Computers to order

Good communication between maitre d' and chef is one of the key ingredients of the successful restaurant.

Thanks to computer technology, it is now possible to speed up that communication, giving both managers instant information on staff and customers, food and drink.

Increasingly the paper order pad and ball-point scrawl are being replaced by electronic tills and server pads. These talk to printers in the kitchen and dispense bar.

To take a customer's order, the waiter touches a screen which asks him for his personal identification code, or to insert his key, and then for the table number, and the number of covers.

The screen clears and the menu appears. He presses the "steak" key - but he can't get any further until he specifies "rare", "medium-rare", etc. He will also be required to accept or refuse mushroom sauce, fries, salad, and so on.

The screen clears again and the waiter can select the next dish ordered. Finally he touches the "end of order" button, and the complete order is sent to printers at the appropriate work station - the bar, the cold larder, the fish section, the grill.

Give him a hand-held server pad, transmitting data by infra-red or short-wave radio, and the operation can be even slicker. He doesn't need to log in his own name after starting the shift, so begins by opening the table for orders.

He takes the order for pre-lunch drinks and presses a key which transmits that order, via the till, to the bar printer. Before he has finished taking the order for starters and mains, the drinks can be on the table.

This benefit of speed can be seen at restaurants such as Smollensky's on the Strand, in London, where Remanco's point-of-sale system, with hand-held server pads, is used.

Smollensky's proprietor Michael Gottlieb lists other benefits of good communication as: less paperwork; accuracy; and control.

"Accuracy" means: you are less likely to give a customer the wrong dish - since nothing has to be written down, there is no illegible handwriting for the chefs to decipher.

"Control" means: nothing goes out of the kitchen without a ticket for it coming out of the appropriate printer.

The waiter doesn't need physically to carry a slip from his order pad to the kitchen to place an order - so he is free to spend more time with customers. This is one of the "front-end" benefits of effective communications.

But what can make restaurant systems really cost-effective is complete information about the food and beverage passing through the business, starting with incoming stock and ending with the customer's bill - or the profit and loss account.

The restaurant communications system can be linked directly to computer software for purchasing and stock control. That, in turn, may be linked to a hotel property management system (PMS) and the whole system used to track stock from purchase to sale.

Paul Reed, executive chef at the Chester Grosvenor hotel, is a great fan of the hotel's Remanco system, but trying to control breakfast on it is, he says, "a nightmare".

That is because Remanco and other restaurant management systems are able to call up, from a large database of the restaurant's menus, all the ingredients for a dish.

That information can then be used in different ways, according to the needs of the business:

• to specify what should be on the plate;

• to indicate what should be charged for on the bill;

• trigger a "re-order" reminder from the stock control system.

The problem with breakfast, says Reed, is the main dish (down on the menu as "English breakfast") can comprise any number of ingredients from a long list.

All the items could be selected from a "picking list" on a point-of-sale screen, but by the time the choices have been keyed in the customer may have given up and settled for coffee and croissant.

Reed's main requirement of the Remanco system is speed. His kitchen serves a 45-seat à la carte restaurant, the Arkle, and the 110-seat Brasserie. "In the Brasserie, it's high speed, very slick. We might do 150 lunches in an hour and a half and it's got to be slick, got to be right."

Hence, the menus stored in the system are organised to suit the pace of the operation. The Brasserie menu is held as complete dishes - select "Roast Beef" and the roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding and vegetables automatically come with it. For the Arkle, each item is selected separately.

The waiters in the Grosvenor's restaurants don't use hand-held server pads - they can use one of three terminals in each restaurant - accessed with a numbered key. If there is any argument between a customer and Reed or restaurant manager Philip Dougherty about what was ordered and by whom, the Remanco system provides a complete record.

Hotels have sometimes been caught out by guests who have checked out, then charged breakfast to the room.

This can be prevented - at a cost - by linking the hotel's electronic point of sale (EPoS) system directly to the property management system (PMS). Room charges and room queries can then be handled directly from the EPoS terminals. The system won't allow a charge to be posted to a folio which is no longer open.

Each bill is identified by its table number but it may also have a unique bill number. This can be useful when different parties are sharing a big table - and also allows splitting a charge for a bottle of wine, for example, on to separate bills.

Panasonic's systems are designed to insist that a table is opened for orders, before the server is allowed to enter menu items.

This doesn't eliminate the need for vigilance - clients can still be given the wrong bills. Gottlieb recalls a recent occasion when two customers' bills were switched, with the result that one customer was over-charged, and the other under-charged, by £40. The error was spotted the same day, and both customers were immediately telephoned.

Gottlieb stresses that such mishaps are rare. They can arise, particularly where waiting staff are using hand-held transmitters to place orders, and an incorrect table number is entered.

A foolproof safeguard against this is possible, but it's expensive. Instead of servers each using a hand-held device, server pads could be built into each table (cost is about £1,000 per table).