Acrelec Brand Guidelines: Ordering Kiosks From Saint-Thibault-des-Vignes to GLORY

Two former McDonald’s employees and a team of seven.

Acrelec is a French maker of self-service kiosks and restaurant technology based at Saint-Thibault-des-Vignes, east of Paris. Its own account of its origins is short: the company says it “began with the meeting between Jacques Mangeot and Jalel Souissi, two former McDonald’s employees,” and grew from a team of just seven people. In December 2021 Mangeot, then its chief executive, put it more plainly in a press release about an acquisition: “Like OrderMatic, we started in a garage.”

France’s official directory of companies dates the paperwork. It lists the operating company Acrelec, also known as Acrelec France, as created in July 1989 at Saint-Thibault-des-Vignes. A holding company named Aksor, which carries the Acrelec Group name, is listed from April 2004; Acrelec Manufacturing from December 2014; and Acrelec Group itself, the company GLORY later bought, from June 2016. When GLORY announced its investment in January 2020 it described Acrelec as having served many of the largest quick-service restaurant and retail brands in the world “for over 15 years,” with a direct presence in 19 countries, mainly in Europe, and it named Mangeot and Souissi as the founders.

The company describes itself today as “a global technology company focused on reinventing the customer experience for restaurant and retail brands,” and calls itself “the inventor of the iconic ordering kiosk” — a claim we give as its own. Its growth can be followed in the trade press. In June 2016 Kiosk Marketplace reported that Acrelec Group had bought HyperActive Technologies, a supplier of drive-thru service timers, outdoor digital displays and order-confirmation software, and that Acrelec then maintained 20,000 kiosks in 49 countries. In December 2021 QSR Web reported that Acrelec had completed the purchase of OrderMatic of Oklahoma City, a maker of drive-in ordering technology founded in 1955; Acrelec counted more than 80,000 installations at the time, its press release said.

Totems, menu boards and a cash recycler.

Acrelec’s range is built around the restaurant counter and the drive-thru. Its kiosk line, as listed on its website, runs from the K22, a compact unit with a 22-inch screen that can sit on a counter, stand on the floor or hang on a wall, to the K27, a 27-inch kiosk offered single- or double-sided and in an ultra-thin wall version, with a lighter K27 Lite and a K27 Outdoor for ordering outside. The C27 is described by the company as its first kiosk with full cash handling built in, using GLORY’s recycler technology. Beyond kiosks it sells outdoor and indoor digital menu boards, the QTimer drive-thru timer, a table-service system and self-checkout units for shops.

Software is a large part of the offer. The company says it runs a 150-person software division and two research and development centres, and that its cloud tool, the Acrelec Transformation Platform, deploys kiosk apps that connect with the major point-of-sale systems and lets operators manage their fleets of devices remotely.

On manufacturing, Acrelec says it owns its factories so that it can control quality “from beginning to installation,” and that it operates two manufacturing plants. Its contact page lists a manufacturing site in Jiashan County, in China’s Zhejiang province, and France’s company directory lists Acrelec Manufacturing at the group’s home town; the company does not say which products are made where. Its offices run from Hemel Hempstead in England and Unterschleißheim in Bavaria to Chicago, Pittsburgh, Oklahoma City, Tokyo and Singapore.

The company gives its present size on its own website: more than 120,000 installations across 70 countries and more than 1,200 employees. GLORY used the same installation figure when it announced in November 2025 that it now owned all of Acrelec.

How kiosk makers present themselves.

Self-service kiosk makers sell machines that most people meet without ever learning who built them. The tall touchscreen totem in a fast-food restaurant, the check-in unit in a hotel lobby or an airport hall, the ticket machine at a station and the self-checkout lane in a shop usually carry the name of the restaurant, hotel or retailer, not the maker. Acrelec’s own range, for example, is named by screen size and use, from a 22-inch counter-top unit to 27-inch floor-standing and outdoor kiosks.

So the makers present themselves to buyers rather than to the public. Their websites lead with markets — restaurants, retail, hospitality, healthcare, transport, government — and with the parts of a job they can take on: enclosure design, payment terminals and receipt printers, cash handling, software, installation, remote monitoring and field service. Counts of installed machines and the quality and environmental standards they say they are certified to are common, and are given here only as each company states them.

Trade fairs are where the products are shown. Retail-technology shows such as the National Retail Federation’s Big Show in New York and EuroShop in Düsseldorf draw kiosk and self-checkout makers alongside point-of-sale suppliers, and the trade title Kiosk Marketplace promotes an automated-retail and kiosk show of its own in Miami Beach. Trade titles such as Kiosk Marketplace and QSR Web also report the makers’ acquisitions and moves.

The companies in this group range from founder-built firms in France, Portugal, Germany and the United States to subsidiaries of larger Asian technology groups. This guide sets out what can be checked about each — who founded it, who owns it now and what it says about where its kiosks are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From founder-run to wholly owned.

Ownership changed in two steps. On 31 January 2020 the Japanese cash-technology group GLORY Ltd., of Himeji, announced that its British subsidiary Glory Global Solutions (International) Ltd., based in Basingstoke, would buy 80% of Acrelec Group. Under the agreement Mangeot and Souissi kept 20% and stayed on to run the business, which GLORY said would continue as an independent entity within its group. GLORY’s list of news releases records the completion of that share purchase on 6 April 2020. GLORY presented the deal as part of a move beyond cash technology into self-service kiosks, mobile ordering and collection, and what it called the emerging “smart store” market.

On 26 November 2025 Glory Global Solutions announced that it had acquired the remaining shares, making Acrelec a wholly owned subsidiary of GLORY, and said that co-founder Jalel Souissi had left the group. Acrelec’s own website now says “the founders leave behind a legacy of innovation and customer focus,” and lists Diane Palmquist as president, chairperson and interim chief executive.

For a design guide, Acrelec shows how a kiosk maker can grow out of the fast-food counter into a family of screens — ordering kiosks, menu boards, drive-thru timers — under one short name. Compare KIOSK Information Systems, the Colorado kiosk maker that also became part of an Asian technology group, and Pyramid Computer, another kiosk maker in this series. For this guide we use a deep navy, a warm orange and steel grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Acrelec’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.