Setting up a self-order kiosk that looks like your café
11 November 2026
A self-order kiosk is a tablet on a stand. The customer picks from your menu, pays at a card terminal and gets an order number. The order goes straight to the kitchen. Here is what setting up Servatto Kiosk involves, and what you can and can't change.
What you need
- An Android tablet on a stand, with the Servatto Kiosk app from our download page.
- A supported card terminal beside it. Card payments go through your payment provider and the money goes to your account.
- Kiosk switched on for the shop in the Back Office, and the shop connected to your payment provider.
Kiosk is A$49 per shop per month, or part of the Café pack (Kitchen, Kiosk and one Screen TV) for A$99 a month. There's a 14-day free trial.
Pairing takes a code
In the Back Office, go to Devices → Kiosks and choose Add a kiosk. In the Manager app, it's the shop → Kiosk → Get a pairing code. On the tablet, tap I have a pairing code and type the six characters.
A code works once, for one tablet and one shop, and expires after 30 minutes. During pairing you pick how customers will pay, and you can name the kiosk (that name is printed on tickets). After that, set a staff PIN so staff can open the staff panel. With no PIN there's no staff panel at all.
Making it look like your café
Under Back Office → Settings → Kiosk appearance & ordering → Look and feel, you choose:
- The name shown at the top and your brand colour. There are quick-pick swatches, and you can enter any colour code.
- A logo. Upload one (a PNG with a clear background works best), or use the logo already on your payment provider's location.
- Welcome photos. Upload up to 10, or use the photos from your menu, or both. You choose how long each stays up: 4, 6, 8 or 12 seconds.
- The welcome words and the start button wording.
- Item tile size (small, medium or large), whether to show photos and descriptions, a light or dark background, and normal or large text for customers who find the standard size hard to read.
Changes reach the tablets within about a minute. If a few shops share the same settings, a change applies to all of them, so check which one you're editing.
How customers order
The kiosk offers dine in and takeaway. You can switch either off, but one has to stay on, and if only one is on the question is skipped. The dine-in wording follows how you actually serve: "brought to the table" or "collected from the counter".
Takeaway orders always need a name so staff can call the order. For dine in, asking for a name is optional, and you decide.
If someone walks away, the kiosk resets itself after a set time of no touches (45 seconds to 3 minutes, set by you), so the next customer doesn't see a stranger's order. Before it clears an order in progress, it asks "Still there?" with a short countdown, which you can lengthen.
Your menu, in step with the till
The kiosk shows your menu. It leaves out anything that is sold out, isn't sold at that shop, has no price, or sits in a menu outside its hours (a breakfast menu after 11, say; menu hours apply when your menu is kept in Servatto). By default sold-out items are hidden; you can choose to show them greyed out and marked Sold out instead. The tablet refreshes about every 5 minutes while idle, and staff can sync it straight away from the staff panel.
Rewards, if you use them
If the shop has Rewards set up, customers can enter their mobile number to earn points. Spending points on the kiosk needs a one-time six-digit code texted to that phone, so nobody can spend someone else's points. They can skip Rewards and still pay.
Where the order goes
Kiosk orders reach the kitchen board only once they're paid, so a declined card never turns up as a ticket. The customer sees "Thank you!" and their order number.
Keeping it a kiosk
From the staff panel, "Lock to this app" asks Android to pin the kiosk so Home and Recents are blocked. Staff can leave it with "Exit kiosk mode". The panel needs the PIN, locks for a time after wrong guesses and closes itself after five minutes.
What to know before you buy
- It's an Android tablet app. Check the Kiosk hardware guide in our help first.
- Every kiosk shows a small "Powered by Servatto" mark, and it can't be turned off.
- If the menu can't load and the kiosk has no saved copy, it shows "Please order at the counter". Have a person able to take orders.
- Setting up needs the tablet online, and the kiosk checks the menu and settings with Servatto regularly.
Try it
You can try Kiosk free for 14 days at servatto.com/pricing. Setup help is at [email protected].
Servatto publishes this post and sells the software described in it.