Cincinnati restaurant gift certificate

Michael Hassel, director of information services for New York's Smith & Wollensky Restaurant Group, says he will be stalking labor-management tools while wandering among the more than 150 suppliers, integrators and service providers exhibiting at the ninth annual International Foodservice Technology Exposition, or FS/TEC, here Oct. 24-27.

Bill Kuntz, director of information systems for Cincinnati-based Frisch's Restaurants Inc., indicates that he will turn his attention to point-of-sale-system hardware as he peruses the FS/TEC exhibit hall in the Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center.

An informal survey of the shopping lists or areas of interest of such FS/TEC-bound foodservice executives as Hassel and Kuntz suggests that many operators, though comfortable with their POS applications, are nearing the end of their hardware lifecycles. Other unscientific findings suggest that many operators continue to look for ways to leverage existing or developing wide-area networks and Web-based technologies in order to increase productivity, improve business intelligence, enhance guest experience and lower administrative expenditures.

Wireless Internet and network-connectivity products and service providers, including those tied to WiFi, are appearing on a greater number of the FS/TEC shopping lists prepared by executives from all industry segments, the survey found.

FS/TEC is produced by Nation's Restaurant News and Robert Grimes of Accuvia. IBM Corp., Micros Systems Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are the exposition's founding sponsors and Aloha by Radiant Systems, Epson America Inc. and ParTech Inc. are its corporate sponsors.

Smith & Wollensky, operator of 17 upscale steakhouses, while Frisch's is an operator of nearly 90 Frisch's Big Boy family restaurants and a franchisee of 30-plus Golden Corral grill-buffet chain units. Although the companies operate vastly different concepts, Hassel and Kuntz share a common desire to avail themselves of the information-systems demonstrations and hands-on insights that can be found at FS/TEC, the first and largest foodservice-industry-specific technology conference.

"We feel we can cut [up to] 20 percent from labor [costs] by managing them better," Hassel explains. "We've been told [by vendors] that by doing certain things, such as staggering [clock-in] times for servers and cooks, we can save significant dollars. We want to see what [products are] out there."

Also on his list of technologies to explore, says Hassel, is something to help his company better manage wine and liquor inventories, while keeping the company abreast of the hodgepodge of state laws related to purchasing those goods. He also is interested in applications or services that will help track the spending of repeat patrons, whose visits often are already captured by software designed to manage table reservations and limited customer-relationship information.

"I've been to every one," Kuntz says of FS/TEC, adding that in the past he used the conference to bone up on technologies of interest, including gift-card systems and Internet Protocol, or IP, credit-card processing. The latter, which went live at Frisch's restaurants over the summer by way of the company's high-speed, satellite-based wide-area network, has cut authorization times "from 30 to 40 seconds down to 6 [seconds]" and has proven even more reliable than the trusty dial-up technology previously used, he reports.

Though Kuntz says he is not "actively shopping," he acknowledges that this year he will be taking "a more serious look" at new POS hardware in anticipation of a rollout in the not too distant future.

Sharing his interest in new POS workstation pieces is Richard Ludwick, information technology manager for the 36-unit Kings Family Restaurants of McKeesport, Pa. Ludwick says Kings also has an interest in learning about POS-friendly systems to automate the sale and redemption of gift cards.

"This will be our second or third pass at gift cards," says Chris Crabtree, senior director of information services for the more-than-500-unit, quick-service Captain D's Seafood chain of Nashville, Tenn. According to Crabtree, there is a marketing angle for plastic declining-balance gift cards. "Our marketing folks believe young people would rather have a card than a paper certificate," he says. But in the past a number of issues have halted his exploration of the technology.

Among those roadblocks, Crabtree reports, was the relatively high cost of trial. "The lowest was $5,000 just to get my feet wet," he says. "And that didn't include the cost of the cards."

Crabtree says Captain D's, like other chains, desires a gift-card system or service provider that can negotiate the tracking and accounting for cards used across company-store and franchised-store lines. The program also should integrate to some extent with existing POS applications or credit-card systems and should not require stand-alone hardware.

Craig Donoghue, senior vice president of information systems for Minneapolis-based Buffalo Wild Wings Inc., says he is taking to FS/TEC his quest to find a POS platform that "truly integrates" with back-of-house applications, including inventory and labor management and enterprise-accounting applications. BWW operates approximately 100 casual-dining restaurants and franchises about 200 others.

Online or network-based training "would be another technology piece we're looking at," says Donoghue, who explains that his company, through the use of an in-house development tool, already "has bits and pieces" of such educational material. He says wireless Internet-access products and providers, as sales and guest satisfaction builders, are of growing interest to Buffalo Wild Wings, which is testing free WiFi connectivity for customers at 10 restaurants.

"Some locations [in test] have surprisingly high usage, while some have next to zero usage," Donoghue says of WiFi test results. "So it would be [installed] on a case-by-case basis." He notes that test results suggest the offering has the potential to boost sales in the afternoon, which typically are not the concept's peak hours of business.

Shari's Management Corp. of Beaverton, Ore., also has an interest in using network-based training and WiFi for company and customer use, says Tom Matson, director of management information systems for the operator of about 100 family restaurants.

"We're going wireless next year for sure because we're doing employee-training kiosks and converting our whole training program to online [systems]," Matson says. The creation of in-store, Internet WiFi access, or "hot spots," that leverages the training infrastructure for guests is "still a ways off," he notes. But he adds that the chain's restaurants "have a great footprint" for such a service amenity and that e-mail and Web-browsing access have been well received by patrons of Starbucks Coffee and other coffee bars. So WiFi might resonate just as strongly with coffee-shop customers.

According to Matson, Shari's in the near term is focused on the final selection and rollout of a new, centrally hosted, back-of-house and food-production-management application and is investigating hardware-support vendors who offer combinations of on-site and depot services. Initial research into gift-card systems that might help leverage the chain's new, high-speed, wide-area network also is on the company's agenda, he says.

Multistate dinnerhouse operator Restaurants Unlimited of Seattle increasingly is receiving requests for WiFi or other wireless Internet access, particularly from banquet and other private-party organizers, says Patrick Irwin, vice president of information systems. He says he will be scoping out wireless-networking components and providers for that reason and also because such cable-free data systems could make sense for trouble-free POS hardware positioning in the future.

"Anything that is Web-based, including POS," commands his attention, Irwin acknowledges. "And what I'd dearly like to get into now but don't have the infrastructure for are portal applications."

Irwin also hopes to gain more knowledge about outsourced wide-area-network management, including security, during his time at FS/TEC, he says.

John Ognenoff, IT manager for 170-unit Cousins Submarines Inc. of Menomonee Falls, Wis., says he is heading to FS/TEC to meet with vendors of enterprise-reporting systems. He hopes to find a system that polls and aggregates sales and menu-mix data from a variety of POS systems in company and franchised stores for the purpose of compiling actionable business intelligence.