How to Compare Dispensary Kiosks

Kiosk mode is a locked-down app on a consumer tablet. It shows your menu and takes an order. On its own it can't scan and parse ID data with an integrated reader, take a chip card, print a ticket, or accept a twenty. Each of those arrives later: as an accessory, a cable, and one more thing to charge.

A purpose-built terminal carries the whole checkout in one enclosure: screen, scanner, payment terminal, printer, and the computer that runs them, serviced as one unit by one vendor. The gap between the two doesn't show in a demo. It shows on a Friday night, when the line is deep and a clip-on reader drops its connection.

If all you want is a browsing menu, a tablet does that. If the unit is supposed to support the checkout flow (capture ID data, take payment, hand back a receipt), judge it as checkout hardware.

Most comparison pages exist to flatter whoever wrote them. Treat this one as a worksheet. Put every vendor's unit against each line, ours included, and keep score on paper.

Two of these criteria run deep enough to need their own pages: cash at /cannabis-cash-automation-dispensary-checkout, compliance at /dispensary-compliance-checklist-pos-kiosks-inventory.

• ID scanning: built into the enclosure, or clipped on after the fact?
• Payments: an EMV terminal mounted in the unit, or a second device with its own cable and battery?
• Receipts: a thermal printer inside the cabinet, or nothing in the customer's hand?
• Cash: accepts bills and makes change, or card-only in a category that still runs on cash?
• Operating system: a full OS your team can patch and lock down, or a tablet on a consumer update cycle?
• Form factor: floor and wall options, or one shape forced onto every store?
• Install: a crew that anchors, powers, and networks the unit, or a crate on your dock and a PDF?
• Service: one company that owns the whole unit, or separate warranties for scanner, reader, and screen?
• POS fit: orders land in your POS against live inventory, or a budtender re-keys every ticket?

Throughput is where kiosk marketing gets loose. A number with no model behind it is decoration. Ask every vendor for their capacity math in writing: what one unit handles at peak, and what it hands back to your staff.

Ours is disclosed: the preliminary calculator uses 68 planned self-service orders per kiosk per day after 15% headroom and 2.5 staff-minutes associated with each self-service order. It is not a measurement of your store. Put your daily numbers through it at /resources/roi-calculator, then bring hourly POS data to a capacity review at /get-started/capacity-review before finalizing the mix.

Ten minutes of direct questions does more than a month of demos. Ask these in order. Write the answers down.

A vendor worth shortlisting answers all nine without a follow-up email. Ours are public: /why-dispensify/implementation covers install and week one, /why-dispensify/support-model covers the Friday-night call, /integrations covers the POS list. Hold us to the same standard you hold everyone else.

• Who installs the unit: your crew, a contractor, or my staff with a manual?
• What does week one look like, and who trains my budtenders?
• Which POS systems do you integrate with today: shipping now, not on a roadmap?
• When my POS pushes an update, what happens to the kiosk?
• The printer jams on a Friday night. Who do I call, and what do they actually do?
• What's your capacity model, in writing, and what assumptions sit under it?
• What does the warranty cover, and what falls on me?
• If I open a second location, what changes about support and rollout?
• Can I talk to an operator running your hardware in a store like mine?

Past the vendor question, the comparison turns physical: floor space, cash volume, wall studs. Our lineup is four units, and the differences are concrete.

Put them side by side at /kiosk-solutions/compare. When you want spec sheets and pricing structure, go to /get-started/pricing-specs.