VAR Serves Up 40-Unit All-In-One POS Install At Restaurant Chain
This VAR worked closely with a POS (point of sale) vendor to provide its customer with a customized all-in-one POS solution.
The recipe of the dinner you recently ate at your favorite restaurant could be worth a lot of money. In fact, if considered a trade secret, its theft could be financially devastating to the restaurant. For that reason, restaurants will go to great lengths to protect this intellectual property (and the courts will harshly punish those who steal it). Art Julian, CEO of Custom Business Solutions, Inc. (CBS), was called by Wood Ranch BBQ & Grill to move the restaurant chain from a paper-based recipe book to a secure digital format. The reason for the installation was to help protect the restaurant's recipes and lower the costs associated with printing and distributing the books that contain them.
In the chain restaurant business, recipe books often are printed on paper at corporate headquarters and distributed to branch locations. For security reasons, it's not uncommon for managers to keep a sign-out sheet to track the movements of the recipe books. Also, printing and distributing new recipe books can become costly and time-consuming. A progressive restaurant will change its menu four times a year and can alter recipes 16 times a year to cope with changes in the availability of ingredients or to make improvements to recipes. CBS offers restaurants a software solution named NorthStar Recipe Viewer, which replaces paper-based recipe books.
Can Your Vendor Customize Your All-In-One POS Terminal?
For Wood Ranch, CBS worked closely with J2 Retail Systems, a manufacturer of all-in-one POS terminals, to provide a touch screen solution that could withstand a kitchen environment. "In the end, we wound up with a J2 model 560 modified with an infrared touch screen. Standard resistive touch technology has a 12- to 24- month life span on the touch panel in typical kitchen environments. Infrared panels can last well over 10 years," says Julian.
While the infrared touch screen was important, so was an integrated battery backup. Oftentimes when a restaurant loses power during the day, it can remain open since most cooking is fueled with natural gas. To ensure the touch screen terminals could be used during power outages, J2 added an internal battery supply (the same used in laptop computers), giving the units 90 minutes of auxiliary power.
The resulting 560IR is a fanless all-in-one touch screen terminal running Microsoft XP Embedded operating system off a CompactFlash memory card. There are no moving parts that can become damaged by liquids, dust, and grease.
Make Use Of Your Client's Existing Networking Infrastructure
There are four 560IRs at each of the 10 Wood Ranch locations running the Recipe Viewer software. The software displays recipes on the touch screen terminals. The recipe content (i.e. instructions, photographs, special notes) is transmitted from a Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) running at Wood Ranch corporate headquarters via a secured VPN (virtual private network). Julian states, "Most restaurant chains today have a considerable networking infrastructure already in place. All of the Wood Ranch restaurants already were connected to headquarters via broadband Internet." Once J2 developed the 560IR, the installation took approximately one month to complete.
A benefit of the Recipe Viewer software is that the application indicates in a number of places when there is a recipe change. "When chefs access the Recipe Viewer from the kitchen, they are notified of the number of new recipes that day. Specific changes in each recipe appear highlighted to alert the cooking staff," explains Julian.
CBS currently is working with Wood Ranch to incorporate training video into the touch screen system. With this functionality, Wood Ranch can videotape a chef who is best at preparing a certain dish and then stream that video to restaurant kitchens as needed. All video will be stored on the existing corporate IIS server and streamed via Microsoft Streaming Media Server directly to the touch screens in the kitchen.
CBS plans to continue refining the Recipe Viewer software and expand on its possible uses. The ability to secure privileged information but make it accessible to the right eyes has long-reaching benefits for many different verticals. "The product was designed for the restaurant industry, but we are seeing interest in hospitals and other areas," concludes Julian.