Meridian Kiosks Brand Guidelines: The North Carolina Kiosk Maker Built on One 13-Acre Campus

Chris Gilder’s company in Aberdeen.

Meridian was founded in 1999 by Chris Gilder, the trade site Digital Signage Today reported in January 2020, when the company marked its 20th anniversary. The company’s own account is that Gilder set it up after finding a gap in the market while trying to supply a kiosk to a PC client, and that it was meant from the start to be a full-service maker, with design, development and manufacturing all done in-house. Retail Customer Experience described him in January 2020 as Meridian’s owner and chief executive, and he was still named as CEO in a company announcement of April 2024.

The company says it outgrew its first premises in nearby Southern Pines and bought its present headquarters in Aberdeen, a 13-acre campus that holds offices, design and engineering studios, fabrication, assembly, integration and shipping. In December 2019 the trade magazine GRAPHICS PRO described the campus as home to all of the company’s executive offices, manufacturing operations and research and development labs.

Meridian has grown by adding to that site rather than by moving. Its timeline lists a 12,000-square-foot administration building with a kiosk showroom and, later, a 15,000-square-foot assembly building with more space for fabrication and extra shipping docks. In January 2020 Retail Customer Experience reported a renovated self-service showroom on the Aberdeen campus, opened for the anniversary, where visitors could try the standard kiosk models in person. The same report said one model from a new anniversary kiosk line would be revealed at the National Retail Federation’s Big Show that month, and named HP, Samsung, Intel and Arrow among Meridian’s industry partners. Earlier, the company says, it opened a Self-Service Technology Center in Bentonville, Arkansas, to show its kiosks alongside partners’ hardware.

The trading name is short. The company’s website is meridiankiosks.com, but in its own announcements and in trade-press reports it is usually called simply Meridian.

Steel, software and smart lockers.

Software became the second half of the business in 2009, when Meridian bought King Products and Solutions, a Canadian maker of interactive touchscreen systems. GRAPHICS PRO reported in 2019 that the Canadian firm had become Meridian’s Mzero software division, working from Mississauga, Canada. The company says the Mzero platform followed: MzeroPlatform, a secure kiosk browser; MzeroCreate, a set of developer tools; and MzeroManage, for monitoring kiosks remotely. Later applications, it says, added interactive digital signage, bill payment and building directories.

The hardware covers indoor and outdoor kiosks, digital signage, smart lockers and, more recently, self-service EV charging stations, developed under a partnership with the software company Charge to Charge that Meridian announced in April 2024. Food ordering is grouped under a QSeries line, and a set of standard “quick-ship” models is sold alongside custom work. In January 2020 the company unveiled the Evolution series at the National Retail Federation’s Big Show in New York: an indoor kiosk whose head unit can be set up as a countertop, freestanding or wall-mounted unit. Its industrial designer said its smooth outer radius was inspired by mobile phones. The company says it takes screens from 22 to 32 inches, and that a removable front plate lets owners swap in newer payment and point-of-sale parts.

Meridian also reached abroad. In November 2019 it announced a UK franchise, Meridian Digital Solutions, based in Leicestershire to handle European sales and consulting; GRAPHICS PRO reported that all manufacturing would stay in Aberdeen. In May 2023 the company announced a 55-inch outdoor Pulse kiosk for downtown Aberdeen, offering wayfinding to local shops and restaurants.

Its markets, as it lists them, run from retail, food service and hospitality to healthcare, higher education, government, travel and car dealerships.

Design and documentation.

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.

Made on one campus, by its own account.

Meridian’s brand rests on doing the work itself. The company calls itself “a fully integrated manufacturer” that designs, engineers, fabricates, assembles, deploys and supports its products from Aberdeen. It describes the process step by step: cold-rolled steel cut by laser or turret punch, bent, welded and powder coated; laminated graphics printed and applied in house; software integrated and tested by its own engineers; and units cleaned, wrapped and packed on site. It speaks of “American-made interactive kiosks,” and its home page says its products are designed, manufactured and assembled in North America.

It names its standards. The company says it was awarded ISO 9001:2008 certification in 2009 and ISO 9001:2015 in August 2018, that it is a UL self-certify facility, and that in May 2022 it achieved SOC 2 compliance, which it describes as making it the only kiosk manufacturer with that status.

Unusually for a kiosk maker, Meridian publishes a short set of branding guidelines on its website. They set out two versions of its logo: a grey-and-green version for white or light-grey backgrounds and a white-and-green version for black or dark-grey ones, with limits on how dark or light each background may be.

For a design guide, Meridian Kiosks shows how a manufacturer can make its own campus and its own processes the centre of its brand. Compare KIOSK Information Systems, another American kiosk builder, and RedyRef, another maker of interactive kiosks. For this guide we use a pine green and a steel grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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