Recommend an EPOS cash register for a pub restaurant please

[Weave]

Hi All

A friend of mine took over the tenancy of a pub restaurant last year and is looking to upgrade the till. Currently they have a basic till which they can ring in the basic items and if something is missing it just goes on as a 'miscellaneous item'. All food orders are written on notebooks by the waiting staff and are passed to the kitchen without being rung in the till. They only get put through the till later just before the customer is ready to pay. The current till does not allow staff to enter alterations such as 'No cheese' or 'Mash instead of chips' so can not be used to create food orders for the kitchen. This also means upgrades such as 'Add bacon to burger' does not get charged a lot of the time as staff would ring it in as just a 'burger'.

This system means the kitchen will send out food written on notebooks that may never be rung through the till either in error or worse.

Can anyone recommend a cost effective and good EPOS system they use that will print the food order for the kitchen and possibly allow two tills or a till plus a tablet to enter orders into at the time of ordering?

The business is running on minimal cashflow so considering monthly payment system if buying out right will be a bog outlay.

Thanks in advance if you have any experience you can offer regarding hospitality tills like this.

 

[bovine]

I've been selling and installing this sort of pos system for a very long time. We have been using/reselling the ICRTouch systems for a long time and they work extremely well in this setup. Will do all of this easily and a lot more. Lots of options for ordering (pos, web/app, tablet, kiosk) and additions (kitchen printers, kitchen video, integrated card terminals, digital menus). Hardware can be a compact unit, the "standard" 15" screen or widescreen units.

Go to the icrtouch website and find the local reseller. For this sort of business, dont underestimate the benefit of proper support with engineers who will come out and fix/help. If you let me know the area, I can see if I know anyone to recommend.

 

[Weave]

Thanks @bovine. Would you be willing to give an indication of what cost we might be looking at for a main till, a tablet to take orders on (or app/cloud access to use on our own tablet). Printer by till to print for customer and to also pass a food order receipt to the kitchen? Are we taking £2k outright or £50 a month for X many years. Or something very different?

We are near Coventry.

 

[Weave]

We have a separate card payment system already so do not need that as part of the setup.

 

[MarketingQuote]

A separate business venture used Izettle (linked to Apple); drinks order went to the bar, food order went to the kitchen.

 

[Mark T Jones]

Speak with @bovine
Also, look at the trade press - Morning Advertiser , the Caterer etc to keep an eye on others

 

[bovine]

Thanks Mark. Two parts to these systems, hardware and software. Hardware from us is usually an up front payment (well, actually, deposit, on delivery and 30 days payment) and the software on the till, cloud back-office and staff ordering tablet software is billed monthly. Approx cost for terminal, printer, drawer including setup of menus, delivery by us, training and ongoing support with onsite engineer backup is £1000-£1400 depending on the hardware. These are good quality units that we would typically expect to last in a hospitality environment 5yrs+. The ongoing software costs start from £25 pm for pos+backoffice, add £10 pm per tablet (you can buy your own, ios or android). There are a load of other addon options for online ordering, kitchen video etc, but not for functions like tables/stock which I have seen others do.

That price is higher than some solutions, but we work with you to setup them and do all the initial setup. We're not an online order, send you some kit, expect you to unbox and set it up and suddenly become a pos expert type company. We also come out to site to demo and see the site, because it helps us understand your needs and how we can best help. So its quite good value

There are online options, some with very low/zero costs. Obviously theyre making money so understand the offer is all i'll say. And if they use trustpilot for reviews, check out the one star ones as they often give a better picture of after sales service than the five star ones.

Coventry is within our area, so i'll send over our details, if you want to arrange for one of us to come and see you would be more than happy to. We demo and discuss, we do not hard sell. And if you did order from us, the person who demoed it would usually be the person who installs. So you can be confident we dont overpromise!

Card payments - can be worth looking at as it can reduce your rates. Card integration can be really beneficial for pay at counter and pay at table, but there is also a option for them to supply a device which can run the tablet ordering app and the card app integrated, so you dont have to purchase one.

And my username is in no way related to the business, ive been here forever and originally signed up without looking to tout for business on here. It was an abbreviation of an online gametag I had. I still dont, I mostly use it as an information resource.

 

[Gill Courage]

I have no dog in this fight, nothing to sell and no experience managing a pub But I do have a couple of decades designing, writing and testing bespoke software and can tell you straight off that this approach is not good.
Most people/businesses do not know what they actually need. They may know what they want and it may be "to upgrade the till" but that is a solution, not a problem. I have always found that users think they know the solution but they don't, until somebody puts a solution in front of them and they try it. Then they can say, "we need this changed and that added". After several iterations, they may have something that fits the brief. If they are lucky, they didn't yet pay for anything.
Your friend needs to first list his "problems" and not do it in terms of what he thinks the solution should be. So, "allow additions to be charged for" rather than, "buy a new till system".
Once he has listed all his problems, he needs to list any additions or upgrades that he would like. Again, not in terms of what the solution would be........
Only then will he have a "requirement" that he can go to market with and see what solutions might fit.

 

[bovine]

True. Sometimes I get people who have done this and send over a document listing all their requirements. I quite enjoy going through things like that and offering solutions. Most of the time thats not the case though. We normally end up going to site, having a look around and discussing with the user. From that and having done this for a long time we can get a very good idea of the core functionality needed and run through it with them on our demo kit (saying we can do it is fine, but often showing is better). This typically leads to a conversation that organically gets to what you're getting at. The more we show, the more questions we get sometimes.

But inevitably there are things that come up after that they didnt know they wanted, or expansions of functions needed. We are fortunate that the system is very functional and can be utilised in many different ways so we have a lot of flexibility to adapt to customer needs and can work with them to achieve whats needed. Some of that falls under the normal scope of support, some might be chargeable additional work or additional product. We also create and bolt on custom scripts to radically alter things if really needed. Cant do everything, but we try.

I didnt mention above, but pricing is + VAT and we do have pre-owned/refurbed equipment that can lower cost.

 

[Weave]

Thanks @bovine for all this info and advice.

Thanks @Gill Courage for your input on advising us to specify what the problems are and what we want to achieve. We will also add in where we want to be in the future with this system.

I will speak to my friend and draw up specific info on what we have, what its limitations are, what we want it do and why. I will send this over to you @bovine so we can start the conversation on what you recommend and whether any of the existing kit can be upgraded or added to.

Thanks so much for taking the time to help.

 

[TerranceGer]

izettle.

easy to set up and easy to use.

Great customer service.

Don't over complicate

Don't let people charge you out the hole for custom services.....

Unless you are a massive hotel or huge cover place (500+) you want need it

 

[Howard Smith]

Hi All

A friend of mine took over the tenancy of a pub restaurant last year and is looking to upgrade the till. Currently they have a basic till which they can ring in the basic items and if something is missing it just goes on as a 'miscellaneous item'. All food orders are written on notebooks by the waiting staff and are passed to the kitchen without being rung in the till. They only get put through the till later just before the customer is ready to pay. The current till does not allow staff to enter alterations such as 'No cheese' or 'Mash instead of chips' so can not be used to create food orders for the kitchen. This also means upgrades such as 'Add bacon to burger' does not get charged a lot of the time as staff would ring it in as just a 'burger'.

This system means the kitchen will send out food written on notebooks that may never be rung through the till either in error or worse.

Can anyone recommend a cost effective and good EPOS system they use that will print the food order for the kitchen and possibly allow two tills or a till plus a tablet to enter orders into at the time of ordering?

The business is running on minimal cashflow so considering monthly payment system if buying out right will be a bog outlay.

Thanks in advance if you have any experience you can offer regarding hospitality tills like this.

Hi did you sort out payment system and where are you based.

Possibly can send someone your way.

Howard

 

[Weave]

Hi did you sort out payment system and where are you based.

Possibly can send someone your way.

Howard

Not settled on a solution yet. We are based near Coventry in the West Midlands.

 

[Howard Smith]

Not settled on a solution yet. We are based near Coventry in the West Midlands.

OK check out a company called Dojo all the best, Howard.

 

[Miss2024!]

Cybertill are a great option to consider

 

[Robin Knox]

For this kind of functionality (sales dashboard / kitchen printing) check out a UK based lightweight tablet POS like seamlesspos.co.uk you’ll have minimal up front cost due to the lower cost of hardware, UK based support and finance options. We can also help you get a really good deal on integrated card payments

 

[TidyM]

Had good experience with both systems below. Reasonably priced and easy to use. Also both integrate with most accounting softwares.

TheGoodTill by Sumup

Zettle POS by PayPal

 

[Weave]

UPDATE BY OP:
In the end we decided to go with a new card payment machine from Zettle PayPal and in return they offered us some discounted iPads, till printer and cash drawer so we could have two tills and a kitchen display for food orders at a total cost of £700.

Instead of using Zettle to run the tills we choose Loyverse as the customisation was better for a restaurant with lots of menu variables. This system costs £20 per month.

We liked this setup as the iPads can run any third party apps so we could change later and use them for other apps such as table reservations. We can also easily extend or replace the hardware too, and at a cost which is less than the more traditional till screens we’ve looked at.

Sadly the pub caught fire a couple of months ago, the same week my friend was due to sign up and pay for the hardware. We are therefore not yet live with the system so cannot confirm if it was the best route. We may never know if the pub co decide not to rebuild .

Many thanks for all contributions on this topic.