Avoid long queues for ordering your favorite burger with RFID

Filed in archive Contactless Payment Systems on September 12, 2007

Do you hate standing in queues at fast food joints to order your favorite burger and feel that your hunger will literally subside by the time your turn comes for ordering? If you count yourself among these impatient people then probably you will never complain from now on as SK Telecom and McDonalds has unveiled a new ordering system where cell phones and infra red sensors enable customers to order from their tables without moving an inch and all they need to do is go to the counter only to collect their meals when it gets readied. Dubbed as Touch Order menu, it is being labeled as the world's first system which uses RFID in a self ordering system at a restaurant.




Now let me tell you how this system works:

Cell phones manufactured after June 2005 need to download a special program on their phone using the Nate mobile Internet service of SK Telecom. After doing this customers are ready to order and all they need to do is visit their nearest McDonalds and after getting seated at the table customers need to plug in the RFID reader in their cell phones and point it at items on the menu which they feel like ordering. The good thing is that the bill will be charged via your phone and only when the orders get readied that a SMS will be sent on your phone stating that your order is ready and you need to pick it up from the said counter.

This system is in operation at the Shinchon branch of McDonald's in Western Seoul and would be implemented in other stores in the coming months but McDonalds doesn't seems to be willing to talk about the technology at this stage. This system would work quite well during busy hours and lower the pressure on the staff at the counter and for lazy people around it's surely a boom!!