Silverstein Properties Leads the Way in Exceptional Customer Experience Through Food Hall’s World-Class Self-Checkout
“CUSTOM BRANDED SELF-CHECKOUT IS VERY IMPORTANT BECAUSE IT LETS US CONNECT CUSTOMERS TO OUR BRAND AND BUILD GENUINE COMMUNITY.”
— NICK BAUER
At 120 Broadway in Downtown Manhattan, the Equitable Building buzzes with over 7,000 tenants across a variety of industries that cater to an increasingly millennial-based workforce. The historic building, owned by leading real estate corporation Silverstein Properties, has received specific renovations in order to effectively target the burgeoning clientele of young professionals that have moved into 44 floors of offices spaces. Silverstein, known for creating custom-branded spaces and excellent tenant experience, has successfully appealed to the new demographic by transforming the Equitable Building’s top floor into a tenant-exclusive social haven with appealing amenities.
KNOW YOUR MARKET
There’s been a notable shift in hospitality and commercial real estate, and the desire for customized experiences, particularly when it comes to dining, has become a primary focus. In a recent Tenant Experience Survey by Building Engines, commercial real estate companies ranked food and cafe amenities as the most important amenities they could offer. Silverstein Properties recognized this shift, created a strategic plan, and saw to its implementation at 120 Broadway through the complete rebranding of the Bankers Club on the Equitable Building top floor.
The Bankers Club — formerly a prestigious dining club mostly made up of financial service clients — has been transformed into a world-class community hub for tenants to escape their busy workdays. The unique space is Silverstein’s way of showing tenants appreciation, rewarding their hard-working residents with a beautiful and spacious place of respite — complete with top-line amenities and sleek, attractive design elements. The space boasts a full service cafe and food hall, ample seating drenched in natural lighting, as well as a sprawling rooftop terrace boasting panoramic views of the city.
The star of the renovated space is the highly-curated food hall, which Silverstein built out exclusively for the building’s tenants in partnership with premier catering company, Great Performances. Featuring a rotating menu of seasonal offerings as well as a gourmet grab-and-go cafe, the food hall provides an unprecedented tenant-customer experience that offers a competitive advantage over other food halls across the city, with the help of branded self-checkout kiosks.
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE IS KEY
Aside from serving delicious and high-quality food, the number one challenge a food hall faces is to maintain consistent and exceptional customer experience, especially during the checkout process. Tasked with a tight timeline of less than two months before opening, Silverstein Properties recognized the need for a system that would prioritize customer service within the food hall in order to boost tenant engagement and retention. To tackle this challenge, Silverstein partnered with self-checkout expert, Newline, to design custom branded kiosks with full-service software and hardware solutions that are appealing to tenants, and are aligned with Silverstein’s brand.
Karla Guarino from Kiosk Group, which provided the kiosk hardware for the food hall, further explained why Newline was the right partner for Silverstein. “In my over 20 years in the kiosk industry, Newline is the only self-checkout platform that can create a custom user experience that makes brands look beautiful to customers while staying on budget,” stated Guarino. “Only Newline could help Silverstein showcase their brand to their standards.”
Thanks to the advanced technology of self-checkout kiosks, Silverstein not only streamlined food hall service, operations, and quality standards, but also created a unique and individualized purchasing experience for each tenant. “Newline lets you create a custom branded self-checkout, which is very important because it lets us connect customers to our brand and build genuine community,” stated Nick Bauer, General Manager for 120 Broadway. “The self-checkout kiosks allow for the ultimate personalization process, which maximizes accessibility and user experience.”
On top of convenience and customizability, self-checkout kiosks have allowed for Silverstein to build stronger relationships throughout the food hall, proving that value does not solely come from the food, but from forging genuine connections with the building’s 7,000 tenants. Through the use of the self-checkout kiosks, Silverstein’s 120 Broadway has eliminated the need for human cashiers, giving their employees more opportunities to excel in new concierge-type roles that focus efforts on sales and exceptional customer experience. “We have concierges on the ground to help with face-to-face communications and to better strengthen our tenant relations,” Bauer shared. “Newline’s self-checkout menu is basically the literature we have for the food hall space that we bring to the tenants in order to generate personal connections and interactions.”
There’s also Silverstein’s unique loyalty program, which helps to promote tenant satisfaction and overall customer retention through exclusive tenant-specific discounts programmed directly into the food hall’s kiosks. “Above everything, loyalty is our number one priority,” stated Nick Bauer. “House accounts and loyalty programs reward our tenants and allows us to better market to them within the food hall. We know their likes, their dislikes, and can tailor this to each specific tenant for their future purchases.”
Through Newline’s end-to-end expertise in self-checkout, the checkout process has continued to flow flawlessly on all sides. Payments are quickly processed by Square POS, and tenants can pay using a credit or debit card, Apple Pay or Google Pay. Behind the scenes, the kiosks have also streamlined kitchen operations through a customized kitchen display and ticketing process that is easy to navigate and effective for cutting down wait time. With live updates on food orders — which can be edited in real time — and the assistance of an expediter overseeing counter service, the process is optimized to deliver customer satisfaction.
APPEALING DESIGN FOR GREATER ENGAGEMENT
Additionally the branded design of the self-checkout kiosk’s interface is aesthetically eye-catching, and perfectly encapsulates Silverstein’s desire to target the millennial workforce. The screen’s menu features Silverstein-branded fonts and color schemes against a stylish, marble background, matching the design elements seen throughout the entire renovated space. Unlike most self-checkout kiosks — which often look generic and offer only the most basic of interface guidelines — Silverstein’s were meticulously created by Newline with branding consistency kept top-of-mind, as well as functionality. This aspect helps to make Silverstein’s kiosks instantly recognizable, which promotes reliability, engagement, and positively impacts customer retention.
“Instead of a typical plug-and-place checkout platform, Newline actually allows for the custom use of Silverstein’s branding assets,” shared Bauer. “This has been an instrumental factor in the relationships we are creating and tenant’s daily engagement within the food hall.”
Since its official opening in the summer of 2019, 120 Broadway’s state-of-the-art food hall has seen a 30% month-over-month growth in tenant traction, and has achieved a 5-star rating in their customer experience survey. Silverstein’s dedication to tenant happiness has been outstanding, and their commitment to personalization takes the corporation’s food hall to an unmatched level. Through their masterful marketing techniques and partnerships, Silverstein has proven that maintaining genuine tenant satisfaction relies on much more than the sole promise of a good product — it is the memorable experiences that will truly make a lasting impact.
