Hawaii Hospitality - March/April 2013 - (Page 4)

Orderman Sol handheld device Aloha "Pulse" iPad app A Whole World in Your Hands: The Changing Face of Point-of-Sale Software By Kyle Little Aloha "Pulse" iPhone app F rancis Tulu wants to know what keeps you up at night. As the president and CEO of CompuTant, a Hawaii-based company that specializes in retail and restaurant point-of-sale (POS) solutions, he considers it paramount to tailor his product to fit each client’s needs. “We’re going to ask you what is important to your business and how we can serve you,” Tulu says of Aloha, the perhaps aptly-named restaurant POS software CompuTant vends. Tulu points to three areas where Aloha shines. “The first is internal theft. Most restaurants lose 3 percent of their annual sales to internal theft, and that money adds up,” says Tulu. With Aloha’s “restaurant guard” feature, owners and managers can track sales in real time. Tulu demonstrates with an iPhone app, Pulse, which has been downloaded onto the phone: A few swipes, and the screen shows a list of open tickets on the restaurant floor. “See that red check? That means something questionable has been comped or voided off that table’s bill,” he says. “A feature like this allows you to see—as it happens—when table five is getting free food.” CompuTant isn’t the only company in the game concerned with deterring theft. 4 Hawaii Hospitality ■ March/April 2013 Mark Anderson, the district manager of POS Hawaii (representing Digital Dining POS), describes his company’s “Liquor Monitor,” which tracks pours with a high-tech liquor spout. “[The spout] uses radio frequency and the viscosity of the liquid to measure pours within 1/10th of an ounce. You can look at your report and see that three shots of Jameson were pulled at midnight.” A second perk of evolving POS software both Tulu and Anderson tout is incentivizing return customers. “With Digital Dining’s frequent diner program, you can bring people back to your restaurant with targeted email blasts. The system tracks important events like birthdays and anniversaries and then invites customers to dine in for a dessert on the house. That sort of marketing can really drive sales,” Anderson says. Tulu speaks similarly of Aloha’s loyalty program, a built-in mechanism for generating repeat business. “With Aloha loyalty and gift cards, you can engineer surveys that reward customers with $5 off their next meal upon completion. I know many of our clients distribute these Aloha gift cards to local concierges as well. It helps them build relationships with other businesses, helps those businesses please their guests, all the while getting more customers into the restaurant.” Tableside Delivery Though important, these features can’t compete with what Anderson affectionately refers to as the “hip, slick and cool” cachet of POS software such as Digital Dining and Aloha. Anderson trots out an iPad equipped with Digital Dining that allows servers to send orders directly from the table and an MSR card reader attachment for easy payment processing. “This way, the credit card never leaves the table. Customers don’t have to worry about their information getting stolen, and—let’s face it—it looks pretty cool too,” he says. Beyond the hip, slick and cool, however, such features present a real advantage on the restaurant floor. As your hostess seats you, she can send your drink order to the bar from an iPod touch. The server can be taking an appetizer and entrée order on an iPad by the time those drinks arrive. Tableside ordering prevents a server from sending in four orders at once and bottlenecking your kitchen, Anderson says.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Hawaii Hospitality - March/April 2013

Talk Story with George Szigeti
Point-of-Sale Software
Farm to Table
Outstanding Food & Beverage Professionals
News Briefs
Associations
New Restaurants
Clean Talk with Rose

Hawaii Hospitality - March/April 2013