How Ape Coffee took out the kiosk and got the conversation back

Ape pulled its Toast ordering kiosk and put a video menu where it stood. Guests see every drink before they order it, and the person who takes the order is a barista again rather than a screen.

3×: faster than Toast, in the PlatePost dashboardChristine, operations manager at Ape Coffee

At a glance

Ape CoffeeOrange County, California

Shops: Orange, Anaheim and Placentia
Took out: A Toast self-order kiosk
Put in: A PlatePost video menu
Menus: Three locations

Their menu is live if you want to use it.

Part of hospitality is the interaction

A self-order kiosk is built to take the person out of the order. That suits a burger chain with a line out the door. In a coffee shop, the order is part of the visit, and the barista is a big part of why people come back.

Ape had a Toast kiosk at the counter anyway, because a kiosk is the usual answer to a menu guests cannot picture. They took it out and put a video menu in its place. Guests still see every drink before they order it. They just tell a person what they want.

Monkey Business™
Cloud APE
Snow Monkey
Mango Cloud Matcha

Four of Ape’s own drinks, as guests see them on the menu.

What happened at the counter

Ape’s team says staff and guests talk more than they did with the kiosk. That is the whole point of taking one out: when a screen takes the order, the barista only meets the guest once it is already placed. When a person takes it, the menu is something they look at together.

Filming at Ape Coffee. The menu on an iPad at the counter.

“VideoMenus are truth — and that's what people want. No gimmicks. PlatePost lets us show who we are.”
Chad, owner of Ape Coffee

A dashboard three times faster than Toast

A coffee menu moves every week. A seasonal drink starts, a pastry sells out, a price goes up. Someone has to make each of those changes, and the tool they make them in decides how long it takes.

Christine runs operations at Ape and works in both. By her account, the PlatePost dashboard is three times faster than Toast. That is her figure, from doing the job, not one we measured.

See what it would look like in your shop

We will build your menu from your real items first, the way we did for Ape Coffee, and you can look at it before you decide anything.

Build my menu Talk to us first

Where this comes from

The kiosk: Ape removed its Toast self-order kiosk and replaced it with a PlatePost video menu.
Three times faster than Toast: Reported by Christine, Ape’s operations manager, comparing the PlatePost dashboard with Toast. It was not timed by PlatePost.
Staff and guests talking more: An observation from Ape’s own team. PlatePost records how guests use the menu, not what happens at the counter, so there is no number for this and the page does not give one.
The recorded quote: Chad, Ape’s owner, on video.