True Grits: iPad POS Inventory System Keeps Parish Kountry Kookin3 min read
Even small, independent restaurants are finding out that an iPad POS inventory system can offer big advantages to their business.
Located in Northport, Alabama, between state highway 69 and U.S. 43, Mr. Bill’s Kountry Kookin is a traditional Southern “meat & three.” Natalie Hopper, a member of the English Department at the University of Alabama (UA) and one of the three reviewers/writers for Tuscaloosa Restaurant Blog, Druid City Eats, calls Mr. Bill’s a “hidden gem; in fact, she claims the food at Mr. Bill’s is the best she’s had at any meat & three in the Tuscaloosa/Northport area. The menu at this meat & three is a single page; the entries change weekly. But, although Mr. Bill’s still uses a printed menu, the restaurant itself runs on an iPad POS inventory system.
The meat & three (pronounced “meat ‘n three”) is a culinary tradition unique to Southern diners and cafés. Thousands of these independently-owned, casual restaurants dot the Southern countryside. No two are exactly alike, but all offer (as the name implies) a choice of meat and three sides (from a list which often includes such Southern favorites as purple hull peas, turnip greens, fried okra, and grits, and may also offer some dessert choices, like), plus cornbread or rolls, and Southern sweet tea, accompanied by a large helping of good old fashioned Southern hospitality. It is not the kind of place you would expect to have the latest technology. But, at Mr. Bill’s Kountry Kookin, an iPad POS inventory system not only tracks the inventory and updates it in real time, it handles everything from point-of-sale service, transaction management, even the restaurant’s accounting records.
The iPad POS inventory system is connected over WiFi to the restaurant’s secure Internet network. The system makes it possible for the restaurant to track and store transaction data, track and analyze food costs, inventory, and sales, identify high and low margin items on the menu, take care of bookkeeping, scan barcodes, control the electronic cash drawer and receipt printer, swipe credit/debit cards, and stay connected, so restaurateur Michael Parrish can monitor the restaurant’s operations and receive performance date on a transaction-by-transaction basis, even when he’s away from the restaurant. (See our previous blog post to find out how “Feature-Rich Digital Menus Saves Time and Money for NYC Eatery.”)
Parish told Tuscaloosa News that, prior to installing the iPad POS system a few months ago, he would either spend several hours adding up transactions or hire someone to do it for him; now the iPad POS inventory system does it for him.
Parish also said that, prior to installing the iPad POS system, if he wanted to gauge the popularity of a menu item, he would have to rely on the cooks to tell him how many orders they were preparing of that particular item. Now, Parish uses the iPad POS inventory system to accurately compute sales and cost rankings – ranking menu items by how well each one sells. That data lets Parish see exactly how effective a new promotional strategy is in increasing sales of a particular menu item over a given period of time and make any necessary adjustments, so he can keep Mr. Bill’s right on track.
Disclaimer: This is an independent report sourced from one or more news articles and or press releases; none of the company’s, entities or technologies digressed in this report are affiliated with or a client of Open.
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