MINOT (AP) - Kathy Guse was commuting to a job in Minot and looking for something different when she saw an opportunity to make money from home.

The opportunity came with Verety, a company that picked North Dakota to do remote order-taking for the fast-food industry. Guse has been employed with Verety for 14 months, and has worked out of her home for the past year.

"The best aspect would be the working at home," Guse said. "I am saving on gas. I am saving on day care."

Since Verety opened its first office in Steele in March 2005, it has expanded three times. The Rugby office opened in June 2005. Wishek's office opened this past March, and an office started in Fessenden in April.

Together, the centers employ more than 100 part-time, remote-order specialists, men and women.

Verety originally came to North Dakota as SEI, a technology consulting firm from Oak Brook, Ill. SEI had established an office in Fargo in 1994, and opened a center in Grand Forks in 2002. As SEI moved into remote order-taking, the company determined that the operation should become a separate entity. Verety was formed earlier this year.

Verety means accuracy, which reflects the kind of service the company wants to offer its clients, said Lisa Leftwich, a company spokeswoman. She declined to say how much Verety workers are paid.

The concept of remote ordering is designed to address the demand for speed and accuracy while reducing stress and multi-tasking at the drive-through window. Drive-through accounts for 60 percent of revenue in the fast-food industry, Verety officials say.

Still headquartered in Oak Brook, Verety is among four technology companies under an umbrella organization called Ygomi, but Verety is essentially a North Dakota company. It maintains some technical and management operations in Fargo and Grand Forks, with the heart of the business in the four smaller towns.

The remote-ordering concept is relatively new in the fast-food industry, and it is expected to grow, Leftwich said. Some restaurants have used call centers for order-taking, but Verety's work-at-home model takes a novel approach.

Drive-through customers are connected to a centralized system that puts them in touch with a remote-order specialist working from a computer at home.

Verety's centralized computer system routes a customer at a drive-through to an available at-home agent, whose headset registers a beep to indicate a customer is ready to order. Using the Internet, the agent communicates with the customer and records the order on an on-screen menu. Within the restaurant, cooks can hear the voice communication and see the order instantly on a computer screen.

Restaurant employees then deliver the completed order to the customer.

Deanna Volk, the operations manager in the Rugby office, said North Dakota agents are spread over a wide area. The Rugby center has an agent more than 100 miles away in Tolley, northwest of Minot in Renville County. Agents live in Minot, Devils Lake and Bottineau as well as many smaller communities.

Verety offers flexible shifts, which enable some agents to work day or night hours or split their shifts so they can get children off to school or pick them up.

Perks of the job include no commute or dress code, along with the computer and Internet line that employees have available for personal use after work hours.

Guse likes the more subtle benefits, such as staying healthier away from work-place germs. She estimates she's cut $200 a month from the gas bill that she would have if she continued to commute to Minot.

She also enjoys the work and the chance to occasionally help train new hires at the Rugby center, a 24-hour office.

Volk said agents stay connected by visiting one of the centers every month or two, often for group trainings.

"It's kind of nice to have that face-to-face interaction," she said.