About the Brand

The Brief

The System Was Working. The Customer Was Not.

A kiosk that requires staff intervention to complete transactions is not a self-service kiosk. Subway India’s kiosk had everything in place: screens, menus, payment hardware. But the experience underneath was built around system logic, not customer behaviour.

8 to 9 steps to place an order. Layouts not designed for kiosk interaction. Payment flows that froze with no recovery path. Crashes during peak hours that brought the queue straight back to the customer who was supposed to avoid it.

The brief was not to patch these problems. It was to understand why the system had been built this way and build the right one from scratch. Eight objectives shaped what that meant:

• Simplify the end-to-end customization journey.
• Reduce order completion time significantly.
• Build a fast and intuitive kiosk interface.
• Ensure seamless and reliable payment experience.
• Support both Windows and Android kiosks.
• Enable real-time backend-driven configurations.
• Design a scalable system for multi-store rollout.
• Improve customer satisfaction and usability.

Fast. Simple. Built for scale. Every part of that brief was hard. None of it was optional.

Challenges

Not Broken in One Place. Broken Everywhere It Mattered.

QSR kiosk systems carry a different kind of pressure than standard digital products. The customer standing at the screen is hungry, in a hurry, and has a queue behind them. Every second the system hesitates is a second the experience unravels.

• A Journey Built for Steps, Not Speed:
  8 to 9 steps to customise a single order created decision fatigue before the customer reached payment. High drop-offs were the direct result of a flow that prioritised completeness over speed.
• An Interface Designed for the Wrong Screen:
  Cluttered layouts and navigation patterns that worked on a phone but not on a standing kiosk screen were compounding every interaction. The UI was not designed for how people actually behave at a kiosk.
• Payments That Failed Without a Way Forward:
  When payment froze, there was no instant cancel, no instant retry. Staff stepped in. The queue grew. A payment layer without failure recovery is not a payment layer built for real-world QSR conditions.
• Two Device Environments, One Inconsistent Experience:
  Windows and Android kiosks running separately meant inconsistency in interface, performance, and maintenance. Every update became a two-track deployment problem.
• No Backend Control Without Calling a Developer:
  Configuration changes required technical intervention. Operational decisions that should take minutes were creating dependency on development teams.

The Approach

The Starting Point Was Not Subway’s Existing System. It Was the Best Kiosk Systems in the World.

Every leading QSR kiosk experience got studied before a single design decision was made. Not for inspiration but for what they had figured out about how people behave at a standing screen, mid-queue, under time pressure. That research shaped five decisions that carried the entire rebuild.

01. Redesign for the Kiosk, Not the Concept:

Ordering steps cut from 8-9 to 4-5. Guided and structured product building replaced the open-ended step sequence. Related options grouped. Redundant steps eliminated. Layouts designed specifically for kiosk screens and the speed at which information needed to land. A 50% reduction in steps that led to a significantly faster experience for every customer, across every store.

02. Rebuild the Payment Layer for Failure, Not Just Success:

PineLabs EDC integrated for card transactions. A payment gateway added for backup scenarios. Instant payment cancellation introduced, eliminating the dependency on timeout-based resets that had previously left customers stranded. Cancel. Retry. Instantly. Real-time sync between the UI and payment hardware so the kiosk always knew where the transaction stood.

03. One System, Two Environments:

A single web-based kiosk application with custom wrappers deployed as EXE for Windows and APK for Android. One codebase. One consistent experience. Every screen, every store, every customer getting the same interaction regardless of the device underneath it. Deployment complexity dropped. Maintenance simplified. Updates rolled out once, not twice.

04. Backend Control Without Calling a Developer:

Backend-driven EDC configuration removed the need for app updates every time a device-level change was required. Centralised control across all kiosk systems. Store-level configurations and operational adjustments that used to require technical teams now happened at the speed of operations, not the speed of a development sprint.

05. A Technology Stack Built to Hold Under Load:

Next.js for frontend speed because kiosk load time is not optional. Laravel for backend APIs because the data layer had to hold under real transaction volume. DotPe for POS synchronisation. PineLabs for payment gateway. Modular architecture built for future expansion without rebuilding what was already working. Every technology earned its place.

The Results

• 50%
  Reduction in Ordering Steps
• 45L+ Orders
  Generated Through Kiosk
• 14,000+
  Successful Transactions Processed

System crashes and payment freezes that had defined the previous experience were eliminated. Checkout success rates improved significantly. Queue management during peak hours got better because the kiosk was doing its job without needing human backup. Staff intervention for transaction recovery became the exception rather than the rule.

The kiosk that was slowing Subway down is now the one carrying it forward.

The Architecture Was Never Built for 17 Stores.

17 Stores Proved It Works. 1000+ Will Prove It Scales.

The architecture behind the Subway India kiosk rebuild was not designed for 17 stores. It was designed for what comes after them.

Rapid multi-store deployment with minimal setup effort per location. Centralised system management that keeps control without multiplying complexity. One codebase that maintains uniform experience across every store format and device environment. High transaction volume support built in from the start. Easily adaptable for future requirements without disrupting what is already working.

Every architectural decision made during the project was made with the understanding that 17 stores is not the destination. It is the proof of concept.

“Ready to scale from 17 stores to 1000+ without friction.”

What the Rebuild Made Possible

A Self-Service Kiosk Only Earns Its Name When the System Behind It Is Built for the Customer.

45 Lakh generated. 14,000+ transactions processed. 17 stores live. Those are the surface results. The finding worth carrying forward sits underneath them.

Subway’s customization is its biggest strength. A kiosk with 8-9 steps was turning that strength into a queue. When the system was rebuilt around how customers actually order faster decisions, grouped options, payments that recover from failure the same customization became the thing that kept customers moving through.

The system is the product. When it is built right, everything else follows.

The Takeaway

The system was slowing orders down instead of accelerating them. That single fact defined the entire project. Not the UI. Not the brand. The system.

What changed when the system changed: customers ordered faster, payments stopped failing, staff stopped stepping in, revenue started climbing, and a kiosk estate built for 17 stores became architecture ready for 1000+.

The kiosk that was costing Subway customers is now the one generating revenue. The system is the product.