Thirty years ago, Nino Salvaggio took a supplier up on his offer to buy 500 cases of exceptionally appealing strawberries. While this was several times the normal order size for his 2,000-sq.-ft. fruit market in St. Clair Shores, Mich., the strawberries looked so delectable, Salvaggio was confident he could entice customers to buy them. By arranging them into row after row of bright red treats, he did.

That was the start of what has grown into Nino Salvaggio International Marketplace, now in three locations in the Detroit area. The stores sell gourmet meats, fruit, wine, baked goods and other specialty products. Salvaggio's focus on quality food has endeared him to thousands of local customers.

In fact, the stores had grown so successful that they were actually losing sales. Shoppers would line the deli area six deep on weekends, says director of operations Fred Rayle, who worried that his team was losing the ability to provide the customer service Nino's was known for.

Rayle and his team researched various devices that promised to help speed up deli operations. They considered equipping customers with pagers that would let them know when their orders were ready. They looked at different kiosk systems that would allow customers to place their orders themselves. Each of these potential solutions came up short, however. Some required an extensive amount of maintenance on the part of Nino's staff; the user interface on others was perceived as being clunky.

Like Nino Salvaggio's deli customers, Tommy Woycik found himself getting antsy whenever he had to wait in line. "I would scratch my head and ask myself if there wasn't a better way," says the president and co-founder of Troy, Mich.-based NEXTEP SYSTEMS.

At the time, Woycik's work involved designing public safety and emergency system software. He partnered with Chuck Wheeler, who had been designing self-service applications for quick-serve restaurants. "These were high-reliability, enterprise applications," Woycik recalls. "I thought, ‘If we can make that work, we can get hamburgers made correctly.'" Wheeler is now creative director of NEXTEP, in charge of designing food and beverage self-order applications for use in delis, quick-serve restaurants, baseball stadiums and airports.

Several companies had already introduced various levels of automation to the food service sector before NEXTEP arrived on the scene. Some early kiosks would print receipts that the deli operator could work from. These were fairly limited, however; for example, they lacked any way for customers to tell the operator at what time they wanted to pick up the orders.

In their efforts to leapfrog the systems already on the market, Woycik and Wheeler focused on several features. One was an intuitive interface. "Users have to have a positive experience the first time," Woycik says. "If they struggle and the customer feels dumb, they'll never use it again." To that end, all buttons on the NEXTEP system have pictures, and surveys of Nino Salvaggio customers show that more than 90 percent of first-time users rated its ease of use excellent or very good.

Moreover, the system lets customers tailor their orders. For example, they can indicate how thinly they want their deli meat cut or select the brand of cheese they want.

Another key point was the order management system. In a busy deli, it's not unusual to have five to 10 orders open at once. With NEXTEP's touch-screen system, deli operators can view several orders at a time and prepare them in the way that's most efficient. (For example, if four roast beef sandwiches are on the docket, the operator can slice enough beef for all four at once.)

A bell alerts the deli workers when an order comes in. An employee fills and packages the order, attaches the order ticket and places it in the pick-up location. Learning to work with the system took employees almost no time, Rayle says. Instead of focusing on the number that's next in line, as they would have done previously, they just look at incoming orders on the screen.

Online ordering
The NEXTEP application also lets customers place an order online before heading to the store. The online user interface is the same as the one in the store, so customers don't have to learn two systems. And both the online and kiosk systems can store orders. Customers who order on a regular basis can simply enter their phone numbers into the system, and it will call up their previous orders. They can re-submit an order as-is, or change the order and then send it in.

Order-status monitors can be located around the store to let customers know the approximate time that their orders will be done. Customers also can request to receive a text message when their orders are done or if the deli has a question on their order. These features combine to create "a very liberating experience" for customers, Woycik says.

Most implementations take just a few hours. The systems are networked, often linked to the retailer's POS or scale system. When the retailer changes the price of an item in the POS system, the NEXTEP system automatically picks up the change. The NEXTEP application also includes a web-based reporting and control module. With an Internet connection, retailers can log on to see which products are selling at which locations and the results of promotions.

Per-store investment
The cost generally ranges from $10,000 to $20,000 per store, Woycik says. At the low end, the system would consist of a single kiosk, order display and order monitor systems. Higher-end installations would include multiple kiosks and order display systems.

According to Woycik, most retailers recoup their investment by increasing the number and size of orders. "Studies show that 10 to 20 percent of customers won't wait in line one minute to get fresh stuff," he says. The NEXTEP system "eliminates the ‘deli blow-by.'"

Nino Salvaggio's experience appears to bear this out. "It was staggering to see how many people use the system on Saturdays and Sundays," Rayle says. Sales immediately and significantly increased when the system was launched, he says, and "when we looked at this, we came to terms with the fact that these were people we weren't getting before."

The size of orders tends to grow "because customers don't feel pressured, as they usually do when standing in line, to quickly place their order and move to the side." Woycik says. And, the system can be programmed to suggest items that complement the customer's order, such as Havarti cheese to go with their deli turkey.