What your customers see
Kiosk
A tablet at your door, for the people who are already there. Walk-ins join the waitlist from it, and people with a booking, or a place they took online, check themselves in. Staff see who has arrived straight away.
What visitors see
Your branding, your welcome, and up to two big buttons:
- Join the waitlist, for walk-ins. The same questions as joining online, with the same opening hours and limits. They join already marked as arrived.
- Check in, for anyone with a booking today or a place they took in the waitlist online. They type their mobile number, see their booking or place, and tap to check in. You see “Checked in at kiosk” on the visit, and anyone who asked in Team notifications gets an email.
After a minute without a touch, the kiosk goes back to the start and clears anything typed, so the next person never sees the last one’s details.
When it’s their turn
Joining at the kiosk sends the usual “you’ve joined” message, with the link to follow their place, and the usual message when it’s their turn. Someone who walks off to the café still hears when to come back.
Checking in sends nothing: they are standing there. For a booking, the booking’s Arrived button becomes Ready once they have checked in, and pressing it sends the “we’re ready for you” message when you are.
Setting it up
Switch it on
In Location settings › Arrival, switch the kiosk on and choose what it offers.
Pair the tablet
Under Tablets, add one and give it a name. Scan the QR code it shows with the tablet’s camera, or open the kiosk address on the tablet and type the code. The tablet stays paired until you remove it, and a new code for the same tablet replaces it, which is how you swap a broken tablet for a new one.
Lock the tablet to the kiosk
So visitors can’t wander off into other apps, use the tablet’s own lock: Guided Access on an iPad or iPhone (Settings › Accessibility › Guided Access), or screen pinning on Android (Settings › Security › App pinning).
Keep it awake and charged
Plug it in, turn off auto-lock, and tap Full screen on the kiosk. The kiosk also asks the browser to keep the screen on, but the tablet’s own setting is the one to rely on.
What you can change
- What it offers: joining the waitlist, checking in for a booking, checking in for a place in the waitlist, in any combination.
- Mobile number: required, or optional for walk-ins who would rather not give one. Without a number nobody can be texted, so staff call them by name.
- Status QR code: after joining, a QR code they can scan to follow their place on their own phone.
- Screen: a welcome message, and how long the kiosk waits before going back to the start.
Everything else a walk-in is asked, such as the name, party size and service, follows your customer details settings, exactly as joining online does.
Keeping it safe
Nobody signs in on the tablet. It is paired once, with a code that works for 15 minutes, and from then on it carries its own key in the browser. Only that tablet can use the kiosk: anybody else opening the address sees a pairing screen and nothing more. Checking in shows only a first name, a time and a service, never a full name or a number.
If a tablet goes missing
Remove it in Location settings › Arrival. It stops working at once. Until then it can add people to your waitlist and look up who has a booking today, which is why each tablet is listed with when it was last used.
Which plans have it
The kiosk is on the Business plan and above. On a plan without it, paired tablets show a neutral “not available” message, and start working again when you upgrade.