Handheld Point of Sales Changing Restaurants

A few years ago in Europe a small restaurant chainTaking the tools I had already created and using them
made history. The future had arrived when they tookto construct a Restaurant Point of Sale was fairly
their first order and sent it electronically to the kitchen.easy and straightforward. There were tons of
That simple act forever changed the future of highchanges and modifications made and features added,
volume restaurants. Their little experiment was expandbut the core functions of selling a product and
to over a dozen restaurants and netted them a 20%recording it are the same no matter what you sell. The
increase in revenue within months. The system paidend result was a Point of Sale Software Application
for itself and created profits by decreasing table turnthat can be accessed and used on almost any
time by delivering orders to the kitchen in the blink ofplatform system with no special software to install.
an eye and increasing the amount of time the waitThe benefits to using this kind of model for software
staff could spend with their patrons.development are far too numerous for me to type. I
Such a simple and wonderful idea has been slow tothink you can get an idea of the advantages to
catch on. Many restaurants fear the initial costbusinesses of any size.
investments and the technical nightmare of installingThink of just a few of the advantages to a medium or
software on handheld devices. Several of majorlarge sized company. For a large chain of restaurants
restaurant software manufacturers have releasedto be able to increase profits by more than 20% is a
handheld versions of their software. Most of thesestaggering figure and well worth the paltry hardware
lack the ease of use and installation needed to makeand software costs. With an Internet Based
them viable. There have even been a few attemptingApplication they can also increase profits by
at making software that can recognize handwriting.decreasing the time needed to install and manage
Although the concept seems sound in practice it is farsoftware across all locations. Imagine being able to
from easy to master.update the software for 400 locations instantly.
Some time ago I was challenged to write a customerImagine how much would be saved by not needing to
Point of Sale Software System for a customer. Iinstall software for the vast majority of the machines
spent a long time thinking about hand held PCs andused for Point of Sales. The amount of money a large
how best to incorporate them into the package. Easycompany could make just by streaming their
installation and the ability to run on almost any platformtechnology and taking advantage of it is just
became my primary concerns. I soon hit upon astaggering.
realization that I could create the application with anIn all of this I forgot to mention the best part. Think
HTML front end. I had already created three versionsabout how cool it is to sit down and have a waitress
of a Point of Sale system we used in house. I hadtake your order on a handheld. That's just too cool and
created our Point of Sale System as an InternetI love it. The same great software can also be used
application because we perform a lot of on-siteas a Kiosk where patrons enter their own order. I can
service. Being able to access a customer's bill andsee the day when you sit down in a fast food
update it from right there at their location was a powerrestaurant and a computer-generated face takes your
we desperately needed. It also allowed for easyorder and a small robot brings it to the table or it gets
integration into our supplier network and allowed thedropped from a chute. Not all restaurants would
owners to access company data from anywhere andbenefit from all technology, but the advantages of
since they're always halfway across the country ithand held ordering are at the bottom line and a lot of
solved a lot of problems.restaurants are going to reap in the profits.