How it all begun

Waiting in long lines at takeaway shops is becoming the norm now. Similarly, one fateful night the Tabin co-founders found themselves waiting for around ten minutes before they could even order their food! Not all was bad during the wait though, it gave them time to think. Why do we have to wait for so long just to order our food? Why can’t all takeaways be like the big food chains and have self-service kiosks? This was the beginning of Tabin.

From then on we went to our whiteboard and started planning. The first stage was research. Do people really use kiosks? How do the kiosks work? What do the customers see? To find out, we visited a number of McDonalds, KFC and Burger King locations to try their kiosks out and to see how many people interacted with them. We quickly realised that there was an even split in the number of people using the kiosk and the number going straight to the counter to order. We also found out that kiosks are very popular amongst the younger generations.

We had to go back to the drawing board again and ask ourselves, what is the future of takeaways after seeing all this? It was clear. Things will be automated.

Furthermore, with the minimum wage in New Zealand going up each year, it’s just becoming harder and harder for restaurants to continue staying profitable. Restaurants will have to look for a way to cut down costs but at the same time increase their sales. This is where we believe kiosks come in. They can help restaurants achieve this, at like 15% of the price.

This is how we began! See you on the other side of the bridge!