The Coatbridge-based fast food company wanted to achieve shorter working hours and higher turnover, and realised it was essential to add home delivery to their business.
After 30 years of operating busy fish & chip shops in Glasgow city centre, 24 hours a day, and relying on 95% passing trade, the fast food company was opened to include home delivery.
To control its home delivery service, the award-winning company installed an EPoS system; a point of sale integrated screen terminal and an order-taking system. When they first opened, a single screen order-taking system was installed for their delivery business only. Within 3 weeks of installing the system, Saturday night deliveries had tripled.
The benefits are many; caller recognition – customer details appear instantly on screen alongside the shop menu when the phone rings, postcode look-up – new customers are added quickly and accurately and fast touch screen ordering with (optional) selling prompts. In addition, meal deals, offers and delivery charges are calculated automatically.
The new system eliminated human error, saved time, and made order taking much quicker.
After a customer has placed an order for delivery and the food has been prepared and is ready to go, the screen is touched to tell the system which driver is taking the order. At this point, a map is displayed to help the driver. Payment can be taken from drivers after one order, a few orders or at the end of the night.
Two months after opening, the company added a second screen to its order-taking system to handle the increase in its delivery business. Then six months after opening, the business added three all-in-one touch screen terminals to the system, allowing them to run takeaway, delivery and collection. This made the whole process much smoother.
The other two touch screen terminals are wall mounted in the food preparation area. One displays pizzas, baked potatoes etc. to be made as they are ordered; the other displays special orders for frying.
Point-of-sale/point-of-service integrated workstations have been developed from industrial PC technology to withstand the rigours of modern hospitality and retail environments and incorporate features such as spill-proof LCD touchscreens, lockable disc drive/power switch, wall-mount fixing and enclosed cable management. The Intel™ chipsets provide a stable, flexible platform. In addition, future protection is ensured through standard expansion features including compact flash card technology.
The order-taking system is not just intended for processing orders, kitchen efficiency and driver management – it is an invaluable tool for customer relationship management. Every time that a new customer is added to the system or a customer orders again, the customer database is updated. This creates effective local marketing allowing the company to send special offers and coupons to customers by mail, by e-mail, or text messages.
http://www.maxatec-europe.com/content/pages/company/news/items/2007/atlantic-food.shtml
Andrea Percival
http://www.articlesbase.com/hardware-articles/fast-food-business-flows-faster-with-new-pos-workstation-681324.html