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Nowadays, technology, and solutions based on it, are so common it is difficult to find any gastronomic facility, restaurant, or café that does not use them. The process of ordering meals by customers is one area that has gained the most from this development. Learn how technology can help improve the functionality of your restaurant for your customers and employees.
Technology and Restaurants Go Hand-In-Hand
The era of computerization and the internet is used for virtually every activity in life. The lack of access to the offer of a restaurant or other gastronomic facility in the chain is a very big disadvantage. A large number of people, who plan to go to the restaurant for the first time, search online for information they need about the available menu or possible special offers. The establishments attach great importance to their presence on the internet. They also realize technology solutions can absolutely not be overlooked nowadays. It guarantees the consumers constant access to what is most important in this case, i.e. the food options.
However, the technology in the context of the operation of restaurants and gastronomic facilities does not only apply to customers. The employees themselves also benefit. They often cannot imagine working without the currently available solutions and equipment. Handling orders with the use of computers, receiving payments thanks to the terminal, or even receiving information from the kitchen employee about the currently ordered dishes. Each of these elements affects the efficiency of the establishments. In the course of time, new solutions will certainly come into force. This technology solution will further improve the ability to manage the daily business for the restaurant.
OS Platform Integration with POS: How Is it a Technology Solution?
The system for ordering food allows implementing orders from customers into the restaurant’s internal database. Nowadays, it’s a extremely important technology solution. It provides added value for restaurants. Apart from benefits for customer service, its invaluable advantage is OS platform integration with POS.
It has an extensive product model that can handle complex orders from almost any POS system, including combo meals. Integration is based on three main data flow channels. These include new orders, statuses of existing orders, and a section dedicated to menus, products, and price definitions.
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How Does the Integration of the Order System with a POS System Work?
The menu importer module in this technology solution is responsible for downloading all menu definitions. It’s also responsible for forwarding them to the food order platform. Install the importer module on a node with read-only access to the POS API. This will provide all menus, products, and base price data. All downloaded data is converted into json documents and then sent to the software menu API.
The importer module of this technology solution works according to a fixed schedule or on demand. So, it logs all activities. So, any data processing can be audited. When the importer menu finishes its work you need to enrich the imported data with additional attributes and multimedia files in the back-end module of the food ordering platform. It is necessary to upload product photos, descriptions and assign products to categories. All subsequent imports will not overwrite this data. So, all this work only needs to be done once.
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Transferring Orders from the Order System to POS
When transferring a finished order from the system to POS, it’s about using the POS API to issue a finished order. In this situation, the owners of gastronomic facilities must install a local OS application on a node with local access to the POS API. Local Agent initiates connection to the server. With this technology solution there is no need to reveal anything to the public network.
Usually, the Local Agent of the chosen platform for ordering food, e.g. Ordering Stack, is responsible for periodically checking the status of previously inserted orders. If there is any update, the Local Agent sends the status update to the OS server. After successfully implementing data from one system to another, the restaurant can use all available functionalities without any problems. This makes it an excellent technology solution for restaurant owners to improve the functionality of their business.
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