Frankly, it wouldn't suprise me if half the machines were broken, and simply a psychological ploy.
I remember the first time I ran the FOH for a national chain, and the company had a national suggestive sale contest (600+ locations at the time). They had four categories...Cotton Candy sales, Extra Cheese Sales (it was a pizza place), Souvanier Cup Sales (we called them Promo Cups, and they were a 99 cent upgrade from a regular cup and offered lifetime free refills), and $20 token deal sales (you got $30 worth of tokens for $20)...
So...after two weeks of failing trying traditional upsell methods such as making sure my cashiers said stuff like "Sir, would you like to upgrade your drinks to a Souvanier cup for only 99 cents?" like all the other 600 stores were doing...I decided...screw that.
So, I did a few things.
First, for extra cheese, I just had my cashiers start adding it to every pizza after the menu spiel (long story as to how I trained them to make that worked, but it involved guiding the guests through the menu, rather than waiting on them to blankly stare at it until they ordered), and then saying something along the lines of "Awesome choice. I'm gonna add extra cheese to that, because it makes it taste even better!". Vs...begging for their upgrade (and, it wasn't dishonest, it really did make the pizza taste better). Of course, if a guest asked the price, you divulged it, and if they didn't want it, you removed it. It had to be done in a conversational way, otherwise it comes off insulting and rude... Very hard to explain on an internet forum without a role play...
Second, for cotton candy, I took it out from behind the counter, and every 30 minutes or so had serverswalk the floor with a small display, specifically targeting those who were close to the end of their meal. Since there were tradeoff prizes attached (like comp movie tickets and comp dinners from other entertainment managers I made relationships in the area with) it was an easy sell to my mostly elder teenage / young "adult" staff... They'd sell it for 2 bucks a pop (a bit of loss when it was actually rung into the register for taxes, but not bad on a product that was nearly 85% profit, after labor cost to produce it fresh twice a day, I hated selling or repackaging old Cotton Candy, it just doesn't taste right)...
Within three weeks we had pulled into the top 20 of the entire company even though we were in the bottom third of total sales. Our "addons" were amazing...
But, I had trouble with the last two. And came up with another idea for those.
We gave out coupons that advertised the same deals that were available on the menu...but gave them out at the greeters (Kid Check) station.
I ganked some images from online (back in 1998) and printed my own coupons off my ink jet at home and had them cut in bulk at Kinkos using their bulk cutter.
Every guest that came in got two coupons that stated, with a nice little graphic, "For ONLY 99 cents you can get drinks for LIFE!" and the other said "LESS MONEY, MORE FUN, $30 in Tokens, for only $20". Both said "Redeem at Cashier".
That kicked us over the top, and we landed 3rd in the entire company...competing against stores that had 4 times out volume at the time, and coming from a store they were considering closing.
Anyhow, no real point here...I just took a trip down memory lane.
