Patent ID: 8109437

Claim:
A system for providing self checkout for an establishment, the establishment comprising a plurality of separate serving areas, comprising: a tray; a plurality of receptacles placed on the tray, the plurality of receptacles selected from a plurality of separate serving areas, each serving area comprising a different catering area within the establishment and providing a different type of content, wherein the content of each selected receptacle is dictated and associated with the serving area from which the receptacle was taken; a system for reading information in a tag embedded in each selected receptacle placed on the tray, wherein the information in the tag is associated with the serving area from which the receptacle was taken and at least one of the content of the selected receptacle and a cost per unit weight of the content of the selected receptacle; a system for associating, in a database, the tag information for each selected receptacle with the serving area from which the selected receptacle was taken; a system for determining a charge for the content of each selected receptacle from the database association; a tag, located on a customer, containing information regarding a credit level of the customer and a requirement for debiting the customer; a system for charging a customer for the content of each selected receptacle placed on the tray and determining a total cost to be charged to the customer for the plurality of selected receptacles; a system for reading the customer tag to determine the customer credit level and the customer debiting requirement; a system for deducting the total cost from the customer credit level; and a system for determining and storing a new customer credit level in the customer tag.