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Many entrepreneurs see kiosks as an affordable way forward, an outlet that frees them from the restrictions of renting retail space. Many experts in the food franchising world figured that quick service industry would seamlessly integrate into kiosks into their business schemes, but for some reason there has been some lag time.

Industry insiders are beginning to wonder why. QSR magazine has investigated the subject in a recent article. While they admit there has been some movement in restaurants introducing kiosk services, there seems to be a general reluctance on the part of the big QSR providers to deploy intensive kiosk services.

“We’ve been doing this for six years, and every year our restaurant revenue has gone up 40 to 50 percent. It’s been good, sure, but it lags a lot behind other industries, which have doubled in that same time,” Tommy Woycik told the website “We thought it’d be higher at restaurants – both in the fast casual and quick-service segments – but it’s just not at the same rates.”

The sense is that it is the franchises, not the consumers, who are holding back a more robust introduction of self-service kiosks at restaurants. American consumers, like eaters all over the world, enjoy using machines that make service faster, but insiders feel that that franchises are slow to remove that human face at the end of the food production chain.

Interestingly, anyone fearing that the presence of kiosks in QSR’s signals the end of humans is mistaken.

“The kiosks are not replacing employees. There has been no elimination in labor. In fact, restaurants can actually earn more labor if they facilitate higher transactions. We believe the kiosks can enhance the guest experience by giving them an additional option for ordering, and freeing up restaurant labor to focus on other areas of service,” said Brian Luscomb, corporate communications vice president at Jack in the Box.