Restaurant chain operators today have realized that creating and serving great food is just table stakes and doesn’t really guarantee success. What truly enables success is delivering a consistently exceptional guest experience while managing the back-end with simplicity. In today’s world, both are driven by the digital experience.
The explosion of digital ordering channels creates tons of opportunities. And challenges. One of the biggest challenges for restaurant operators has become how to manage brand consistency when swimming in a sea of third party services and platforms that often don’t speak to each other—aka an administrative nightmare.
We explore the immense amount of digital disruption that restaurant chain operators have dealt with in the past decade—from the advent of cloud POS to the challenges of third party integrations—in the “Rise, Fall & Rebirth of POS.” And all this change, led by more digitally savvy and demanding guests, means it is more important than ever to deliver a consistent brand experience.
This blog post is part of a 6-part series specifically written for enterprise-level restaurant operators, “6 Things Every Operator Should Know” to position themselves and their businesses for success. Our posts so far include:
- POS is now a Virtual Term and System
- You Can No Longer Sanely Manage Multiple Menu Systems
- Restaurant POS Systems Need One Common Core (you’re reading it!)
It’s only logical, restaurant POS systems need one common core
Restaurant operators are scrambling to overcome the inherent challenge of having a separate processing engine for each ordering channel. The complexity is deep.
The solution sounds simple enough (if you’re a tech expert): get a POS with a single set of APIs to take and process orders. Well, it’s not that simple and is only half of the equation. The true magic happens when you have a single-engine that processes everything. A logical core that runs the entire system.
Until now, there hasn’t been a technology advanced enough to actually do this. Enter Qu-1CORE—the brains behind the modern restaurant chain operation.
Taking orders from multiple systems? Say goodbye to rigid APIs
With the restaurant menu madness finally solved, the next puzzle piece is what happens after guests engage a menu: order taking, order processing, and order fulfillment. These are functions of the POS core: the magic engine behind the scenes, if you will. And much to restaurant operators’ (and ultimately guests’) dismay, POS vendors almost universally have not taken time to get this basic function right when it comes to cross-channel order processing.
Digitally savvy guests enjoy ordering from a variety of channels, and to support this, restaurant operators need the technological ability to support guest choice. To accommodate this market shift, POS vendors began touting multiple APIs that connect with each channel. But restaurant operators soon learned that these APIs don’t communicate well with one another. Instead of seamlessly processing cross-channel ordering, we’ve ended up with fragile and rigid POS integrations—creating a technological environment that fragmented, rather than unified, the guest experience. Put shortly, POS vendors have failed to innovate in a way that best-served restaurant operators and their core mission.
The path forward with disparate POS systems is unification —and that’s exactly what 1-API does with multiple channels. With a single API layer for all ordering channels, guests have unified food experiences whether they’re engaging a restaurant from a self-service kiosk, a mobile app, online ordering—you name it.
Qu POS is designed with 1-API, a modern, bidirectional single set of APIs that connects to a single logical core engine (Qu-1CORE), which uses a single database—thereby eliminating the headache and disconnected guest experience that’s frustratingly prevalent among quick service (QSR) and fast casual (FC) restaurants. Guests see the same information across channels and devices, whether viewing nutritional information or collecting and redeeming loyalty rewards.
Why a single core is the only real option
Without a singular menu system, restaurants are receiving orders from outdated, inconsistent menus via multiple rigid APIs. Take those orders and add them to the next step—the processing engine—and no one needs to tell restaurant operators about their administrative nightmare.
Qu-1CORE fuels single menu management (Qu-1MENU) across all order channels—while being able to update and deploy in-store and cloud services independently. Any menu updates are applied consistently through one logic point, database, and engine. Any changes made through the administrative interface, Enterprise Intelligence (EI) – to menus, items, pricing, taxes, discounts, promotions, reporting, service charges, etc. – are processed and enforced through Qu-1CORE logic. The core communicates with the database and EI to analyze and apply changes.
Qu-1CORE is different than other POS engines because it’s built for the present AND the future:
- Store-level APIs uniformly communicate with in-store POS, kiosk, drive-through, and handheld devices.
- Scalable foundation for future order channels, including voice.
- Ability to support global administrative changes across locations and brands.
- Leverages one modern, flexible codebase.
Designing a singular, or “common” core was challenging—to put it lightly. But we truly believe it’s the only logical way for restaurants to accurately and efficiently process orders, now and into the future to deliver unified food experiences. That was worth the extra effort to create!
Restaurant chain franchises that are buying into his philosophy are reaping the benefits of a modern, make-sense platform that increases their capacity to deliver stand-out guest experiences.
Qu is a POS delivering unified food experiences
The beauty is not in any one singular component of Qu POS—which is the reason they’re not standalone solutions. The value is Qu POS as a holistic, platform—both more sophisticated AND more simplified than any other POS system. The function and simplicity are… beyond. And the pain points it solves for are entirely different—innovating for administrators, operators, and guests alike.
Each component supports seamless order taking, order processing, and order fulfillment:
- With Qu-1MENU, guests can engage a restaurant from any channel on any device and see the correct menu. Restaurant operators can update a singular menu across an entire franchise.
- With Qu-1API guests’ orders will be taken and delivered to the processing engine core exactly the same regardless of how it was placed—online, mobile app, in-store, etc. Restaurant operators don’t need to manage multiple API’s to connect disparate systems anymore.
- With Qu-1CORE, orders will be processed from the singular engine, ensuring uniformity across channels and across restaurants—both for guests AND restaurant operators.
A future-minded POS
As the market continues in the direction it’s predicted, third-party delivery and channel expansion will continue to increase. But unlike before, restaurant operators now truly have the ability and freedom to take control of their ordering process and deliver unified food experiences for guests, while managing a sensible administrative system.
Qu is delivering the POS engine that’s going to power the restaurant industry forward. Restaurant operators are craving simplicity, and finally, the technology is here to deliver it.
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