It has been frustrating trying to get our channel to adopt kitchen video. Granted, the timing has been very bad to get restaurants to upgrade their kitchens $$$, but the ROI is real and fast. And new products, like Harmony, provide much quicker setup, installation, and training timelines which means less frustrations and costs than you might have had in the past with other solutions. Not to mention that almost everything that an end user will need to change for their day to day operations (cook times, routings, etc) are easily setup through the best restaurant POS system around.
If you have never seen a kitchen run with a kitchen video system you really need to find a site and ask to peak in their kitchen... almost every chain restaurant has upgraded a long time ago.
I recently had the opportunity to see Harmony working as an expo / ticket timing display only. At first I thought this idea was a complete waste of time for everyone, but 15 minutes of seeing it in use changed my mind. The premise is that the kitchen will still use printers completely as they do now, but will use a single KDS screen to view orders and bump them off when they leave the kitchen. Orders turn red after 12 minutes (configurable) and always show up in the order the were rang in. This keeps the kitchen working on the tickets in the correct order and lets everyone know in a quick glance about kitchen performance and any possible problems... in fact managers can now proactively go out to tables and apologize for long cook times before the guest even realizes there is a problem.
Yes, this utilizes maybe 30% of what a solution like Harmony can do, but it still has great ROI and perhaps more importantly reduces both implementation risk and cost for both the customer and reseller. Maybe this is the answer on how to get started with kitchen video. Instead of telling a restaurant operator to change everything in their kitchen and spend the $6000-$8000 on equipment and training, a $1500-2000 tool sounds much more appetizing.
It has been 2 weeks since I was at the launch of this "expo kds" at this multi-unit site, and they are more than pleased. The morning of the install they were saying how the system "far exceeded" their expectations and are now trying to figure out if they should roll out this simple solution to their other 50 locations or go for a complete KDS at them instead. Suddenly this sounds like a brilliant strategy for getting KDS out to your customers.
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Here's a reseller perspective. We have installed Harmony KDS powered by onePOS and it is a truly GREAT solution. Because it is really easy to install and also very quickly up and running. Setup in onePOS is just like any other hardware device. Setup of the Harmony controller is easy as well. We have connected it to a remote control software so we can make changes to its setup without the need to go into the ceiling (where we have hidden the controller device for a very clean looking installation).
ReplyDeleteFor the restaurant it is a big deal to be able to have all the production times and enhanced control over the entire production process. No debate needed whether service or kitchen was slow - now you have the data to know.
Last but not least, there is such thing as the e-n-v-i-r-o-n-m-e-n-t and saving all the consumables (paper and ribbon) is also great for the bottom line.
Harmony has powerful capabilities such as timed routing. Menu items routing is based on cook times to the specific kitchen station responsible for preparing that item. Every change made at each preparation station is reflected at the expediter station so that servers and managers can keep track of the status of their orders.
Unlike kitchen printers, speed of making an item is displayed in real-time at all kitchen displays and is available for historical reporting.
We have done QSR installs and in comparison HARMONY is a breeze. OnePOS has relevant fields in its item setup, that makes it outright simple to get this up and running and unlike QSR you're dealing with one software setup and not two...
As a reseller we are able to compete with anyone in Arizona, thanks to that great solution by onePOS.