Ordering kiosk serves a waiting area located next to the hospital’s operating rooms so family members can get food without leaving the premises.
Mike Buzalka | May 14, 2018
Remote ordering and delivery is a fast-growing trend in various niches of the onsite dining world. At Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center (OSUWMC) in Columbus, the experimentation has reached a surgical waiting area where families anxiously await the results of procedures going on in the nearby operating rooms and are often reluctant to leave to get something to eat.
Installed earlier this year, the remote ordering kiosk offers a limited selection of items from OSUWMC’s BistrOH! Café, located on another floor in the complex, which already gets customer orders from its own bank of self-ordering units. The food is delivered within a 45-minute window to the customers in the waiting area, which is equipped with tables where the meal can more conveniently be eaten. Payment is by credit card only, and the service is only available weekdays between 10:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.
Choices available for the waiting room include pizza, chef’s salads, burgers and some kid-friendly items like Uncrustable PB&J sandwiches, “things we know will hold up during transportation,” says Mike Folino, associate director of nutrition services. The BistrOH! is five floors below the surgical waiting area, called the Atrium, and generally takes five to seven minutes for the delivery person to traverse, Folino estimates.
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