A SCOTTISH start-up firm is set to bring innovation to the food and drink industry with a new app.
Edinburgh-based ePOS Hybrid has developed an Android-based point of sales app which can automate a restaurant or bars’ complete business operation, even if the owner is thousands of miles away.
The digital menu capabilities the technology offers means that restaurants can squeeze in an extra sitting of an evening as staff are able to work more efficiently, meaning on average an extra 30 tables available per night.
The firm’s “Smart Tables” mean that diners are placed in full control of their dining experience and easily able to request a waiter and place orders. EPOS Hybrid aims to enhance the dining experience and not replace the need for waiting staff but instead just reduce the number of times they have to visit a table.
Founder of ePOS Hybrid, Bhas Kalangi, came up with the idea when helping in his cousin’s bar and seeing first-hand the difficulties that using a traditional point of sales system caused. He has since invested more than £500,000 of his own money after two and a half years in the research and development process.
He said: “Traditional point of sales systems mean that business owners can get locked in a myriad of processes and it can be very hard to keep on top of everything when you have to manually make the connection between stock levels, orders and staff performance, and then link this to income. With the click of a button, digital menus can be updated, offers can be created, staff performance levels can be monitored and stock management can be controlled.
“It’s so intuitive that a business owner could be relaxing on the beach on holiday and decide to start an offer at their restaurant back home and it would be up and running immediately. The digital menu capabilities mean that our customers can also squeeze an extra sitting into their evenings. Traditionally, there’s around three table turnarounds but the efficiency of our system means more time is freed up to get more customers in.”
The ePOS Hybrid software also allows business owners to set up their own app, meaning customers can order food directly and save the business owners money they would usually lose to subsidiary apps.
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