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POS Software: The Quick Service Perspective by Vicki Powers
This article discusses how different restaurants have different needs from their POS software. The author mainly focuses on quick service restaurants such as places that serve pizza, smoothies, or pitas. She focuses on six specific restaurants: Mr. Pita, Tropical Smoothie Cafe, Westshore Pizza, ZPizza, Church's Chicken, and Froots Smoothies. The article then discusses each food vendor's specific wants and needs from their specific POS system.
Mr. Pita is a chain restaurant based out of Michigan. They have thirty two different locations and in 2008, they made the transition from a cash register to a touch screen POS system. This system, developed by FireFly, has made back office capabilities much larger. It is so easy for them to quickly change prices and add menu items in the system. Also, the system features mapquest directions for all delivery orders, which is definately a plus.
Westshore Pizza is a small pizza chain in the Florida area. They have forty-eight different locations and were looking specifically for ease, delivery tracking, affordability, and internet credit-card processing in their new Adelo POS system. This pizza chain is extremely pleased with their new system because it automatically adds the delivery charges and then subtracts them from revenues at the end of the night, which used to take about a half an our for personell to complete. Also, this system added online-ordering for the company, making this small chain able to compete with large pizza companies.
Froots smoothies had similar needs to the other companies, looking for integration with credit cards, custimization, and touch screens. This company has thirty franchises between Arizona and Florida. They chose the SoftTouch POS and management has said they like this system because it is easy to train staff and is easy to customize to their business. They also like the "on-the-fly" output for the kitchen which allows the kitchen to look at the order in the computer while it is being put in, before it is actually placed.
Reflection:
I think this article is good to compare different needs that restaurants have from their POS. It is important to remember that not every restaurant has the same needs. It is also important for these small chain restaurants to upgrade in technology and find the POS system that best suits their needs. The delivery tracking is definately a good aspect of the system for any restaurant business that does delivery service and the FireFly system that Mr. Pita chose automatically gives delivery drivers directions which definately saves time and will prevent drivers from getting lost. This will definately improve guest satisfaction. Westshore Pizza was interested in integrated their credit card processing to the internet so it would take a miniscule amount of time to run customers credit cards and would also increase guest satisfaction. I think it is very important to look and compare different systems to decide which one suits your restaurant best. Not every system is the same and their are major differences in convenience, price, and different features available, so choosing a system takes a lot of time and effort. This article did a good job of comparing how different businesses have different needs.
