Waffle House Franchisee Northlake Foods is being ushered into the technology age by Geac Restaurant Systems, a provider of state-of-the-art software solutions for restaurants of all sizes.
Facing an employee training challenge, Northlake Foods, the largest franchisee in the 1,300 unit Waffle House system, approached Geac to develop software that would simplify the chain’s unique server call-in process. The result is an innovative version of their SmartSeries Point-of-Sale (POS) system, which Northlake is installing in its 152 units at a cost of approximately $3.1 million.
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“We’re moving quickly into a new millennium here,” said Billy Martindale, Vice President of Tampa, Florida-based Northlake Foods Inc. “With SmartSeries, our sales are up, food costs are down and hourly associate retention has improved.”
Unlike most restaurants, servers at Waffle House always call their orders to the kitchen. “Our grill operators take orders verbally,” explained Martindale. “It improves production time.”
It’s also a big part of the Waffle House culture. “Customers expect orders to be called-in, and we don’t want to lose that,” Martindale added.
But learning the language of the trade is “difficult and takes a toll on new hires,” said Martindale, who noted that SmartSeries has turned things around. In addition to printing a normal guest check, SmartSeries prints a call-in chit using the proper Waffle House terminology.
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By GlobalData“It used to take servers a very long time to learn that call-in procedure. Now, all they have to do is read it out loud to the kitchen,” Martindale added.
David Poole, who previously managed Geac Hospitality business in Europe and recently became General Manager of Geac Restaurants Division, said “Waffle House has been reluctant to invest heavily in technology because suppliers were not able to satisfy its operational requirements. By utilizing our new Microsoft based solutions, our development team met all the challenges, and we have now successfully rolled out the solution.”
The new SmartSeries package is flexible and can be adapted for a variety of organizations and circumstances. “At Northlake Foods, we are integrating the unique POS software with a human resource piece as well as payroll and financials, creating a SmartEnterprise™”, Poole added. “We’re now presenting this solution to a wide audience of restaurant companies. The tangible and sustainable return on investment makes for a strong purchase justification.”
Geac’s SmartSeries is a fully integrated suite of software products for front-of-the-house, back-of-the-house and corporate headquarters. It is a fully scalable corporate management and reporting system that offers an enterprise-wide approach to database control, sales reporting, inventory control and purchasing. When integrated with Geac Enterprise Resource Planning and Supply Chain Management, Geac provides an end-to-end SmartEnterprise.
“We designed SmartSeries in the opposite way to other vendors who typically develop functionality from their POS through to the back of house. SmartSeries was developed from the back to the front, which sets us apart,” said Poole. “The SmartEnterprise features, such as corporate maintenance, purchasing, inventory and centralized database management, that many corporations are now struggling to implement are long established components of our back office products, which are widely installed in Europe.”
About Geac Restaurant Systems:
Located in Nashua, New Hampshire, Geac Restaurant Systems is a division of Geac Computers, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Geac Computer Corporation Limited one of the world’s largest software companies. Further information is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.rsd.geac.com, or through e-mail at rsdinfo@geac.com.
About Northlake Foods, Inc.:
Northlake Foods, Inc. currently owns and operates Waffle House restaurants in Florida, Georgia, and Virginia. For more information about Northlake Foods please email Vice President, Billy Martindale at bmartindale@Northlakefoods.com.
About Geac Computer Corporation Limited:
Geac Computer Corporation Limited (TSE:GAC) is a provider of mission critical software and systems solutions to corporations around the world. Geac solutions include cross-industry enterprise business applications for financial administration and human resources functions, and enterprise resource planning applications for manufacturing, distribution, and supply chain management. As well, Geac provides industry applications to the hospitality, property and publishing marketplaces, as well as a wide range of applications for libraries and public administrations. Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, Geac ranks as one of the world’s largest software companies.
This news release contains forward-looking statements based on current expectations. These forward-looking statements entail various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those reflected in these forward-looking statements. Risks and uncertainties about the Company’s business are more fully discussed in Management Discussion and Analysis published in the Company’s annual report.
