Point-of-sale (POS) systems have changed the game for restaurateurs, helping them juggle employee schedules, labour costs and customer orders. Cloud- and tablet-based POS providers have granted operators easier data access, simplified ordering and ticketing and seamless guest experiences.
For Turgay Kirbiyik, co-owner at Ozzy’s Burger’s — with three locations in Toronto, Vaughan, Ont. and Mississauga, Ont. — a partnership with Toronto-based TouchBistro provided a central location to review orders and allowed the company to increase sales by tracking data during peak periods. “It makes it a lot easier to run a smoother operation for ordering and ticketing and it’s been great for tax purposes [because you can pull up old orders],” says Kirbiyik. “We’re able to see trends, such as [top-selling] menu items, so it’s helped us to make the right decisions when it comes to growing the business.”
While the system has greatly benefitted the business, Kirbiyik craves more. He wants to integrate a third-party delivery app into his existing system, but says the company has been slow to partner with a mobile-ordering platform because of the demands of operating two separate systems. POS companies have been slow to innovate beyond client-service technology and adapt to digital applications. The systems have created a simplified environment for many but, going forward, modern POS technology will have to evolve and go beyond Cloud support and API reporting to a fully integrated omni-channel commerce and order-processing engine.
One company leading the charge with third-party-delivery-service integration is InnQuest Canada — a POS software-solutions company in Edmonton. Trina Stephens, president of InnQuest Canada, says the company will soon be releasing an integration with San Francisco-based on-demand food-delivery service, DoorDash, through its Restaurant Manager POS system. Its current platform costs approximately $349 a month and training can take anywhere from two to five days. InnQuest has also partnered with Hasa — a POS-system solution based in Eastern Canada — that’s offering a similar application.
Alex Barrotti, president and founder of TouchBistro, says companies are continuously working together to develop the technology and share information and strategies that will lead to the improvement of POS systems. Through Apple’s App Store, TouchBistro can easily add updates to its software, limiting the impact delivery and kiosk-ordering channels have on the overall guest experience.
“The business model of these older companies was to hold onto your data very tightly and not share it with anybody. That was their security. But today’s mentality is the opposite,” Barrotti says. “There’s more strength in sharing your data with other systems in terms of customer attention, than there is in keeping it as proprietary as possible.”
Written by Jordan Maxwell
