Screen Shot 2015-01-12 at 10.25.11 AM 1People who go and visit certain TGI Fridays locations will be met by an employee toting a Windows 8.1 tablet, thanks to a program the casual dining restaurant set up with Microsoft. The Oracle mTablet E-Series slates will be running MICROS Restaurant Enterprise Solution (RES) software, and allow servers to take orders, respond to customer requests, and more.

The tablets are ruggedized in order to withstand the hazards of regular use in a restaurant environment, so employees won’t have to worry as much about breaking them. Right now, Fridays has deployed the tablets in a six-city pilot program in Texas and Minnesota, and will roll them out to another 80 locations by March.

In addition to the Fridays news, CKE Restaurants (the parent company of Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr.) announced that it is testing Windows 8-powered self-service ordering kiosks. Those kiosks, which also run on Dell hardware, allow diners to pick out their order without interacting with a human being. The order they place on the kiosk is relayed directly to the kitchen through the restaurant’s point of sale system.

Right now, those kiosks are deployed in 30 restaurants, and CKE expects to roll more of them out in the coming months as it expands the pilot program.

Both of the announcements come as a part of Microsoft’s presence at the National Retail Federation’s annual Conference and Expo. The company is showing off how its systems can be integrated into stores and restaurants to boost business.

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