I’m sure everyone has heard about the self-order kiosks in 2 restaurants in a major chain that were found to have human feces on the screens. I have heard they may have found the same in ten more restaurants.

That is a PR nightmare for the restaurant chain and for the touch screen industry. I don’t know what their plans are but this needs to be resolved quickly in a way that will give their customers confidence it has been resolved and won’t happen again. They may have had a cleaning process in place but it has to be changed and the changes advertised quickly.

There are amazing new technologies already developed that will solve this problem. There are new films and cleaning compounds that will kill all the germs, bacteria and harmful organisms and keep the screens clean. The compounds will last from a day up to more than a year. There is also a new LED lighting system available that will do the same that may be used to illuminate the displays. I have to believe there are people working on this problem now that know about these new technologies.

If this causes a serious enough problem that end users are afraid to use kiosks that large numbers of customers touch, an alternative is to switch to the self-order kiosk everyone carries with them. The cell phone. I also read a recent study that determined a significant number of cell phones were found to have human feces on them also. However, that is not a problem for the restaurant.