batch into a single kitchen ticket; and during a rush the system caps orders per time slot and shows guests an honest wait before they commit.
Where a kiosk fits
A kiosk earns its spot in any room where guests order at a counter: a cafe, a fast-casual concept, a pizza slice window, a food-hall stall, a taproom kitchen. It works for the same reasons the chains report. Guests take their time, see the whole menu, and say yes to the add-ons. The line moves because ordering and paying no longer bottleneck on one person at a register.
It also helps at the two ends of the day. At the morning rush, a kiosk is a second register you do not have to staff. At closing, it keeps taking orders while the one person on shift is cleaning.
The practical constraint is placement. A kiosk that guests cannot see from the door, or that faces away from the line, goes unused. Put it where the line naturally forms, at eye level, with the menu already showing.
The fee side
Dedicated QR and kiosk platforms tend to price like the delivery apps: a monthly subscription, plus a percentage of every order on top, often 2% to 8%. The busier your dining room, the more you pay, which is the same backwards math as per-cover fees on reservations.
The subscription alone is worth pricing out before you sign. Toast's self-ordering kiosk runs $90 a month per device on top of about $1,000 of hardware, and dedicated QR ordering platforms commonly sit between $90 and $200 a month before a single order goes through. Several vendors will not publish a standalone figure at all, so ask any of them for one all-in monthly number per device.
bavoli's fee on dine-in QR and kiosk orders is 0.5% of the subtotal, 20 cents on a $40 table order, with no monthly fee. By default the guest covers it at checkout, along with card processing, so your restaurant keeps the whole menu price, tax, and tip. The menu behind it is the same digitized menu you already manage for pickup and delivery, and the setup is on the QR code ordering page.
| Typical QR or kiosk platform | bavoli | |
|---|---|---|
| Software cost | $90 to $200 a month | $0 |
| Cut of every order | 2% to 8% | 0.5% |
| Total fees on $10,000/mo of dine-in orders | $200 to $800, plus the $90 to $200 subscription | $50, covered by guests by default, and $0 subscription fee |
How to decide
Three questions settle most cases.
- Do guests order at a counter? If yes, a kiosk is the higher-value tool, and the check-lift data is on your side.
- Do tables wait for a server to reorder? If yes, QR ordering at the table is the tool, and the second-round and split-check cases are where it pays.
- Is your labor line above 33% of sales? If yes, either format is worth testing on your busiest shift, because the tool pays for itself on that shift alone.
The wrong reason to do it is because the chains did. The right reason is a specific order you are losing on a specific night, and a specific server who could be selling dessert instead of running a check. Start there, turn it on for that shift, and read the ticket count on Monday.
Sources
- National Restaurant Association, Restaurant labor costs are well above historical averages (2025 Restaurant Operations Data Abstract: full-service median 36.5% of sales in 2024)
- National Restaurant Association, Automated meal ordering and payment a draw for customers (67% tablet at the table, 65% kiosk, 62% QR code menu)
- Restaurant Dive, Why QSRs are doubling down on kiosks (Shake Shack, Burger King, Taco Bell, and El Pollo Loco earnings-call figures, November 2023)
- Restaurant Dive, 47% of consumers not comfortable using QR codes in restaurants (2023 survey)
- Toast, Get started with Toast Pay (tips 3.8 percentage points higher, 2.5 minutes saved per table, about 15,000 restaurants)
- Merchant Maverick, Toast pricing guide (self-serve kiosk terminal at $1,034 plus $90 a month)
- Web Gerek, QR menu software pricing compared (subscription ranges for dedicated QR ordering platforms)
