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Continuing to Make the Most of POS Advances

In the gigantic and highly diversified world of hospitality today, increasing efficiency of operations with POS is a relative proposition, to say the least. While it's true that all types of venues need point of sale solutions that save time, provide the hardware stability that is critical during peak business hours and deliver functions such as security monitoring and inventory control, others might benefit more from POS systems that help weed out non-productive servers or stretch the costly labor force farther by offering sales options such as pay at the table features.

Whatever the issue facing a venue today in terms of point of sale solutions, it's a safe bet that there's a POS system out there to address it. Indeed, no other aspect of food and beverage has witnessed more innovation as to technology and support and integration of components than has the POS industry. At the same time, fewer front or back-of-house systems may be more underutilized than the POS that is available to owners, managers and servers to perform an array of tasks that increase productivity and keep customers coming back.

Fewer Moving Parts

At Casio, a leading U.S. manufacturer of POS with worldwide sales, Glenn Deal, sales and development manager of Casio's System Products Division, says the company is focused on new ways to make POS equipment more stable in the hardware area. The latest touch-screen equipment from Casio builds in reliability through fewer movable parts.

"For example, Casio's QT-6000, QT-6100 and QT-6600 touch terminals have no hard drive or Windows operating system," Deal says. "Everything operates on solid state technology, flash ROM and RAM. There is no movable part to break down, such as a hard drive. There is no Windows operating system that would be susceptible to viruses or people loading unauthorized software."

Deal says Casio's wide range of products and an emphasis on software development that makes its flash ROM products more PC-like in both appearance and operation allows them to offer individual POS solutions that can match the capabilities of costlier systems for less money.

"We have a large nightclub in San Antonio with eight machines that were sold to the customer on the price, hardware stability and one major feature: credit card pre-authorization."

Efficient Weeding

Greater efficiencies for servers that translate into higher table turnover and profitability for the house is at the forefront of the POS technology offered by Future POS, a multinational company headquartered in Akron, Ohio, with more than 100 dealers worldwide.

Future POS Public Relations Spokesman Steve Pritchard says the company's handheld POS system is ideal for taking quick and accurate orders tableside when modifiers such as salads, side dishes and steak preferences are a part of ringing in items.

"The industry norm is a system in which a window pops up as soon as a steak is entered into the system, with prompts for how the customer wants the steak prepared as well as his or her preference as to side items," Pritchard says. "You could have two or three more windows describing that steak dinner."

That same server who entered a steak dinner on the Future POS module likely could have the entire table's order transmitted to the kitchen in the time it took to register a singe order on another POS device, Pritchard says.

"On the Future POS device, I don't see one window when I hit the button," he says. "I see every way that I can modify the order on one screen. The first column will ask about meat temperature. The second column will ask what kind of additions the customer wants."

Other columns prompt questions about the kind of salad dressing and potato sides that customers desire.

"The benefit is that the server is not wasting time," Pritchard says.

Another feature of the Future POS system that has the potential to boost server productivity is the beverage ratio report that the bar or restaurant manager can print at the end of the month with the push of a button.

"The gist of this report is that 80 percent of the customers who walk into a restaurant order a beverage," Pritchard says. "We set up the criteria so that every time a server rings up an entrée, if the number of beverages does not match the number of entrées, the system will not let the order be sent to the kitchen."

This POS feature, which includes categories for "Water" and "No Beverage," enables a restaurant or lounge manager to identify the servers who are not hitting the 80-percent plateau for beverage orders as well as those who are meeting the mark.

"This allows you to weed out the ones who are not hitting the plateau," Pritchard says. "If a server is only taking beverage orders from 55 percent of his guests, then that person is a poor server. He is either not asking for the order or else he is stealing."

The beverage ration report likewise sets up the effective servers for a reward.

"Give them a day off," Pritchard says. "I would reward them for anything over 80 percent."

The New and the Unexplored

There is always something new being added to the POS products being offered by companies such as SilverWare POS Inc., a Canadian firm that has been providing information technology solutions to the foodservice industry for more than a decade.

"By upgrading to the latest versions, customers may take advantage of the latest features, PCI credit card compliance regulations, and interfaces to other modules such as real-time security monitoring with text overlay and inventory control," says SilverWare's Pantely Neofotis.

The company's recently developed SilverWare Avrio POS system already is creating a buzz in the on-premise for its potential to become the next generation in POS equipment. Specifically designed for the hospitality industry, Avrio uses advanced Microsoft development technology and a Microsoft Windows presentation foundation that runs on a sequel server 2008 database and a .net framework to offer server features such as sophisticated table management functions, multilingual support and unlimited menu item prices levels.

Other novel aspects of POS that operators could avail themselves of in their day-to-day operations are the capacities of their existing POS systems that Neofotis says go unexplored.

"Most operators will not use the integrated Gift Card and Customer Retention module and, as a result, they do not capture valuable information used to make effective decisions," Neofotis says.

Tomorrow's POS Today

Operators on the go now can monitor and respond to up-to-the-minute information via their laptops and iPhones, of course. Accubar's Version 4.0, which was released in August after more than two years in development, represents a major push to give AccuBar a variety of tools to manage a beverage operation successfully.

"Version 4.0 represents the first major overhaul of the AccuBar architecture in four years, and will provide the structure for major enhancements in an operator's ability to analyze data and maintain corporate oversight," says Dean Grimm, chief technical officer and a partner of Englewood, Colo.-based parent company G4 Technologies.

Among the broad range of added features, AccuBar's developers put a heavy focus on making the system a powerful tool for wine management.

"More and more places are carrying significant wine lists," Grimm says. "The downside to this is the massive effort it takes to manage that list. Version 4.0 aims to help you get the situation under control with much less time investment."

"For instance, you can now print your wine list based only on what you have in stock, as often as you like," says Dan Grimm, partner and president of the company. "That's one new feature that's creating a lot of buzz. Version 4.0 also adds the ability to assign a bin number to a wine, to search the handheld by BIN number and to distinguish between different vintages of a wine."

Another main area of focus of 4.0 is reporting. Users will have more analytical tools, enhanced by AccuBar's ability to interface with numerous top POS systems.

"Many of the reports can now be viewed online, which has the benefit of being able to click on a number and drill into the data behind it," Dan Grimm says. "This will make the system much more capable of pointing you more directly to a problem and possible causes."

The list of new features also includes more powerful reordering capabilities, support for the Firefox browser and mobile phones, and a revamped approach to managing banquets and events.

"We have already started work on the next set of enhancements, which will include more wine management features, draft beer management tools, more analysis and trending reporting and more corporate/multi-unit functionality to help the corporate operators," Dan Grimm says.

Hand-to-Hand Tracking

Of course, as an operator checks his or her stock movement from a handheld PDA in a hotel room far from the bar, it's possible that guest orders affecting those numbers originate from handheld units waitstaffers are using on-premise. In terms of POS technology and gadgetry, among the hottest trends in the nightclub and bar industry today may be the handheld wireless terminals and printers offered by companies such as Digital Dining.

"The efficiency with handheld terminals is incredible, says Digital Dining's Andre Nataf. "The busier the bar, the more revenue is lost when servers and cocktail wait people have to run back to fixed terminals to place orders."

With wireless terminals and remote printers, Nataf says servers can enter the order as soon as it is given by the customers, allowing for more orders to be placed in the time period that their customer is in the establishment. Additionally, he says customers can rest assured that their credit cards will never have to leave their side, since the Digital Dining handhelds can verify credit cards and print receipts right in front of them.

"This eliminates the potential for identity theft, which protects both the establishment and their patrons," Nataf says. "Additionally if the business establishes runners to bring the drinks out so that the waitstaff can stay within their section their entire shift, this allows servers to always be accessible for their customers to order more drinks and food. We have seen bars and nightclubs increase their gross revenue up to 45 percent by simply implementing our handhelds."

The increase is incremental, Nataf says, meaning that the only additional expenses against it are food or liquor cost.

"If a business is grossing $2 million a year, they can increase their sales by $600,000 just by adding handhelds from Digital Dining," he says. "Of that $600,000 of increased revenue, 70 to 80 percent is pure profit. We are selling these handheld POS solutions like hotcakes."

Efficiency Nurtures Growth

One venue that is sold on its POS system is Club Paris, a Jacksonville, Fla., nightclub that chose the Maitre'D software suite to help it take its business to the next level. Since 2006, the POS system has allowed Club Paris to operate at peak efficiency and better manage its high volume of sales. In particular, Club Paris is growing its business aggressively with a POS system that has allowed it to thrive and generate more revenue by providing the accuracy, reliability and speed of service that are essential to a busy nightclub.

''With more than 3,000 transactions per night, we needed a dependable system to help us manage our operations and provide our staff with tools to increase productivity and keep up with the high volume of transactions," Fred Khalilian, CEO of Club Paris says. "It is clear that the increase in both profitability and customer satisfaction with the technology provided will guarantee that we achieve a ROI very quickly.''

Club Paris currently has 22 Maitre'D POS workstations set up in its Jacksonville nightclub, running on PartnerTech POS hardware and using Epson printers. The club also uses Maitre'D Inventory to control its food and beverage costs and manage inventory and purchasing, electronic funds transfer, and time and attendance to manage labor costs.