As part of restaurant SOP to make everything clean and look shiny, the screen on touchscreen kiosks is wiped at least daily, and often several times a day. Being glass, sanitisers are easily used.

On the other hand, paper menus which are touched by dozens of customers every day are not even wiped, and possibly never ever sanitised. Paper, being porous, can absorb bacteria which can sometimes even thrive and grow.

So, if you order from a paper menu, please wash your hands AFTER ordering.

If ordering at the kiosk, go ahead and enjoy your food.

Start with the Palas Self-Service Touchscreen, upload your menu/item images/prices, design & build your own kiosk, add devices as needed. Easy to use software included

We may spend hours wandering in a store to select a garment that we like, but having finally decided, we do want the bill quickly. But so often –

a) either a long line, or
b) sorry, system is slow today, or
c) this billing machine is broken please go to the next counter, or
d) the billing clerks are busy chatting, or
e) a myriad of other reasons

Times are changing, and customers demand quick service.
Airlines have sorted this out by use of technology in the shape of self-check-in kiosks.

There is a need for self-check-out kiosks in retail stores. Technology exists, products are available, stores will recover the investment within a year.

So hopefully we will soon see wide adoption of self-check-out kiosks speeding up billing.
(full disclosure – Palas has started making self-check-out kiosks in India)

AVOID HANDLING PAPER RECEIPTS from ATMs, Toll Plazas, Shops, Restaurants.

BPA and BPS being toxic is now well established, and many plastic products are now certified as “BPA free”. BPA does not need to be ingested, it can leach into your skin just by handling it, so even children’s toys have to be BPA free

Less known is that BPA is also present in the humble paper receipt that we get from toll plazas, ATMs, or when we make card payments at petrol pumps, restaurants, etc.  BPA/BPS is apparently added to thermal paper to help ink develop quickly.

In quick service restaurants, we often first pay, then hand over a part of the receipt to the service counter, and when the food is ready, we show our receipt to collect the food. In such cases we handle the receipt much longer, and unfortunately, the longer we handle the more BPA/BPS leaches into our skin. Even 10 seconds is too much

While customers may handle only one receipt, food service staff handle hundreds, increasing risk manifold.

Recognising the risk (and simultaneously saving paper), ATMs now print receipts only on demand, FastTags in toll plazas remove the need for receipts.

But the retail trade, whether shops or restaurants, still print mostly on thermal paper. Some do offer, in lieu of printed receipts, an email or WhatsApp bill as an option, and so do some Self-Ordering Kiosk manufacturers like Palas. This needs to become a standard practice.

References:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5453537/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/14/paper-receipt-chemical-bisphenol-s

AI based self-learning software from Palas helps small stores predict tomorrow’s sales, optimising inventory, saving money, without spending a fortune on IT hardware.

For billing, shopkeeper uses a smart phone to scan items – either barcodes if available, or Palas image recognition software; show the QR code with payable amount embedded; customer scans, pays using UPI,  gets bill on their phone.

Palas’s software is learning all the time and is soon able to tell the shopkeeper which items are going to sell tomorrow, and which of these have a higher margin – so place them up front, promote impulse buying. Enables loss-leader pricing, enticing customers to visit.

All this for a nominal monthly subscription, helping them compete against super-markets and online retailers.