Just got off the phone with FoodTeC Pos

[TangoPizza]

They said two stations $8500 and i just saw the demo… its pretty good all the feautres and easy to use for employees.

what do you guys think of them?

I am going to check out all of them hopefully. but i need you guys to helpo me decide.

 

[wiseguy]

Spoke to a guy named Andrew from that company. Very arrogant in my opinion. Started right off stating that two stations would be 9000 and that if I didn’t have that kind of money, he wouldn’t go any further. Didn’t even offer to show me why his system would be worth that much money. Didn’t offer anything. Basically just told me that it was 9000 and if I didn’t have it, he wasn’t going to waste his time. I am glad that I got to see beforehand what type of service I could expect from them if had bought it. That kind of jerk when he was trying to sell it to me…god only knows the horror if he already had my money.

 

[RobT]

I’ve had Foodtec since Apr 2006. I have not had any problems with their software, and their support is wonderful.
They’re system is on the pricey side, but i back it up. I am a big supporter of their system as it has helped my business since day 1.

Continue to get demos, compare, and choose the right system that fits you.

 

[Pizza_Roadie]

I’m just a long-term employee in a great pizza shop, but I will tell you this: We just got Foodtec installed about two weeks ago, and it is a very, very nice system. It hasn’t crashed once, while our old Ahola system crashed six times a day, occasionally “eating” an order that you just took (an hour later, the customer calls and, you know the rest–free food!). While it is very nice, very capable, and and so far, stable, I don’t think the makers of the software have ever worked in a multi-million a year pizza place. The order-taking screens are nice–once you get there–but the customer database is a lot more complex than it needs to be (for us, anyhow). We really don’t need it or even want to to link anything by address, only the phone number is important (because in our area, a single address could house a hotel, many businesses, plus condos). Furthermore, it’s quite an ordeal for the driver to add or correct info in the customer’s file when he returns from a run (stuff like “Security Code = 215,” “Call First,” “Go to the side door,” or correcting simple data entry errors).

There are several important operational limitations, and it seems to ask for your employee number 2 or three times in order to do anything! When things don’t go exactly as planned–and when you’re running five figure sales through the place on a Saturday, that happens a lot!–the POS system seems to work against whomever is trying to fix the problem. It can’t reopen closed orders (that we’ve figured out), and it can’t change a mis-assigned order to a different driver if that driver has ended his run. Stuff like that happens, and being unable to fix it on the fly is not helpful.

Also, the whole system seems to slow down around order #1000, but Foodtec is working with us to address that. We’ll see how it goes tonight when we hit #1000.

Maybe some of the Foodtec junkies can chime in with some tips and tricks. (How do you quickly edit customer info upon returning from a delivery, and how do you reopen a closed order???)

 

[paul7979]

I’ve had some high volume operators reccomend Food Tec to me, but I wasn’t much impressed after a demo. The fact that Pizza Roadie is in a place doing 1000 order days and has anything good to say after two weeks tells me the system is much better than my demo led me to believe. Certainly all the ins and outs of a system cannot be learned in such a short time in a place where every moment of the day is focused on the current rush. I would have to imagine that Pizza Roadie will learn the system better over time and will appreciate the system. I will probably still not look too much further into it as a solution for my store as I also remember the sales staff being quite arrogant. Still searching for the perfect system.

 

[creampuff]

Any owners have experience with the Semicron Systems? This is the one I am leaning towards for smiplicity and cost.

 

[Pizza_Tony1]

Is anyone currently using Revention? I did the Demo and it looked great. Any comments?

 

[paul7979]

Is anyone currently using Revention

My only comment is that they quoted me $29K for six stations. Was expecting about 20K, maybe 22K but at 29K it wasn’t even worth continueing the dialog.

 

[pizzapirate]

I would just suggest that you write down the list of things you want your POS to do and then actually do them yourself on each POS you demo. There’s a big difference between what the systems say they can do and how they actually can do it. Big difference between them doing it and you doing it yourself. I think its safe to say the major “pizza” pos systems can all handle what most operators need. There’s usually some kind of workaround if you don’t see immediately what you want.

I also think that anyone in business for any length of time here will tell you that the number one consideration with an pos system is service and reliability. The best system in the world will leave you very unhappy if it constantly goes down or they have poor service.

 

[Pizza_Tony1]

Its a tough decision. But very well said pizzapirate I think you hit it on the head.

 

[Pizza_Roadie]

Re: high order numbers: Correlation is not necessarily causation. We achieve those high order numbers during the busiest period of the business day, which is our bar rush, from 1-3 AM.

Tonight was a little slower than last night or the previous weekend, so we didn’t even make it to #1000 tonight, yet during the peak of business, it was still bogging down. I think that it’s not so much slowing down at high order numbers, but it’s slowing down when there are four people taking phone orders on four terminals, two people on two quick service counters, a driver assigning runs going out the door, and two bartenders all using the system at once. Too many people using too many terminals at once seem to be slowing it down, not too many sales being rung up. (I wonder if they need faster “gigabit” network equipment? Maybe it’s a Windows XP network issue more than it’s a Foodtec issue? I don’t know. All of the employees are frustrated to some degree with the slowdowns though. I hope it can be fixed readily with some performance tweaking.)

I’ve noticed that when they have a problem with something, Foodtec support is working with the managers. As far as I can tell, their support service is good. (Sorry, I’m not a manager, so I’m not in a position to know everything that happens with the POS. I just have the pleasure, and occasional displeasure, of using what is for the most part, a far better POS system than the Aloha system that we were running previously.)

 

[Charles]

Pizza Roadie:

Correlation is not necessarily causation.

Ah, one of my favorite phrases of life! It is a statement that should always be on one’s mind when taking notice of a trend or being presented with “conclusions” from some new study.

 

[fastbreakrob]

Pizza Roadie:

I’m just a long-term employee in a great pizza shop, but I will tell you this: We just got Foodtec installed about two weeks ago, and it is a very, very nice system. It hasn’t crashed once, while our old Ahola system crashed six times a day, occasionally “eating” an order that you just took (an hour later, the customer calls and, you know the rest–free food!). While it is very nice, very capable, and and so far, stable, I don’t think the makers of the software have ever worked in a xxxxx/year pizza place. We have exceeded xxxxxx some days. The order-Maybe some of the Foodtec junkies can chime in with some tips and tricks. (How do you quickly edit customer info upon returning from a delivery, and how do you reopen a closed order???)

Those are some nice sales… What is your store called and where is it located? I’d like to check out the menu and website.

 

[system]

Hi all. I’m a new poster. I have been following from time
to time but never posted before.
I had foodteck in one of my stores. I was happy with it until I
needed to go into the system. When I bought the system they were
just starting out. So everything was inexcesible. We could’t even make
price changes with out calling them for a password. Passwords changed
every two mos. This was a long time ago 6 yrs and they may have gotten
better. I now use speedline.

 

[Pizza_Roadie]

fastbreakrob:

Those are some nice sales… What is your store called and where is it located? I’d like to check out the menu and website.

Send me a PM with the URL to your menu, and I’ll do the same. (I’m a foodie. I love looking at menus.)

 

[snowman]

Pizza Roadie:

(I wonder if they need faster “gigabit” network equipment? Maybe it’s a Windows XP network issue more than it’s a Foodtec issue?

This should simply be impossible. I assume you’re running a 100mb network. Your networking equipment isn’t an issue. The amount of data you’re actually pushing through the system is quite low (assuming it’s a client-server app). There are three reasonable possibilities…

1. You’re using a HUB instead of a switch (doubtful since hubs actually cost more than a switch) and getting lots of collisions. Also, a good switch will allo you to run at full duplex rather than half duplex (half duplex is required by hubs due to collisions).
2. Your server machine (the one holding the database, not as in “waiter”) is overloaded and either the disk is too slow or the RAM is too low or the CPU is getting hammered.
3. The database isn’t optimized and isn’t performing the way it should.

For #1, get the model number of the networking device that connects everything and google it. A “switching hub” is a switch and not a hub.

For #2, on the database server, click start, run, perfmon . Right click in the graph area and select properties. Go to the general tab and change "sample automatically every x seconds to every 600 seconds (10 mins). This will allow you to graph 16 hours and 40 mins. Select the following counters. They may already be populated, and if so, just change the sampling interval. Memory, Pages/Sec; physical disk, avg disk queue length; processor, %processor time. For the last two, select all instances. Minimize it and go about your business. At the end of the day (or periodically), pull it back up (restore or maximize). Hit control-h to highligh a particular line. Click down in the bottom right area (where the counters are listed) and scroll up and down. Pages/sec should be 5 or less per disk. Avg disk queue length should be below 1 for the avg. It may spike a little, but not over say 10-20. %processor time should avg well below 50%. It might spike to 100% periodically, but not for any extended period of time.

If you need more granular data, simply start it at the time you anticipate the heavy rush and set the sample time to every 60 seconds, but know that you will only have up to 1 hour and 40 mins of the most recent data. So, if you start it at 5pm and don’t check it until 10pm, you only get from 8:20 to 10pm visible.

If all of those counters seem reasonable, then I suspect logical or physical issues with the database (either structural/data issues or simply poor optimization).

You can also spot-check things by pulling up task manager (by right clicking on the taskbar, and selecting task manager). Go to the performance tab and look at “physical memory”. There should always, always, always be 10,000 plus available (that’s 10megs). That number could be significantly higher. You will also see CPU usage (very short time period) and page file size.

A simple defragment on the data volume could do wonders as well.