How a 100-year-old border retailer runs self-checkout, Click & Collect, and staffed registers on one POS system using 52ViKING POS UI Designer.
Per Sørensen has spent 30 years in Danish retail and more than a decade working with POS at Fleggaard. He knows what happens when a setup gets too complicated. The cost does not show up first in a project plan or an architecture diagram. It shows up at the counter.
So when Fleggaard needed a self-checkout solution for its bistro, he went to Germany, looked at what the specialist vendors had built, and came back empty-handed.
The products were good. The math just did not work.
The story came up in a Retail Dialogues session, where Per walked through Fleggaard's approach to checkout across its stores.
Watch the session on-demand: From complex checkout to simple operations with POS UI Designer
Fleggaard marks its 100-year anniversary in 2026. Across 12 stores on the Danish-German border, the business runs bistro self-checkouts, Click & Collect kiosks, staffed registers, information points, and bottle return stations.
Every one of those touchpoints needs to share the same product data, the same promotions logic, and the same coupon system. Add a specialist POS vendor for one part of that setup, and you introduce more integrations, separate release cycles, and more places where data and logic no longer line up.
“We wanted everything to live in the same ecosystem. Once you start splitting it up, it becomes almost impossible to put back together.”
Per Sørensen, Business Process Manager, Fleggaard
That decision, made two years ago for what looked like a modest bistro project, now defines how Fleggaard runs checkout across the whole business.
At the center of that setup is 52ViKING POS UI Designer.
Nikolaj Søby Wassmann, who leads UI development at Fiftytwo, puts it like this: “You design the experience, test it in your browser, and then send it to the register.”
The POS core handles the logic, the transactions, and the data. The UI layer handles what customers and staff see and use. That split is what makes the whole thing work. Fleggaard can run different checkout experiences for different scenarios while keeping the same POS system underneath.
That is how the same underlying software supports a bistro self-checkout, a Click & Collect kiosk, a staffed register, an information point, and a bottle return station, each handling its own flow, all on identical hardware across the store estate.
The first real test was the bistro.
At the start, the setup was simple. A small menu. A handful of self-checkout kiosks. Then the requests started coming in. Customers wanted to remove tomatoes from a burger. Choose a dressing for their French hot dog. Small changes, maybe, but not when you are standing in front of a screen about to order lunch.
The menu grew. The flow adapted. The system kept up.
Today, on a busy day at Fleggaard’s largest bistro, around 80% of transactions go through the self-checkout screens. The flow makes enough sense that people choose them.
The Click & Collect setup exposed a different kind of problem.
Online orders had grown quickly, fast enough to justify a robot warehouse at Fleggaard’s central distribution facility. But the experience at pickup points had not kept pace. Customers arrived in different states. Some had paid, some had not. Some had completed export declarations, some had not. The old setup did not guide them clearly enough through the right path.
So people improvised.
They pulled queue numbers without having paid. They showed up at the pickup point before paying or completing the previous steps. Staff spent a meaningful part of each shift untangling situations the system should have handled automatically.
“We tried everything. Signs, visuals, different flows. But if the system doesn’t enforce the process, people find their own way around it.”
Per Sørensen, Business Process Manager, Fleggaard
Five machines were running to manage the process: three for payment and two for queue management. It still wasn’t working.
The redesign brought the entire journey back into a single guided flow on the same POS core. The system detects the customer’s order state and shows the next step accordingly. Payment can happen anywhere in the store. At pickup, a scanned receipt signals to the system that the order has already been cleared.
They went from five machines down to three. Volume increased. The confusion did not come back.
Every checkout type in a Fleggaard store runs on the same physical screen. The bistro self-checkout kiosk and the Click & Collect terminal are the same device with the orientation flipped. Staffed lines, information kiosks, and bottle return points use identical hardware throughout.
What standardizing on one POS system and one hardware type gives you:
It also reduces the number of variations the team has to manage. Less hardware variation means less time spent solving the same problem in different places.
Before POS UI Designer, a UI update to live registers meant a routine anyone in retail IT would recognize. Wait until closing time. Sit at a PC late in the evening. Hope nothing sticks. Call the consultant if something goes wrong.
That old process made the team more cautious than they needed to be. Small issues stayed in place longer than they should have. Bigger changes became something you saved for later.
Now they push changes while stores are running. A cashier flags an issue, the team fixes it and pushes it out before the shift ends. If something is not right, they roll back in seconds and keep trading.
“We trust the system enough to push changes while running full operations. Because we can roll back instantly, we’re willing to try more.”
Per Sørensen, Business Process Manager, Fleggaard
New releases go to every screen at the same time. No version differences across stores.
New staff notice it immediately. The interface feels familiar, and they get started without much explanation.
The next rollout is Calle, Fleggaard’s second retail brand.
The platform stays the same. The POS core stays the same. The interface needs to feel like Calle. A Calle employee spending the day looking at Fleggaard colors is looking at someone else’s store language.
That balance matters. The experience should feel tailored to the brand, but the setup still needs to stay manageable across the whole business.
“The scenario should decide what’s available. The flow should be so clear that staff don’t end up somewhere they can’t get out of.”
Per Sørensen, Business Process Manager, Fleggaard
Thirty years in retail, and that is still what good operations look like.