I was recently in Europe, Holland and Belgium specifically, and one thing that stood out to me as a Point of Sale VAR was the extremely common use of pocket PCs within most cafes and restaurant establishments. Many of you may be familiar with the European culture of outdoor seating. There are many tables and usually only one server. Most customers are there just for coffee or a quick beer so the turnaround from customer to customer is fairly quick. The thing that allows restaurants to keep up with the customer flow, especially in high tourist areas, is the use of Pocket PCs integrated with their Point of Sale systems to make order processing quick and easy.
The waiter/waitress usually approaches the customer who orders a couple of beers, enters the order in the Pocket PC, and moves on to the next customer without writing anything down or worrying about entering it into a stationary terminal for kitchen retrieval in between orders. By the time she's done entering in all the orders she heads back to the bar where the drinks are already waiting for pickup. She brings them to the customers and prints receipts on the spot with a mini hip printer, swipes credit cards, and sends customers on their way clearing up tables for new customers and finishing up orders from the palm of her hand.
I think most restaurateurs are able to see the benefits of this but fail to find the technology or the right company to do the job. We've anticipated this and positioned ourselves with tested hardware & software at the best possible price for the greatest ROI. We offer a free Pocket PC license with every purchase of a PAR PixelPoint POS software lane and we have finally found a modestly priced Pocket PC built for the anticipated beatings of a restaurant environment at a very modest price point. We provide the full wireless integration, service and support to go along with it.
