Case Study of a Restaurant choosing its Point of Sale System
- High Volume Restaurant Panama City Beach Florida.
- 20+ employees.
- Open 15 years.
- 200+ transactions average daily.
- 4 POS Terminals
- 2 Hand Held
- 1 KDS, plus printers
- Online Ordering
- POS Implementation 2023.
- https://www.sandpiperbeacon.com/
Business Assessment:
Located in Panama City Beach Florida, Coconuts restaurant, which is also part of a resort, is typical in that it provides breakfast, lunch, dinner and has a bar. They also provide take out. They have an inside dining area and outside seating area at the beach.
The menu has a variety of seafoods, breakfasts, lunch and dinner as well as pizza. You can see the menu on our demo.
They have implemented Oracle and want integration with Oracle, their current system does not support this.
Online Ordering – They want to add online ordering from their own solution and integration with delivery apps.
Considerations:
The seasonality of the location results in a fluctuation of staff. This results in a variety of staff some of which have to quickly learn the software.
They have 3 terminals, 2 kitchen printers and an expediting printer. The administration is done from a single desktop computer.
They do use the time keeping mechanism for their staff.
With their current solution they apply a service fee, and their current system has 3 tax rates they apply.
Their team had an internal Analysis. They recently updated to Oracle. In doing so they were presented by the Oracle staff a presentation for Symphony, and then a demo of Toast’s solution for Restaurants.
Toast & Symphony Comparisons
Their team’s requirement required that the OHIP Room Service integration allowed for charges. Both Oracle’s Symphony and Toast allowed for this.
At the time of their assesment. Symphony provides a special offer where their equipment was provided for $1.00 USD, This sort of ‘sales tactic’ is common; and like always it comes with caveats and someway the business will recoup their costs.
Their experience with Oracle was adequate in that they knew the proposal that the equipment would be a dollar, meant nothing to the support and ongoing cost of the POS system. Additionally, upon review of Symphony, it was clear that the POS Software developer was in a sort of limbo. It appeared just as Micros, (it’s origin), did 10 years ago (Symphony was formerly Micros and purchased by Oracle several years earlier). So the question is, would there ever be any advancement in a system that already looks like it’s 10 years old?
Here’s some considerations they evaluated: Micros was obviously purchased by Oracle to fulfill a goal. This goal was not specifically to be passionate about Point of Sale, but something else. For example, what competent and innovative software developer would ever strive to work for Symphony; what would their incentive be, let alone a team of developers.
On the other side there was Toast, which had all the features, but a set of issues: high proprietary equipment cost, each terminal had a monthly fee, the equipment was proprietary; and the credit card services were not necessarily competitive. Each turn of the head for another feature was an additional cost. While this is to be expected, the fees, costs and increases over time that had been evaluated by their team; meant Toast, while it clearly could do the job, it was at a premium price that only promised to increase, and that is not desirable.
PointlessPOS Analysis
And then they reviewed PointlessPOS. The solution was able to do an integration with Oracle. It was able to provide handheld table service, KDS, online ordering. It could fufill all of the goals required by the team that both met the features by Toast and by Oracle, yet it had a cost value solution that was equivalent to the credit card rates they paid.
They were able to negotiate this because of their volume in part, but also that their needs fit within the price point and feature set that Pointless can run, with a low cost solution. So they moved forward with Pointless based on the goals in the following section.
Goals:
- The resort is adding Oracle to their Resort for Hotel Services, would like integration with the services
- Table Service with handheld devices.
- Modern solution with intuitive UI for things like split checks etc.
- Low cost merchant solution – Reduce their cost with PIN Debit
- Inclusion of Oracle’s Room Service Charges.
- Uber Eats & Other Delivery Apps.
- Internal Online Ordering.
- Auto Apply Service Fee
- Calculate variables for payroll deductions.
Solutions:
- Pax A920Pro Max for Handheld ordering.
- Terminals & Printers Provided by PointlessPOS for Printing & Network Support.
- KDS Self Provided TV/ Terminal Solution
- Online Ordering utilizing Pointless online App as a seamless solution. Provides a separate menu, with restrictions on order for times.
- Oracle Integration – PointlessPOS has a Registered and Integrated App for Room Charges / OHIP features with Oracle
- Behavioral controls for Staff
- Timeclock which includes the calculations for their Auto Fees as well as deductions of Credit Card Fees to save the ownership/management money on Employee related Tip Fees.
- Tax rates for multiple fees.
- Reports can be pulled from the resort.
- Customers can self pay with wrist bands
Mobile view online ordering. Direct integration means easy to update and low cost for transaction fees.
Customers can schedule pickup, delivery and more.
Menu’s can be custom designed using CSS & images. Can support multiple columns per screen. Can be used for TV Menus and Online Ordering.
Pointless POS is provided as SASS solution which is onsite, and buttressed by online support. This allows for it to run offline if there is an internet outage.
Online access to custom domain. Management no longer needs remote connection software.
Oversight and awareness of behaviors. Behavioral notifications now alert management for:
- Price Changes
- Purchase orders
- Cash drawer opens
- Processing errors that are unexpected.
Enhancements Price Savings
PIN Debit has been implemented.
Cost / Support & Ongoing
Price Lock – No Increase in fees over time.
A stable no change in fee structure. Because of the implementation & architectural decisions of Pointless; it can maintain a virtually static price model. There are no upgrade fees, price increases and modules that are add ons. Yes, other third parties may have their expenses, but based on the Pointless POS model, the ongoing cost of the solution can remain in effect for another 10 years, like it had for them the previous ten years.
