DeliGirl

Alright I'm back with a final summary of our attempt at installing an I-pad based POS system. Two words sums it up for me: Buyer Beware! After researching all the options, and talking to many different companies, I decided to try one called talech. I know there are a million options, but even one of the oldest and biggest, Shopkeep, could not have met my needs. I know this because I did a trial with their software and it had the same problems as talech, in spite of their sales guy saying it would all work out. I don't know why, but I was hell-bent on having an I-Pad POS. Big mistake there! The people working at talech were very nice and the free customer support was generally (although not always) helpful, so it pains me to say this, but they really are not ready for prime time, and do not really understand the type of business functions that we needed. I got the feeling that they were growing way too fast as sometimes I got a techie who understood and could provide me with solutions, and more and more often, I got some clueless newbie who had no idea how to help. I spent hours and hours uploading and getting everything ready to go live, with the assistance of the tech support. At the end of the period, what I had was a system that: 1.Crashed often (even after hard wiring all the printers), since you have to be connected to the internet to use the app, any glitches in connectivity bind up the whole system. Really. Has anyone ever had connectivity issues with either wifi or wired systems? It's pretty much the only thing you CAN count on. 2. Was not flexible enough between to go orders and for here orders, especially for those who were buying grocery items as well as ordering lunch items. 3. Could not meet the demands of taxable versus non-taxable foods, which is in constant flux (what business owner does not life in fear of a visit from the tax man?) 4.Required marketing information for every name (if Joe ordered a sandwich, you couldn't just enter Joe in the name area, you had to take time in the middle of a busy lunch rush to take down all his contact info). Tech support: "no sorry we have no way around that right now". 5. Provided summary day end reports that were not formatted. You had to download a spreadsheet and format it every day. 6. Was way too complicated to allow modifications. Have you ever been in an ordering line at a quick service restaurant, and the order taker is spending minutes swiping through menus to find the proper thing to push for "no onions?" Mind bendingly tedious. 7. Was way too complicated to deal with multiple people at one table all paying separately. 8. Barcode scanner sometimes found the items, sometimes not. I don't think it was the scanner's fault but the system, for various reasons that would bore you more than I already am! 9. Getting all the pertinent information to print on the order tickets was not intuitively built into the system. Especially a problem when you have different stations (hot food, cold food, salad station) all preparing food for one table. There was no way to connect the tickets for the various line cooks. Oh, yeah, you could do it if you set the system so it printed at every station for every ticket, even if that station didn't have anything to do with that ticket! 10. Required hardwiring of printers, although tech support initially told me it should work with wifi. At each step of the way, we would try something and it did not work, so we'd do the next thing. You have no way of knowing, when you start out, whether or not you will even like the system. You have to keep doing the NEXT thing to make it work, and only when you have completed all the things that they told you you will not need to do, do you realize it's not a good match for you. I could continue, but I think you probably get the picture. Maybe for a less complicated business, this app would work, but if you are trying to do as many things as we do, it was a mess. If you think about it, it kind of makes sense. In most restaurants, they take your order with pen and pad, then go in the back of the house to enter the order into the system. Standing in front of a customer trying to enter all the piddly little details is just not feasible. I learned the hard way, through many hours of training, data entry, hardware investment, IT support, and hard wiring expenses. We have now purchased a Sam4S cash register with integrated credit card swiper and love it. We are back to taking orders by hand and running them to the kitchen. Not ideal, but it is much faster and it keeps things moving. I guess the human brain is still superior to a computer for some things. Thanks for letting me vent. I've been needing to get this off my chest! If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them for you! Have a great day, DeliGirl

Just a quick update: we are meeting this week with a rep for the system POSLavu. I met with a business developer at our local Apple store last week and he recommended Lavu, so I'm going to give it a look. I'll let you know how it goes! DinerWare did not have an inventory function.

I'm proud to say that our local health inspector, who is quite a, shall we say, detail-oriented professional, actually eats in our establishment. Customers constantly comment how clean our place is. Here is how we do it: As other comments said, the daily crew is responsible for constant cleaning. Every single surface gets cleaned every day so that when you come in the next morning, it's like a new kitchen. In my opinion, if you don't have the same people cleaning the mess as those who make the mess, the mess could be quite a bit well, messier! Here's how it works for us, and I'm open to suggestions if anyone has any better ways to accomplish this important part of what we do: The kitchen crew are responsible for keeping all their cooking equipment clean, including cutting boards, the inside of the ovens and the grill and the hood and their reachin. Every two months, the hood baffles get swapped out by a professional company, and when the inside of the hood needs it, they also come in to give it a thorough washing. For the first 5 years or so, we (the owners) did the baffles ourselves, until we could afford to hire a service. The dish pit team keep the dish room clean, including the floor sinks, the walls, the ice machine, and they usually do the bathrooms and back of the house and the walkin as well. Professionals pump the grease trap but my husband maintains as the pumpers can be a little rough with it. If you want to keep good employees, I do not recommend you make them clean the grease trap! The deli crew take care of everything on the deli line, including the sandwich table, the salad station, the micro, toasters, slicers, cutting boards, deli cases inside and out, and they also sweep and mop the entire place every night. As owners, we pitch in whenever needed, including cleaning ovens, deli cases, dishes, windows, patio, etc. If the crew didn't think we were willing to do it ourselves, it would be much harder to motivate them to keep things clean. And as the owners, in the beginning we did even more of it; such as, for the first 5 years or so, we actully took the laundry home every week do do it ourselves! Our washing machine will never be the same so I don't actually recommend this.

Bud: as long as your bad taste doesn't roll into your food prep, it's all good! Saara: sounds like we are in similar situations. We should top 1 MIL in sales this year (woohoo!) but only net like $25k at the end of the year. We are running a dinosaur register with a regular swipe credit card scanner that takes forever. I don't think square will work for us as there are still too may bugs to work out and from what I've seen it will not address complicated functions like ours. For banks, we switched from (probably the same) certain American bank to a local small bank and LOVE them! You know when you fill out a credit app and they ask you for your bank contact? Who do you currently list? Righto, no names just an 800 number with a rotating cast of characters. Now I have a name at the bank who knows me and my business, a bank president who eats at my establishment 4 times a week, and people who actually care about my business. I never have cash deposits in excess of $10K, but I'm sure if I did, they would not charge me to deposit them! They recently refinanced our real estate loan for us and were a dream to work with. I highly recommend going local for banking for small businesses! As the official CFO, HR Manager, CEO, Chef, Buyer, Accountant and Clerical Assistant (to name a few of my many hats) in our small business, I'm afraid the above line scares the bejesus out of me. I need great customer service from the company we partner with or it might just push me over the edge! Thanks though for taking the time to write. If their service improves, lmk! I'll keep ya'll posted as my research continues, and let you know if I find something worthy of your taking the time to read! Thank you!

Eternal: thanks, I'll check them out! A quick look at their website looks promising.

Thanks Beebs! the crickets were killing me. We need to find something that does both jobs: restaurant-y and retail-y. I appreciate your taking the time to let me know about this Microsoft product; I will look into it as they may have made some upgrades and have more uses in the current iteration.

Hey EGulleters! I own and operate a deli-gourmet grocery-bakery-sandwich shop-wine store-breakfast establishment. We sell prepared foods (breakfast, sandwiches, salads, soups), inhouse baked goods, beer, wine, imported food stuffs, charcuterie, cheese, gifts, beverages, etc. It's gotten busier and more complicated over the past 9 years that we are desperate to add an effective POS system that doesn't cost us an arm and a leg. We currently take orders manually and run excel spreadsheets and quickbooks for everything else, but we need to streamline the whole shebang. I'm hoping to come in under $5k all in. Does anyone have any experience, pos or neg, with any of the new IPad systems? Any customer or user input would be welcome. I've located a company in the Bay Area called Revel Systems. Anyone have experience installing one of their systems? Thanks so much!

Thanks to all for your input. Here are the results of my first abalone attempt: I gathered as much info as I could from sites around the web and went to town. I decided to try pan frying. It was a very large muscle, maybe 2-2.5 lbs. Too big to cook whole. I used just half of the abalone so I could try another version tonght. I cut it into 1/4 inch slices and pounded it with a meat tenderizer. Most sites said just to pound it till it was not so rubbery, to loosen the muscle, and not to make it super big and flat, so I went that route. Each piece was sprinkled with kosher salt and fresh cracked pepper. I clarified some butter so I could have the pan and cooking medium nice and hot. Into the hot clarified butter, I scattered some freshly minced garlic. I decided not to use any breading so I could just taste the delicious sweet meat. In went my precious abalone cutlets. 30 seconds on one side, 30 seconds on the other. I counted. This was the recommended cooking time from around the internet. Onto the plates, we immediately cut into our catch and... Rubber. Some pieces we were able to cut into, but definitely not with a fork. Delicious flavor, but really unacceptable texture. Most pieces were edible, but many were just too tough. What went wrong? I don't know if the problem was that we didn't tenderize them enough, or if we cooked them too long, or if we cooked them too short. The questions now are how do you know when you've pounded them enough, and how do you judge when they are done? Any assistance out there from anyone who has actually cooked abalone themselves, for tonight's attempt? Thank you! I'm new here and really appreciate your help.

Although it is uber-fresh (friends free-dove for it last weekend, then cleaned it for me and froze it immediately), it's not going to be fresh enough for sashimi, alas. I'll slice it thin, pound it, and pan sautee it very quickly so it doesn't get tough. I'll let you know how it comes out!

Thanks Annabelle! Ironically enough, I'm in Santa Barbara too! I'm leaning toward a pan fry with panko but just had hoped someone could convince me to grill it.

My first time preparing abalone will be tonight. Previous posts indicate a light breading and flash fry is the way to go (after pounding the hell out of it and slicing it thin) but I'd really prefer to grill it as it's HOT tonight. Anybody have a preference for fresh, large, free-diver sourced abalone? To grill or to pan-fry. That is the question!