Cash programs for restaurants. Cafe, diner or small restaurant automation

Employees of numerous firms rush to cafes at lunchtime in order to “eat tasty and inexpensive food”. The whole subsequent working day will depend on how tasty the food is. At the same time, an important condition is the cost of food, since this process occurs almost every day, with the exception of weekends and holidays. A cafe, unlike a restaurant, is designed specifically for everyday customer service during working and evening hours. The main influx of visitors is lunchtime and evening from 19:00 to 22:00. In the cafe, not only dine, meetings are scheduled, serious business meetings are held. Thus, cafes become part of the workflow, providing a comfortable and relaxed lunch or evening.

The increase in demand for high-quality and affordable catering outlets is forcing catering business owners not only to expand the network of establishments, but also to improve the quality of service, to give their cafes a uniqueness, highlighting their establishment from the mass of competing cafes, canteens and eateries.

In the conditions of fierce competition, it is necessary to pay attention not to one, but to a whole range of tasks typical for a cafe:

Search for the optimal location of the cafe;

Development of individual interior and exterior design, so that visitors want to come back again;

Development of the optimal menu to be tasty and inexpensive;

Selection of friendly, even and professional staff;

Selection of good suppliers of high-quality and inexpensive products;

Marketing policy;

Selection of optimal equipment.

From the point of view of a company engaged in the automation of cafes and other catering facilities, we can only provide assistance in the selection of optimal equipment for cafe automation and, in part, in the field of marketing policy. It's no secret that in many ways it is discount cards that are the mechanism for carrying out most marketing activities and increasing the level of interest of both current and potential customers, coming to the cafe as often as possible.

Let's take a closer look at what we can offer.

Most cafes are mini-restaurants, so the scheme of the cafe automation system is built on the same principle. But there are small differences.

The most important difference is that cafe automation should be cheap, but at the same time simple and reliable in operation.

It's no secret that R-Keeper currently occupies the undisputed 1st place in the rating of software for cafes and restaurants. Another brand came close to it - iiko. The software is really efficient, reliable, but quite expensive. Does it make sense to spend money for a start-up business? If this is a serious restaurant, it certainly has. It is quite possible to consider automation options for a cafe, fast food, canteen, snack bar or small restaurant. There are quite cheap and effective catering automation systems that allow you to achieve excellent results for little money.

What is the automation of a cafe, fast food, canteen, snack bar or small restaurant?

The automation system for a cafe, fast food, canteen, snack bar or small restaurant includes two components:

1) Restaurant software, including workstations for waiters, bartenders, administrators (Front-office).

2) The program place of the merchandiser (or in other words "Back-office").

The first point is the main one when opening a catering point. It is understandable, the workplace of the cafe waiter will not be able to take customer orders in an automated mode.

A standard solution for automating a cafe, fast food, canteen, snack bar or a small restaurant in a minimal version looks like this:

A waiter's workplace is installed on the sensory monoblock, on which the hall and tables are simulated in graphic mode, the client's order is placed;

The order is sent to the chef at the receipt printer with a call;

The cook, according to the order printed on the receipt, starts cooking the dish;

After the client has eaten and asks for an “Invoice”, the waiter prints a non-fiscal document “Invoice” (in other words, “pre-check”) on a fiscal registrar connected to the waiter’s workplace and brings it to the client for approval;

In case the client does not agree, the order may be amended and a new invoice provided;

If the client agrees with the bill, the waiter receives money or a bank card and closes the order by printing a cash receipt.

Thus, automation directly of the catering point operates.

What does the merchandising software (or Back-office) give us? It creates dish maps and keeps track of inventory in warehouses, thus providing full control over the results of the establishment.

It should be noted that in order to save money, some business owners do not install a workplace for a merchandiser, saying that "a cafe can work without it." In fact, after 2-3 months of work, they return with a request to install it, because they cannot inventory their establishment, and therefore cannot fully control its work. Only a complete automation system for a cafe, fast food, canteen, snack bar or small restaurant can bring the desired result. At the same time, I would like to note once again that our company offers to automate a cafe, fast food, canteen, snack bar or a small restaurant cheaply, but with high quality. In our arsenal, there are options for automating both one establishment for a cafe, fast food, canteen, snack bar or a small restaurant with minimal requirements, and for automating a network of cafes, fast food, canteens, eateries or a chain of small restaurants.

A modern restaurant is not just good cuisine, but also high technology. Various IT services are abundant on the market that help attract new customers, automate the work of waiters, and even allow management to manage the establishment from home, sitting on the couch.

Vyacheslav Semenikhin, Global Marketing Director of Smartfin OJSC (2Can & iBox brand) researched the restaurant services market and chose the top 10.

1. Attract new customers

A barker stands near the restaurant and invites visitors - the good old scheme works, of course, to this day. Only in the era of the Internet, spending time and money on this is not so necessary. In matters of attracting new customers and creating a service for regulars, LeСlick will help restaurants.

This startup offers to manage restaurant reservations in . Customers reserve a table on the LeСlick website or partner platforms ZOON, Moscow-restaurants, Yell, gdebar. The restaurant only needs to open its electronic reserve book, in which you can see and process new reservations.

The electronic book of reserves makes it possible to generate various reports on the workload of the institution. LeСlick also offers booking widgets for establishments, which restaurants place on their websites and pages in social networks. In addition, the service allows you to make automatic targeted SMS and email mailings to an existing guest base.

The database of the service already contains more than 8,000 establishments in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other large cities. Now LeСlick is planning to launch a new project - a platform for selecting the venue for the Restobase banquet, investments in which are attracted on the StartTrack site.

2. Automate the work of the restaurant and manage it from home

A comprehensive restaurant, bar or cafe automation system is offered by the Russian startup Quick Resto. The application of the same name allows you to automate the work of companies in the field of HoReCa - both in terms of customer service, and for warehouse and operational accounting. With the help of Quick Resto, waiters quickly transfer the customer's order to the kitchen, issue receipts for payment, and chefs take into account the remaining products in the warehouse. The service counts the working time of employees, and is also integrated with 1C and 2Can&iBox systems.

For February, 2016 clients of the company are more than 500 restaurants and bars. All information about orders, payments and stock balances is stored in the cloud and is constantly available to the management and owners of the establishment.

3. Create a virtual room

4. Buy everything in one place

A ready-made kit for restaurant automation - a program plus equipment - is offered by Helpmix. Her basic “gentleman's kit” includes: Helmpix restaurant automation software, a netbook, a touch pad on a mount, a magnetic card reader, 10 magnetic cards, a POS printer and a WiFi router. The system assumes standard functions for automating an establishment - perhaps everything a small restaurant needs.

5. Watch the restaurant from anywhere

Food disappearing from the kitchen, alcohol from the bar? Catering outlets regularly encounter such troubles. The cloud-based video surveillance service of the startup Ivideon will help the owner and management of the establishment manage the establishment remotely.

The advantage of the Ivideon service is to minimize the cost of organizing a video surveillance system. The cloud service eliminates the need to install a special server (separate computer) for video data analysis. You can view the recording from anywhere in the world on a regular tablet or smartphone.

6. Deliver food straight from social media

Automation has not bypassed such a sphere as the promotion of a restaurant in social networks. In the end, it is from social networks that the youngest and most active audience of cafes and restaurants draws information.

Two years ago, a young businessman, Stas Arkhangelsky, launched the Openboom service, which allows you to "upload" restaurant menus to a social media application. In this way, Openboom “brings” food delivery orders to the establishment with payment for the result, restaurants receive a new source of orders, and their customers receive a convenient platform for selecting dishes based on the recommendation of friends from the network. The company claims that they are already working with about a hundred Russian restaurants.

7. Accept cashless payments for food delivery

However, it is not enough to deliver dishes from the restaurant - the courier must accept payment. The problem of availability of acquiring is becoming more and more acute for restaurant delivery services. Indeed, in the largest cities, customers are used to paying for goods with a bank card, and the ability to pay for an order only in cash is assessed by many buyers as a lack of the necessary service.

The ability to accept non-cash payments upon delivery provides establishments with an increase in the average check. But if standard bank POS terminals for delivery services are too cumbersome, mobile acquiring comes to the rescue. With its help, the courier's smartphone or tablet easily turns into a full-fledged terminal for receiving bank cards. It is enough to download an application to it, which was developed by the Russian startup 2Can & iBox, and connect a card reader. The application also integrates with mobile cash registers. At the same time, the arrangement of a mobile terminal is about ten times cheaper than classic POS receivers.

8. Serve a hurried customer

Your client has no time to wait, and it is too expensive to hire additional waiters during rush hour? The Resti service will come to the rescue, with the help of which a hasty client will place an order on his own. Using a smartphone, a client reads a QR code and gets to a page where they can call a waiter, view the establishment's menu, leave a review and pay the bill. Information from the table instantly appears on the smartphone or tablet of the waiter or administrator.

As promised in Resti, the speed of service will thus increase by 30%.

9. Invite to recharge the gadget

It's no secret that various services for customers in the hall also help restaurants attract new customers. And who will refuse to go to a cafe, drink a cup of coffee or even have lunch, if you can recharge your smartphone or tablet in the establishment? :)

The founders of the City Charger startup claim that the presence of a universal device for recharging mobile devices leads to an increase in the average bill of an establishment by as much as 30%. The company sells restaurants, cafes and bars stations designed to simultaneously charge 12 devices. According to the company, 167 restaurants in Moscow are already “recharging” the gadgets of their customers in this way.

10. Find out everything about the visitor

Every good restaurant and cafe has its regulars. Those who like the establishment visit it all the time, and they must be served in a special way. The waiter must remember what such a client prefers, and even better, be prepared in advance for his arrival and prepare his favorite table.

Startup Beaconka will help to cope with this task. The company's mobile application is based on BLE Beacon geolocation technology, which allows to recognize restaurant customers, track their actions, collect data about them, send targeted advertising and personalized offers. Customers get the opportunity to use a personal loyalty program, make contactless payments and always have access to the menu through the application in their smartphone.

In addition, the establishment can be equipped with special Bluetooth beacons. When the client is near the restaurant, the system will send him a personalized offer that he cannot refuse.

On Habré, the topic of automating the restaurant business is not covered very actively. Meanwhile, this is quite an interesting market with a large number of players who develop and sell a variety of products.

In today's material, your attention is 24 tools for automating the restaurant business. In preparing the review, I also tried to evaluate the quality of the company's support services and the speed of response to requests from potential customers, information about this is also presented in the article.

System names are clickable

As a front office, you can use the local development of the same company called POSitive .

System "Expert"

A comprehensive turnkey solution includes a trading floor module, a managerial part, a reporting service, costing and warehouse modules. It was not possible to wait for the operator's answer immediately, but they answer in detail and to the point.

type of instalation: local

Price: 219000 rubles

Bit. Appetite

The company provides institutions with a range of services for the selection of software for automation (including its own production), its implementation (along with equipment) and support. The number of clients is more than 2,500 establishments in Russia and the CIS (including well-known chains like Yakitoria and Coffee House).

Own developments based on 1C in terms of embedded business processes are quite noticeably behind competing and more modern solutions. Technical support by phone, more complex questions on costing - only by mail.

type of instalation: local

Price: complex automation of the restaurant from 250000

simple dining room

A program that can be customized for a specific type of institution. It allows you to control the receipt of products, keep track of dishes, track stock balances, and so on.

Contrary to the name, installation and operation with it is not so easy. The degree of "simplicity" of interaction is best illustrated by the scheme of support work: in order for a user's problem to be considered, he needs to shoot a video of the problem, take a screenshot and backup the database.

type of instalation: local

Price: 3000 rub.

bitrest

The program allows you to log all the actions of the staff of the institution, access to the reports can be obtained via the Internet, the development company also trains the staff. Support is only by phone and not particularly prompt.

type of instalation: local

Price: 45000 rubles

For rest

A convenient program that allows you to create orders, accept payments, arrange the seating of the hall, provide customers with discounts and view reports.

There are some disadvantages of the interface (for example, the price for a dish is not displayed in the invoice), but they are not critical.

Phone support only, many regional branches. Top speed.

type of instalation: local

Price: 21000 rub.

Helpmix

The system allows waiters to work through a stationary or mobile touch tablet or a regular computer. Stock balances are accounted for in warehouses, products are written off in real time, working hours are recorded, time and fines are recorded. Management can view reports remotely. It does not require internet to work.

Judging by the data on the website, more than 50 establishments are currently clients of the Ukrainian project.

type of instalation: local

Price: basic kit ~$530

Conclusion

In this review, we have considered a significant number of various tools and services, but, of course, there are many more of them, and many projects were not included in the article. Share links to interesting automation tools in the comments, and maybe in the future there will be material for another article.

Thank you for your attention!

Tags:

automation
catering business
IT infrastructure
business infrastructure

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As a front office, you can use the local development of the same company called POSitive .