IS IT TIME TO RETHINK YOUR POS SYSTEM?

QWhat should I look for in a POS system?

AWhether you have one store or hundreds, now might be the time to take a closer look at your pizza ordering management solution—which can span from highspeed, contactless in-store or tableside ordering to online ordering, third-party ordering and even kitchen management systems with sticker printers for optimized throughput, not to mention easy-to-use in-house delivery and dispatch. Today’s powerful new technology can take your business from break-even to profitability!

To build trust, increase efficiency and boost sales growth, a contactless customer journey is highly desirable in this pandemic. Since terminals can spread germs, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that restaurants eliminate shared-payment terminals and switch to 100% contactless methods. Further guidelines suggest that hardware should not be touched or shared between customer and guest.

Today’s powerful POS technology can take your business from break-even to profitability, even in the COVID-19 era.

BY MICHAEL RASMUSSEN

So consider looking for a POS innovator specializing in contactless and off-premise dining, because the pandemic isn’t going away soon. For accepting payment, try to eliminate the need to ask the customer for his 16-digit credit-card number over the phone. Create contactless curbside pickup and bar service for open tabs. The end goal is to never touch a credit card or a shared payment terminal again. Guests and staff see cutting-edge technology as protecting their health while adding speed and convenience.

Some QSR, table-service and general-purpose POS systems cannot handle the ordering complexity of pizza, but settling for less functionality limits your full potential. I recommend a system that includes options and prices for halves, thirds and quarters. Yes, this can be a math nightmare on the back end, but for the user it should be transparent and effortless. Consider a system that will let you instantly publish your online ordering menu on social media outlets, including images, and allow automatic integration with third-party systems for customers using their cell phones.

Many customers are nervous about using static printed menus these days. Look for a point-and-click web menu setup with the ability to define toppings, quantity of toppings per pizza, and price of toppings by size, along with instructions for the line crew, images for the cashier, and images of toppings for your online store. The menu should be centrally managed from a browser, especially with disruptions in our supply chain affecting the ordering of ingredients. An operator must have the tools to modify pricing and ingredients immediately to ensure a solid profitability mix. Cheese and flour are commodities, and pricing changes daily. A COVID19 outbreak in a sausage manufacturing facility could mean you can’t buy sausage for a while, so you must be able to offer alternatives. The ability to modify your menu online and on social media is critical. Customers expect these modifications as the new normal.

Your online store should offer a better experience than third-party delivery apps. When it’s easy to use, with special offers, rewards and an order tracker, you’ll generate more sales. You must also be able to own the customer record with their order-history data. And a delivery-tracking method for the customer—from “ordered” to “making” to “baking” to “ready” to “out for delivery”—elevates the customer experience.

Additionally, make sure your online store is optimized for phones, tablets and desktop computers. (Ask millennials on your staff to help you if necessary.) Strive to ensure that all interaction on your online store is 100% contained so you can track customer “clicks” for analytics and management reporting. This enhances your brand and its street value.

Finally, engaging your back-office staff is as important as engaging your customers. They can provide valuable feedback on the front-of-the-house customer experience. Your number crunchers matter and can summarize the brand value for your pizzeria operation!

Michael Rasmussen has been contributing to PMQ for more than 15 years. You can visit his website, hitechcpa.com, for additional insight into restaurant-specific tax strategies, accounting and technology programs.

HITECHCPA.COM

MOOBY’S STRIKES BACK

A fictional burger joint came to life when Gianni’s Pizzeria, located in Red Bank, New Jersey, hosted a pop-up event for Mooby’s, an eatery featured in director Kevin Smith’s Clerks II and referenced in other Smith films like Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. The menu featured $28 meal deals for carryout or patio dining, with Mooby’s items like Hater Totz and the Cow Tippers Burger—both a beef version and a plantbased Beyond Beef version—as well as a Messy Vegan Lasagna Sandwich. The pop-up, which ran from September 18 to 25, also featured Jay and Silent Bob merchandise and photo ops with lifesize cutouts of the two characters. Actor Jay Mewes, who plays Jay opposite Smith’s Silent Bob character, delivered pizza for Gianni’s when he was younger. Smith is a Red Bank native, and he and Mewes were best friends as kids in New Jersey’s Highlands borough before Smith launched his moviemaking career. “This is where we come from,” Smith told NJ.com. “If we hadn’t both grown up in the Highlands, none of this ever would have happened, man. So Jersey is super-close to my heart [and] always will be.”

OLD GREG’S PIZZA GROWS FAST

Greg Tetzner and Jackie Richie, the brains behind Old Greg’s Pizza in Miami, know you should never underestimate the power of a tweet. Twitter brought them together with restaurateur Brad Kilgore of Kilgore Culinary Group and turned their Instagram pizza brand into a real-deal pop-up in Kilgore’s Japanese-inspired cocktail lounge, Kaido. Tetzner initially sold his sourdough-crust pizzas only to friends and family while perfecting his dough recipe at home and working on plans for a restaurant. His Instagram posts, highlighting his mouthwatering pies, caught fire, and soon Old Greg’s was the hottest pizza ticket in town, even though Tetzner could only produce pies in limited quantities. After Kilgore, a James Beard-nominated chef, tweeted that he wanted an Old Greg’s pizza for his birthday, calls were made, and a partnership was born. Kilgore helped Tetzner and Richie expand their carryoutonly menu for the pop-up, and fawning media coverage spread the word far and wide. The only problem: Tetzner and Richie still can’t keep up with the demand for their pies. Customers can place orders and schedule a pickup date on Wednesdays only, with limited time slots available—and those slots fill up fast.

General Assembly Offers Pizza Subscriptions

General Assembly (GA), a pizzeria in Toronto, has launched a pizza subscription service, offering monthly contact-free delivery of stacks of 10” pies for as little as $39 per order. Subscribers can sign up to receive stacks of four, six, eight or 10 pizzas from a limited menu. They can change, pause or cancel their subscription at any time. Made with naturally leavened dough from a sourdough starter, the frozen pizzas arrive in a temperature-controlled, recyclable box and can be stored in a freezer and cooked in a home oven in five to seven minutes. GA already markets a line of frozen pizzas in grocery stores in Ontario, so the subscription-based model seemed a logical next step as the demand for food delivery continues to soar. “In 2020, providing the best guest experience means GA has to be more than a restaurant,” said founder and CEO Ali Khan Lalani. “I’m proud to say that, after almost six months of planning, many roadblocks and countless pivots…we have done it.” GA executive chef Curt Martin said subscribers can expect new options in the future, including more vegetarian, plant-based and pork-free pies.

Comfort Food With Words Of Comfort

Brooklyners know Sean Berthiaume, co-owner of Vinnie’s Pizzeria, as the cheeky inventor of the pizza box made of pizza and the pizza topped with a pizza. Now Vinnie’s, with locations in the Williamsburg and Greenpoint neighborhoods, is the pizza joint they turn to for words of comfort as well as comfort food in the COVID-19 era—and it costs only an extra buck. Vinnie’s virtual menu on Seamless features a side item of sorts under the category of “Positive Reinforcement.” The description reads, “Comforting

Words: For $1, our delivery driver will look you straight in the eyes and tell you, ‘EVERYTHING’S GONNA BE OK AND YOU’RE DOING THE BEST YOU CAN.’” Vinnie’s tweeted about the new add-on in late September, spurring coverage from the New York Post, Fox News, and other local and national media outlets.

As COVID-19 began spreading back in late

DOMINO’S PLEDGES $100 MILLION TO ST. JUDE CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL

Domino’s is putting its famous name to work for a good cause: raising $100 million in the next 10 years to support Memphis, Tennessee-based St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, a world-renowned medical facility for kids with life-threatening diseases and illnesses. It’s the largest commitment in St. Jude’s history, and, as a thank-you, the hospital will name its newest family-housing complex The Domino’s Village. Families of hospitalized kids will be able to stay in the facility, which will boast 140 fully furnished apartments. Domino’s named St. Jude its national charity partner in 2004 and has raised more than $68 million for the hospital, primarily through its annual St. Jude Thanks and Giving campaign. Customers can also round up their order total and donate the extra change to St. Jude when they purchase food on the Domino’s website. “The Domino’s Village will provide a home away from home for the thousands of kids and families who come to St. Jude from around the world,” said Richard Shadyac Jr., president and CEO of St. Jude’s fundraising arm. “They will forever be transformed by the generosity of Domino’s in their greatest time of need.”

PAPA JOHN’S ON THE MOVE TO ATLANTA

With sales and profits booming and new menu items like the Shaq-aRoni and the Papadia creating buzz, Papa John’s plans to restructure its operations and open a second global headquarters in Atlanta while maintaining its current location in Louisville, Kentucky. “With strong momentum and our potential expanding every day, we are investing in capabilities for future innovation and global growth, improving efficiencies and better aligning our organization around the strategies that are driving our near- and long-term success,” said Rob Lynch, the chain’s president and CEO. “Metro Atlanta’s deep talent pool and its world-class airport— connecting us to the domestic and international markets that are key to our brand’s future—will accelerate our long-term growth.” According to Marvin Boakye, chief people and diversity officer for Papa John’s, the corporate changes “mark another milestone in Papa John’s ongoing transformation into a more innovative brand with a culture that is focused on diversity, inclusion and winning.”

Pizza Hut Reinvents The Calendar

Pizza Hut marketed a new value deal, called the Tastemaker, with a free calendar covering 680 days and featuring brand-themed artwork “inspired by the funniest, most absurd and overused calendar tropes…reimagined through the eyes of a pizza lover.” Launched in September, the Tastemaker deal offers a large pizza with three toppings for $10. Pizza Hut emphasized its selection of “more than 17 toppings,” which makes for a total of 680 topping combinations—or a different pizza every day for 680 days. Accordingly, the first 680 customers who ordered the deal for delivery were promised the free calendar, to be mailed separately to the delivery address at a later date. The limited-run calendar boasts eye-popping original artwork, “from an astronaut eating pizza floating in space…to a slice exploding with toppings radiating within the Northern Lights, to a delivery ‘driver’ riding alongside wild horses to his next destination.”

How To Click With The Kindergarten Crowd

How do you get a new generation of customers hooked on Chuck E. Cheese’s pizza? Start ’em out young. At least, that seems to be the idea behind the chain’s Kindergarten Kickoff program offered this fall. The company, which has been going through Chapter 11 bankruptcy, provided free educational video resources and 30-minute “All You Can Play” cards to more than 70,000 students in 14 school districts in Atlanta, St. Louis and Orange County, Florida. The videos, described as “entertaining and enriching,” feature Chuck E. and his friends and cover topics from art tutorials and music exploration to silly songs and age-appropriate Spanish lessons. “As we’re planning to make sure our virtual learning is effective and our school buildings are safe, we also want to make sure the year feels special for our students, particularly those who are going to school for the very first time,” said Rachel Sprecher, the executive director of partnerships for Atlanta Public Schools. “Chuck E. Cheese has helped us deliver moments of fun and celebration, and we appreciate their commitment to our kids.”