6 JANUARY 2010

Going cashless to boost business

As the teams behind the UK's campus cafés and conference halls are doubtlessly aware, their market is rapidly changing. From what customers eat, to the how, the where and with whom, the days of the functional canteen lie firmly in the past.

With a necessarily captive, yet notoriously hard-to-please market, University catering teams are going to huge lengths to excite, inspire and satisfy. Think grab'n'go, think freshly squeezed juices, think sushi and cappuccinos. A broader and more interesting offer on menus strains ordering, stock control and – amid escalating and eye-watering supplier invoices – pricing. So, how can caterers make life easier?

EPOS – or electronic point of sale, to give it its full name – is far from foreign to the retail and hospitality industries; rather, it is a pivotal part of any product or service providing business. But fresh developments are pushing the envelope of EPOS technology, affording users complete control.

David Naylor, MCR Systems
“Standards of catering and service have improved remarkably at Universities and the education sector in general over the last couple of decades, and we've found that they've been demanding increasingly sophisticated EPOS and enterprise management systems to give catering managers the same tools, intelligence and support services as high street bars and restaurants”

These days, crunching numbers is a mere formality when groundbreaking systems – including cashless payment card technology – become stock controllers, brand ambassadors, expert administrators, nutrition advisors and marketing strategists. What’s more, there’s not a note or coin in sight.

“Ultimately, it allows control, so you know exactly who's buying what, and where,” says David Naylor of MCR Systems, pioneers of EPOS technology. “It's becoming widespread in the Higher Education sector because catering operations have become retail-led.”

MCR has successfully installed its systems at universities across the nation, from Loughborough, Staffordshire and Hertfordshire, to Nottingham Trent, York and UCL. With 30 years in the business, the company's newest EPOS system, the Metro Symphony, is an example of the new web-based interface that is revolutionising EPOS and Cashless Payment.

The system enables users comprehensive and fully integrated control of all front-of-house operations from a single back-of-house unit. Its benefits are manifold, both reactive and pre-emptive in being able to respond to customer activity, while also being able to forecast and guide it. “It allows catering operations to be as dynamic with their offer as in retail,” David explains. “Because of the back office control of all POS activity, users benefit from accurate pricing, are able to change and adapt the pricing of their offer and build promotional activity directed at the way in which their clients are using the system.”

The major boon of the Metro Symphony system is the one-card cashless payment system. Not only can it be used to pay for goods in catering and retail outlets, but it can also help with the washing in the laundry room, the printing and photocopying in the library and for tickets on the bus into town.

Plus, it can be used, for example, to keep a tally of the meal allowances that come as part of a student's catered facilities, and triples up as a loyalty card scheme that awards user points for purchases that can be redeemed across those catering and retail outlets. So, how does it work? By combining what MCR dub 'electronic purses', the cashless payment system enables its users to top up their card in the same way they might with their mobile phone. In this way its function works on three levels.

First, it becomes the equivalent of the credit or debit card that is already in every student's wallet. As the entire system is web-based, students can financially fill one of their card's 'purses' online, affording them a manageable resource for their funds. It also enables students' parents or guardians to top up the card remotely, so for the ever-increasing international contingent at the UK's universities, the system can be an invaluable facility, if only because it may allow parents to monitor where their money's going.

“The card is the equivalent of a credit or debit card,” David explains, “and because when you spend with a card you don't feel as though you're spending as much as you do with cash, it can help to generate revenue.” Additional 'purses' can be used for students who have opted for catered facilities, where the purse is filled with their weekly food entitlement. Most importantly, and perhaps the one of the card's greatest assets, is down to the division of funds in the purse system, which means students are simply unable to cash in their food credits behind the bar. Yet with an additional purse for loyalty points on certain lines in catering and retail outlets, the system means operations teams can guide their punters to redeem their points during, say, that afternoon lull.

If the card system affords its users freedom, it enables unprecedented back office control. “It becomes a vehicle to control entitlements,” David continues, “and on an administrative level, the system allows the delivery of business critical data efficiently and quickly, so it's possible to offer real-time, dynamic promotions based on customer activity.”

Via the card-over-cash and loyalty schemes that the purse system enables, all monitored by the back office, the card can be fuel for the fire of that all important bottom-line profit.

At Loughborough University, the 'smart card' system has done exactly that, with significant increases in bottom-line profit and spend per head. This has worked in two ways. The university uses a user-defined promotions module in the back office application, which works in tandem with the three catering brands – 'Fuel', 'Taste' and 'Dine' – to monitor and adapt to student eating habits. At the other end of the scale, it means purchasing, stock and portioning can be more effectively controlled, so at Loughborough the cost of sales has been significantly reduced. In addition, it enables close monitoring of students' dietary intake, which, at Loughborough in particular, is an extraordinary advantage given its sporting pedigree. For the increasingly health-conscious student, it's a welcome addition, too.

An increasingly demanding and rapidly changing market by definition requires control. With a system that affords cardholders freedom, incentives and unfettered access to that wider offering, life for students and catering teams can be easier than ever, keeping those all-important costs down, and that even more important profit up. What could be better?