In the broader market, restaurants have been generally slow to adopt customer-facing technology for ordering and checkouts. Francie Mendelsohn, the president of Summit Research Associates, which studies self-service systems, said automated kiosk ordering at some restaurants is "logically a no-brainer, except practically it hasn't worked all that well."
Mendelsohn said the automated systems often have "build menus" and when customers start deviating from them the process can get time-consuming. Sometimes, customers may not get what they want.
"Of course, with a human there's a very good chance you're not going to end up with what you ordered, either," she said.
OTG is using iPads and self-service technology at its airport eateries to speed up service and keep travelers happy.
Patrick Thibodeau covers cloud computing and enterprise applications, outsourcing, government IT policies, data centers and IT workforce issues for Computerworld. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @DCgov or subscribe to Patrick's RSS feed. His e-mail address is pthibodeau@computerworld.com.
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