Specialist manufacturer of PC-based touchscreens, LCD touchscreen monitors and point-of-sale hardware to the retail, hospitality and leisure industries, J2 Retail Systems, has been selected by the City-based chain of all-day eateries and salad bars, Salade Retail Limited. In what is its first move into EPoS, the young group has installed J2’s 560 tills in Salade shops in London’s Stratton Street, Old Bailey, Fetter Lane and Paddington Station. In the world of fast food, Salade is a clever concept, as refreshing as its ingredients. The company sprung onto the City scene five years ago and has since become an oasis of taste and quality. Chairman Karim Lalani has set his sights on a 20-store estate within the next two years.
“Ours is a very hectic, complex environment where both speed of operation and an ability to look up multiple variables are absolutely crucial to daily sales. J2 tills have certainly met these challenges well and we are happy to recommend them,” says Karim Lalani.
Salade started out with very basic stand-alone tills that generated only simple day-end reports. However, with entrepreneur Karim Lalani at the helm, it was motivated to upgrade its technology. It turned to Wedderburn EPoS Systems, a specialist EPoS supplier for the leisure and hospitality trades.
Wedderburn recommended J2 Retail Systems for point-of-sale hardware. Tim Smith, Wedderburn’s Managing Director, explains his reasons: “J2’s 560 PC-based touchscreen till was ideal for Salade. Because it has all the ports built into the screen, we were able to meet Salade’s requirement for both pole and standard mounting.”
Forty J2 560s are installed across the four stores, spread between the salad bars, the coffee areas and the till points. For space-efficiency and to create a hygienic and ergonomic environment, screens are pole-mounted in the servery areas. At the pay points, Salade has opted for traditional counter-mounting.
Tim Smith continues: “The J2 560 also had aesthetics in its favour. Salade found it both stylish and practical. Importantly too, for a young business with high volumes of customers during peak trading periods, it was essential to keep the tills up and running. We knew that the J2s came with a 3-year parts & labour warranty.”
Salade’s Business Director, Clare Sykes, is responsible for monitoring and improving food costs. She explains: “Prior to running this system, the process was quite slow and we could only record how many individual ingredients we had sold each day.”
Things are now quite different. The customer selects items at a salad bar where a server combines them. Each item put into the bowl is recorded on a swipe card. This is taken to a till point where extras such as drinks are added. The card is then swiped through the till and produces a bill in seconds. Adds Clare Sykes: “Having had to queue at the salad bar, we did not want customers to have to queue again to pay.”
The new system is not only good news for customers, but it also provides a wealth of accurate operating data that helps Salade to analyse its trade. It can now identify how much of each of its 100-plus ingredients and products are being bought each day, and what the process costs. Management intelligence even enables the team to tailor the composition of its ready-made salad bowls, by basing them upon the most popular ingredients and combinations.
Salade’s staff find themselves under great pressure at lunchtime when the stores fill with hungry, clock-watching office-workers. They need to deliver quick service with a smile, and they have reacted very well to the new system. Each of Salade’s many ingredients is itemised on the touchscreen and staff navigate their way around the displays at speed and with confidence.
J2 Retail Systems
www.j2retailsystems.com
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