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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Topic: Recommendations for POS (point of sale) systems
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David Zylstra
Master Film Handler
Posts: 432
From: Novi, MI, USA
Registered: Mar 2007
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posted 06-05-2008 12:04 PM
I have experience with Radiant, Vista Entertainment Solutions (the POS company, not the Microsoft product) and a little with RTS.
If you can afford it Radiant and Vista are excellent systems - over the 2 years I've dealt with Vista there have been minimal issues and none have been sales stoppers. Radiant is also excellent, my experience is only with their version as of 2005 and there were rarely any sale stopping issues.
Vista has a full suite of products - POS, sign software to use PCs to drive box office signage, a canned website for selling tickets, ticket sales by phone, self service software, mobile POS on PDAs, etc . . . . . . as far as I know the only components that Vista has that Radiant does not are video signage, canned website and mobile POS.
The brief time I spent with RTS I found it to be a solid, economical POS system - very good for the small exhibitor; I found a security issue that precludes me from using it (some see it as a "feature" and not a security issue), not to mention the lack of the ancilliary modules like web, IVR, etc.
I've heard a lot of companies are leaving Splyce for Radiant or Vista . . . . . . and that Titan has some bugs that they definitely need to work on (and are).
If you want RTS pricing you may be stuck with RTS - but try calling Radiant to see if they will work with you on price . . . . . . Vista may also work with you since they structure pricing on a per screen basis.
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Jack Ondracek
Film God
Posts: 2348
From: Port Orchard, WA, USA
Registered: Oct 2002
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posted 06-05-2008 07:17 PM
Justin:
The problem with POS systems for drive-ins is that there aren't enough of us to really be worthwhile to them.
To their credit, RTS stepped up to the plate. I don't know of any other company that has included features that are relatively exclusive to our needs.
The single ticket concept was enough to convince me. They put that in the system within a month of my asking them. The car (transaction) count, instead of counting people on the front screen was also a biggie for us. Before that, it was hard to keep track of how many spaces we had left in our fields.
Frankly, I don't use the inventory count-in process. We build too many food products for it to be very helpful. We have several vendors, including picking up some supplies ourselves. For us, itemizing in the system would be too cumbersome, and once you get behind, it can get away from you fast. On the other hand, it does do a good job of tracking our products for statistical purposes. It should report voids and "no-sale" cash drawer opens for you. The system logs most every keypress from all stations.
At one time, RTS was considering dropping the back kitchen "pickup" window, which we use heavily here. Since then, enough theatres have made use of it that this is no longer a problem. They've also made several modifications to that feature, based on our request, so it's reasonable to assume they've done the same for others.
One thing I've notice though, is that we all seem to have our own personal list of "desireables", when it comes to the POS equipment. RTS is at least as responsive as any company I do business with. However, one has to realize that they can't be expected to meet everyone's individual needs. There are some detail items I've suggested over the years that haven't made muster over there. I guess those things were more important to me than anyone else. Given what the system does bring to the table though, I can live with that.
I'd try to make this work. As far as I know, RTS is the only system that comes close to working for a drive-in... and the price is right, too.
RTS has a discussion board, for chatting about their software and feature sets. I'd bet that there are RTS users here who would be willing to help out over the phone or email, including me.
Jack
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Jack Ondracek
Film God
Posts: 2348
From: Port Orchard, WA, USA
Registered: Oct 2002
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posted 06-06-2008 11:52 AM
quote: Justin Hamaker
what food items do you sell besides hot dogs, nachos, popcorn, and candy? And if you don't mind me asking, how many cars will you get on a normal Friday or Saturday?
Besides what's mentioned above, we also do pretzels which we microwave to order. I've considered cook to order pizzas, but I don't know if they would sell.
We have pretzels and "Cinepretzels" (J&J snacks). We cook the regular pretzels in our pizza ovens... the Cinepretzels in the microwave.
We get frozen 15" pizza shells from our foodservice provider (FSA), and build our pizzas here.
We sell chicken strips in a basket of fries (Brakebush chicken) along with ranch or barbecue sauce dip cups, battered mozarella sticks with a little pizza sauce for dip, nachos, "super nachos", corn dogs, burgers, chicken sandwiches, hot dogs, "pizza dogs" and philly cheese steak sandwiches, which we do on-site.
Anything a customer orders, which involves something from our back kitchen, shows up on the RTS pickup window... something like what they use at McDonalds, Burger King & the like. If it's just pop, popcorn & candy, it stays up front & the kitchen doesn't see it.
We added cotton candy, some years back... huge!
Unfortunately, very little of this is guaranteed to clone over to another drive-in. There are different local and regional tastes to consider, as well as your theatres's size and capacity and the amount of space you can dedicate to cooking equipment. A large part of our building is kitchen. On the other hand, many small, single screeners have all their food prep gear along the back wall, and are pretty limited in terms of what they can do. It's probably worthwhile to see what others do, but in the end, you really have to cut & paste to see what works for you.
Gas and/or power capacity matters, because you need enough equipment to cook for a lot of people in a short period of time. If we had all day to serve a normal crowd out here, the kind of gear we have would be insane. When you compress it into 3 or 4 hours though, recovery time becomes a big deal.
We have 3 screens... 450, 300, 300, give or take. Once school lets out, we could have a couple thousand people running around the place.
"Normal" attendance is hard to quantify. Films, weather, time of season & other area activities all have an effect. Right now, we seem to be stuck in "early Spring mode"... It's raining today, and the week might be a wash.
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