Press Room
WaiterPad Expands Use of Palm Handhelds in the Hospitality Industry
Restaurants Gaining ROI and Customer Support for Technology
23 July 2002 -- A new bar and restaurant opening this week in Sydney called Industrie is the latest Australian restaurant to implement WaiterPad, a wireless Palm™ handheld solution designed specifically for the customer-service market. The system, created by an Australian developer WaiterPad, incorporates a Palm Vx handheld with a wireless attachment to enable wait staff to take and relay orders to the preparation and bar areas, as well as WaiterPOS terminals, by wireless transmission using radio frequency. With more than 95 deployments in Australia, the WaiterPad system is revolutionising the way the hospitality industry operates.
Industrie General Manager Michael Gencher, formerly of boutique bar L'otel, believes that the venue will attract a savvy city crowd, and wanted to reflect this image with high-tech and sophisticated environment, including handhelds, plasma screens and downloading of music from the Internet. But as important as the refined ambiance was the potential for reduced costs -- he believes that the efficiency the WaiterPad solution offers will lead him to reduce his wage costs by 20 percent.
"WaiterPad economises the movement of waiters across the restaurant and bar, meaning we can provide great customer service with less staff on the floor at any one time. I expect we will have a return on investment [ROI] within 12 months," said Gencher.
With one-touch menus and ordering, WaiterPad can be customised to meet specific objectives that ultimately can lead to reduced staff costs, increased efficiency of order taking and service delivery, and decreased billing errors for restaurants of all sizes. The ease of use is fundamental to its success, and further should ensure a decrease in training costs.
WaiterPad has provided a compelling business case for a range of busy establishments throughout Australia and the UK, all of which have different objectives for using handhelds. Successful Australian establishments using WaiterPad include fine dining at Machiavelli, street café Zoo Bar, cabaret restaurant Draculas and franchise Tony Roma's.
Measurable Efficiency and Revenue Improvements
As one of the more popular cabaret restaurants in Australia,
Dracula's has an average occupancy of 300-450 customers each
night. Quick service is essential to serve the large number
of guests in the small window of time pre- and post-dinner
entertainment. Since WaiterPad was implemented two years ago,
drink orders have increased A$1,000-A$1,500 per night.
Machiavelli in Sydney has also experienced increased turnover and sales; furthermore, they attribute improvements in customer service to the implementation of the system.
"Palm was the clear choice -- we are assured of providing our customers with the smallest and most robust device in the industry with superior battery performance," said Richard Steers, operations manager at WaiterPad. "The Palm OS platform also provides the fastest and most reliable OS."
Zoo Bar owner Marcus Gattos commented that he has "loved life" since implementing the WaiterPad system at his trendy Bondi street café. "I can not overstate how the implementation of WaiterPad has changed our business. Improvements in operational efficiency have greatly reduced staff stress, which has directly impacted on the service delivered to our customers," said Mr. Gattos.
WaiterPad is currently rolling out an updated solution using Palm m500 and m515 handhelds. The m500 series offers improved backlight technology that will enable the handheld to work well in any environment, while the expansion technology will allow restaurants to easily change multiple menus and access large wine databases using SD Cards and MultiMediaCards with the Palm Expansion Slot. Steers forecasts that in 12 months, there will be double the number of WaiterPad installations throughout Australia and an additional 150-200 sites in the UK.
"The efficiency of the WaiterPad system using Palm technology heralds a new and improved way of operation for not only restaurants, but airlines, fast-food outlets, aged care, and occupational health and safety," said Lesley McKnight, marketing manager, Australia, New Zealand and India, Palm Sales Australia.
"World-class applications like this that are wholly devised and manufactured by Australian developers are changing the way people do business by simplifying processes, allowing all parties to benefit."
About WaiterPad
WaiterPad began operations in 1997 as the Australian distributor
for the Uniwell range of hospitality POS terminals and a range
of bar-coding devices. The company was also involved in the
development of software for these products and harboured and
underlying desire to develop a wireless hand held ordering
solution for the hospitality industry and WaiterPad has since
been released.
WaiterPad has encountered great success in the release of
this product and the company has achieved rapid growth with
the establishment of secondary offices in Sydney and Melbourne.
The company's work and experience in developing the WaiterPad
solution has lead to opportunities in several other fields
including that of Business Auditing. Consequently the company
recently released its second hand held solution named AuditPad
last month. The company is currently negotiating with several
major Australian clients and distributors.
Founded on an ethos to provide leading edge solutions and
superior customer service, WaiterPad's mission is to continue
to expand both its range of products and its customer base
whilst ensuring that every customer is satisfied with their
chosen solution.
About Palm, Inc.
Palm, Inc. is a pioneer in the field of mobile and wireless Internet solutions and a leading provider of handheld computers, according to IDC (2001). Based on the Palm OS® platform, Palm's handheld solutions allow people to carry and access their most critical information wherever they go. Palm™ handhelds address the needs of individuals, enterprises and educational institutions by offering the foundation for thousands of application solutions. Palm stock is traded on the Nasdaq national market under the symbol PALM. More information is available at http://www.palm.com.
Palm OS is a registered trademark and Palm is a trademark of Palm, Inc. Other brands may be trademarks of their respective owners.
