Sumo: the story behind our toughest enclosure

Sumo is our strong yet beautiful tablet enclosure for high-traffic settings. Offering durability in the most challenging environments, this robust tablet kiosk was originally developed for McDonald’s. We’ve been supplying to McDonald’s since 2012 after meeting them at Olympia in 2011.

The Spirit of Family concept implemented in 2012 was McDonald’s first step in their digital transformation, and our first project working with the hospitality giant. The initiative was focused on reducing stressful moments for families and to make the experience of eating out more enjoyable and playful, using smart technologies such as self-order kiosks and Bouncepad Static 60 entertainment stations.

We soon realised that our Original Range products were not resilient enough for the unsupervised dining areas in McDonalds, designed to offer kids and adults the chance to surf the web, play games and check their social media.

In continuation of the Spirit of Family concept, McDonald’s launched the Experience of the Future program in 2015 to enhance the initial digital capabilities and technology they had implemented three years prior. Taking what we had learned from the previous initiative, we started developing the Sumo product for this project, which launched January 2015.

Sumo is the strongest and most secure tablet enclosure on the market, offering ultimate protection in restaurants, malls, play areas and airports. The six-point locking system ensures ultimate theft resistance and the rotating mount allows users to play games, switch between apps and share screens. The faceplate is designed with easy cleaning in mind, minimising gaps and preventing grime getting trapped in between.

Once installed, the sumo can be left unsupervised for guests to interact with freely. While these tablet kiosks improve the customer experience and help increase dwell time, McDonald’s is able to create more sales opportunities – a win-win for everyone.

“The tablets form an important part of our new customer experience initiative, which is part of our overall ‘Experience of the Future’ programme. Technology has an important role to play in all walks of life, including our customers’ eating out experience, so the changes we’re making as part of the ‘Experience of the Future’ programme bring us closer to the way people live their lives today. We pride ourselves on listening to customers and providing an outstanding experience; innovations such as tablets help provide this experience and have been extremely popular with customers.” – Doug Baker, head of IT restaurant solutions and service at McDonald’s UK, 2017.