Feature Article: Sharpen Your Skills For Restaurant POS Sales

By Mike Monocello, Business Solutions magazine.

QuikServe Solutions is an ISV (independent software vendor) whose products fulfill the POS (point of sale), back office, and corporate reporting needs of quick service restaurants (QSR). Currently, the ISV has installs in more than 1,000 restaurants across the United States. When you listen to Kevin Simmonds, president of QuikServe Solutions, talk about his solutions and the quick service industry, a recurring theme quickly takes shape — data. Specifically, as a "penny profit" business, QSRs need all the data they can get that will help them make timely business decisions and improve their bottom line. Today, Simmonds has built his quick service business with solutions that provide real-time data to both the franchisor and franchisee. The logic is that providing data a number of ways (e.g. web, mobile) to a number of different people (e.g. franchisor, franchisee, managers) will help his customers, and therefore QuikServe Solutions, succeed.

To understand why data is so important to QSRs, you need to imagine the issues facing franchisors, franchisees, and managers. Speed of preparation, freshness of ingredients, and appropriate staffing levels are just a few examples of this group's needs. QuickServe Solutions has grown over the years to aggregate data from a number of different sources mdash; some from in-store and some external. For instance, today's restaurants have product holding units (warming stations where food is held prior to being placed on a sandwich), drive-thru timers, and kitchen video, all of which have alerts that can be captured and reported on. "While it's possible to see some reports from each system, putting the data together and adding data from external sources can provide new clarity to restaurateurs," says Simmonds.