For all the POS sales and tech types, sorry…we’ve come down to the final two.
OK…after a lot of talking and rethinking and reviewing all my info from a year ago, we’ve come to a decision…almost.
There are 2 POS companies who have local distributors/support in St Louis that we have settled to. Micros and Digital Dining.
Neither has gotten a lot of play in any discussions here, but there is really no comparison between these and all the others. The “local” service (well, within 50 miles at least) makes for a lot of comfort in a truly serious situation, and the costs involved are in line or better than anything else.
A little background…I have a lot of IT background, especially with hardware. My assistant manager is going to junior college part-time working toward a computer degree. I have a brother-in-law who could write a POS that would probably blow anything else away, given the time and desire. I’m not stretching the truth, he’s just that good, and his years of IT management in Fortune 500 type companies supports that idea.
So, hardware support is absolutely no problem.
Micros’ top drawer system has everything we need, and it’s a far cry better now than when I looked at it a year ago. The delivery module is vastly improved, most importantly. The cost of 2 stations plus back office is the same as 3 of the Digital Dining, though. Micros also has solid state hardware, more like a flash drive type system than a normal PC.
Digital Dining absolutely blows me away. All the little things make a huge difference—smart tax, so a drink only has tax included, a drink and food is cost plus tax. System protection against tables with no drink orders, to help prevent free drinks going to friends. Table icons give status of the table, the delivery module does everything we need. Loyalty and CC well integrated.
Add to that the overall support the DD vendor offers: they sponsor a local restaurant association of sorts, with a discount card, networking, group purchasing opportunities, AND free or reduced foodservice sanitation training for employees. I got my managers ServSafe training free, even before we signed on the line with them.
I don’t see any reason to consider anything but Digital Dining. They’ve been doing this for 30 years, and it just plain impresses me. The cost, 3 stations plus back being the same as 2 stations from Micros, the fact that DD uses standard PCs, the extra networking system, all that has convinced me.
Plus, I have a strange feeling about Micros. Since they have remote backup, what if we would choose to not pay for the ongoing service? While it wasn’t stated in so many ways, it sounds like we would lose access to our backup. I hope someone will tell me wrong.
It’s not in stone yet, but my lean is strong towards DD. Anyone (NOT a vendor, please) have something to convince me toward Micros?
Thanks!