How a Jogja studio kept quality high while rolling out three booths at once
This operator started their business in May 2025. For the first eight months, they stuck to a single booth. Then, in January 2026, they rolled out three new locations in just four weeks. That move drove their monthly volume up about eightfold over three months, hitting more than 33,000 paid sessions by August 2026.
The first eight months: building the foundation
Their first booth went live in May 2025. Rather than rushing to expand, they spent the first eight months maintaining a steady volume of 500 to 850 sessions a month.
They used that time to dial in their frame designs and user flow, instead of hunting for new locations. Along the way, they kept experimenting, eventually putting together a total of 185 frames and 47 filters for their guests.
Three new locations in four weeks
Come January 2026, they moved fast. Three new locations across Jogja were rolled out and wrapped up in just four weeks. One of these quickly became their busiest spot, logging an average of about 85 sessions a day over 202 days of operation.
But running a business means facing the reality of foot traffic. By June 2026, they closed down one of the other locations simply because it didn't draw the same crowd. In day-to-day operations, closing or relocating an underperforming booth is just part of the job.
Adding machines means adding operational work
Opening multiple locations means taking on more operational work. You don't just drop a machine and walk away. Fortunately, you can manage everything from a single dashboard. You can push the same set of frames to all locations and route everything through one QRIS payment gateway with daily disbursement.
The field data shows that 93.5 percent of sessions were paid via QRIS. The busiest hour usually hits at 21:00 WIB, with the 19:00 to 23:00 window making up about 40 percent of total volume. As always, weekends are much busier than weekdays.
Keeping quality consistent as volume spikes
The hardest part of scaling your volume by a factor of eight is keeping your guests happy. This studio managed exactly that, holding an average rating of 4.82 out of 5 across 2,080 guest reviews. That number stayed rock solid, with 92.5 percent of guests leaving five stars, even on their busiest day when they hit 339 sessions across the fleet during the Lebaran week in March 2026.
On the operational side, guests ordered a total of 44,506 prints. That breaks down to about 1.32 prints per session. Interestingly, 24 percent of guests opted to buy two or more prints to take home.
Operating without asking for personal data
When pitching a new location, venue managers will inevitably ask how you handle visitor data. To clear up any concerns, this operator's booths do not collect any personal data whatsoever. There are no prompts asking for email addresses or phone numbers across more than 52,000 completed sessions.
Software is the part you can try first
Before buying any hardware, the free tier runs the whole flow in a browser using a laptop webcam — welcome screen, capture, result.