POS system recomendations

[azrobert]

Hello,

We are a 7 store family restaurant chain looking to replace our aging pos systems. We have looked at Micros, Aloha, and Squirrel. I am our IT director and have seen benefits in each system over the others and am leaning towards Micros. Does any one have advice or information to offer? We will be looking to do some customization such as accessing information from the database to upload to our main office, and possibly integrate our own gift card program.

Thanks in advance

 

[AkamaiAloha]

Any mature system will probably work for you (Micros, Aloha, DD, Restaurant Manager, Posi, etc). Most of them also offer enterprise solutions and central managing, as well as online Gift Card. Personally, I'd look into programs designed to integrate with the manufacturer before writing my own. Then, you could tweak the program (or have the vendor tweak it) to customize it to your situation. Or do what most restaurants do---which is slightly modify their business practices to accomodate the way the POS handles things. This might sound like putting the cart before the horse, but in most cases, businesses can make minor adjustments in the way they do things that save them a lot of time and trouble trying to customize the system. I am not talking major stuff... but minor adjustments on the business end can save you a lot of time, money and frustration.

Just my two cents.

 

[azrobert]

Thanks for the input,

I am more interested in getting reviews from any end users that might be watching this form, I know a lot of suport and dealers are active here. I am not a stranger to the pos game, I do some programing for a local pos company and we have been using their system at our stores for over 15 years now but they are falling way behind in the game so we decided to make a switch. We currently do almost all of our work on the present pos system for all stores: purchasing and receiving, accounts payable and payroll. the one thing I have noticed is that no one system is handeling all of that, they all have options and companies that they work with but those options are very expensive. All of the big guys (Aloha, Micros and Squirrel) say they have back of the house modules but they all seem to be geared towards franchise operations that only want to transfer sales information and completly ignore the bassic functions of payroll and accounts payable.

 

[gmpirate]

We use Aloha Quickservice in our stores. It can export payroll to ADP specifically and handles "house" accounts. I have not seen any POS that integrates all the accounting that you want and I don't think you will find anything satisfactory. It seems logical that there could be one package but I really think that if a vendor tried to do that you would have an overall mediocre product. Tough to be really thorough in both areas.

 

[azrobert]

True,

the pos system we currently use is an old superdos bassed system and handles all of our needs. they just have not kept up with the times and their "windows touchscreen" version is really just interperted dos code and I am really leary of switching to it even though I have written some of the applications for them.

Micros looks like the real winner so far, I have written a back of the house program that handles our purchasing, inventory and accounts payable and integrates with a server at our office. so any of the big boys should do the trick for us. Squirrel seems to be heavly proprietary on the hardware which scares me, and I am leary of Radiants past so Micros looks good.

Thanks again

 

[suchasynic]

I have SquirrelONE in my restaurant and was given the option to use SurePOS workstations from IBM -- so I think it's not as proprietary as people think.

I also did a demo on their POS manager product before my purchase -- this product allows you to have 1 central database where all the configuration information (menu items, prices, etc... ) are kept and you make changes here and extract the changes and send them to the stores -- then they get written into the store system automtically. It's was pretty slick in the demo. Apparently the Keg is using the product.

I didn't go with the SurePOS workstations -- I went with their own workstation -- the think I like is that, when I had one break on me (server spilled draft all over it) I called it in and a technician was sent out to swap out a loaner while it got fixed. I could have gone with a cheaper option of sending it in for repair etc... but I just didn't have time -- nice to have the option though.

I sure like the system -- it's really easy to use and the reports are really nice. My staff like it too. I like the fact that each workstation isn't a full fledge computer that I have to worry about updating the OS on. I have 1 IBM server in the back office that I also run my MS Office on.

I'm looking at getting a inventory package for my liquor -- but haven't decided yet. There's a couple offered with Squirrel that intergrate well -- just haven't had time to look into it.