UK Catering Forum

Hi everyone, I'm very glad I found this forum, I've been searching everywhere for somewhere to ask restauranty/catering questions.

I'm a software engineer/developer and have been developing a restaurant ing suite, it allows you to plonk your tables down in a layout, take reservations from customers online, restrict ing times, manage how many reservations can fit in one table per night - you probably know the rest. At the moment I've had several questions floating around in my head and I'd love it if people could give even just an answer to one of the questions - just so I can get an idea of whether this is viable or not.

1. Do you use a reservation/booking management system to take reservations?

2. If you have an EPOS system does it require an Internet connection, do all/any EPOS systems require Internet ?

3. How easy would it be for you to obtain a laptop/notebook - put it next to the phone which gives you your ings and give it an Internet connection - IE would it be as easy as simply connecting to a wireless source that's already there or would it require knocking walls down to thread cables through?

4. Would dealing with reservations through a laptop/notebook be viable in a restaurant?

5. How willing would you be to initially draw a rough layout of your restaurant before you start using the software for the first time? (takes roughly 10 - 15 minutes).

Although I cannot offer you anything back for answering the questions I can give you free reign to suggest what you want from a ing system - that's if you need one at all. If you already use a ing/reservation management system is there anything else you'd want from it? This could be anything from better reliability to statistics such as how many ings are made in a week/month/year etc. As I'm the sole architect of the software I can mold it to how you see fit (to a certain extent )

Thanks for your time,

Alex

Hi Alex and welcome to the forum.

I've used a few EPOS systems over the last 10 years.
Some have been internet ready but never had cause to connect it.
The problem, as I see it, with automated ing systems is that I have yet to find one that can rearrange tables. All restaurants have a 'standard lay' but the problems start when you have non standard parties. I can reorganise tables to fit the ings, pull in tables that are not usually used (from another room for example) but have yet to see a computer that can do this.
I like the bill generating, kitchen printing and stock control facilities that EPOS gives but as for ing and organising tables, I have my doubts.

I don't like to sound like a damp squib and maybe I have misunderstood your aims. I would be happy to contribute more if I can.

Hello Alex

Its been a while since I was a duty manager and the systems we used were not that great. I am sure they have moved on a lot over the last couple of years. I will ask a couple of mates still in the industry to see if they know more.

Is this a saas system you're working on or a one off? I am understanding it right and it's web (cloud) based?

We're working on something similar , well it's catering related but that's about as far as the similarity goes actually. I can't really help with the table ing questions as I'm not a restaurateur but interested to know about your project.

If I can help at all then let me know.

Gary

It's a bit out of my field Alex but welcome to the UKCF anyway.

Many thanks for the welcomes!

Dumb Waiter wrote:Hi Alex and welcome to the forum.

I've used a few EPOS systems over the last 10 years.
Some have been internet ready but never had cause to connect it.
The problem, as I see it, with automated ing systems is that I have yet to find one that can rearrange tables. All restaurants have a 'standard lay' but the problems start when you have non standard parties. I can reorganise tables to fit the ings, pull in tables that are not usually used (from another room for example) but have yet to see a computer that can do this.
I like the bill generating, kitchen printing and stock control facilities that EPOS gives but as for ing and organising tables, I have my doubts.

I don't like to sound like a damp squib and maybe I have misunderstood your aims. I would be happy to contribute more if I can.

Thanks for the reply, it's interesting you should say that, my software has a standard layout which you set at the beginning, if you so choose you can edit this layout for a specific night/day of the week - drawing in tables and removing tables how you wish.

My main issue is whether or not Internet is available in restaurants, this could be in the form of a wireless access point or some other way plus whether or not restaurant staff would find it cumbersome to bring in a laptop/notebook and use that as a way of managing ings instead of a paper-based diary.

creospace wrote:Is this a saas system you're working on or a one off? I am understanding it right and it's web (cloud) based?

We're working on something similar , well it's catering related but that's about as far as the similarity goes actually. I can't really help with the table ing questions as I'm not a restaurateur but interested to know about your project.

If I can help at all then let me know.

Gary

It's not saas entirely but the software does require an Internet connection for it to work due to it collecting customer ings. Essentially you download the software and you can use it how you wish. One version can be used without an internet connection and the other requires a connection so I suppose that version could be classed as saas. I know that a lot of reservation management systems do use saas but this one isn't dependent on it.

It's not saas entirely but the software does require an Internet connection for it to work due to it collecting customer ings. Essentially you download the software and you can use it how you wish. One version can be used without an internet connection and the other requires a connection so I suppose that version could be classed as saas. I know that a lot of reservation management systems do use saas but this one isn't dependent on it.

Sounds like it's desktop software to me, or at best halfway house such as Adobe AIR. Saas is pure 100% web based. To start to see AIR powering something like this would be great.

Gary