With hospitality venues under increasing pressure to meet higher customer expectations and greater levels of convenience and choice, investment in innovative POS technology is more important than ever. By taking advantage of unique and flexible solutions, businesses can respond to these challenges and thrive in an increasingly difficult operating environment.
One company that understands the importance of innovative technology is Dines. Founded in 2016, the company has grown from strength to strength to offer an all-in-one ordering system, allowing venues to run the entire hospitality business on a single, powerful, omnichannel platform. Catering to the needs of different settings, Dines offers tailored solutions to restaurants, pubs, bars and cafés, theatres and cinemas as well as weddings and events, attractions and pop-ups.
For the very latest in order management, Dines turned to Star for its CloudPRNT™ and more recently StarPrinter.Online technology. With CloudPRNT available across a range of Star thermal receipt and label printers as well as matrix kitchen printers, Star provides the largest range of multi-platform remote cloud receipt and online ordering printers available today.
The technology benefits hospitality venues by enabling customer orders to be sent directly to the printer from an online ordering service or app, eliminating the need for an additional tablet in the bar or restaurant. Moreover, Star CloudPRNT enabled printers are able to receive orders from multiple channels including POS, tablet, web and cloud which results in an efficient ordering and transaction process for any hospitality business.
For venues that prefer a fully managed CloudPRNT service, Star has recently introduced StarPrinter.Online, a dedicated service for businesses to manage the printer estate with minimal setup time and cost as well as near zero integration. This allows printing direct from an ordering website through the REST API or direct from the page with JavaScript, or even via email; order emails can be forwarded directly to the chef’s printer for preparation.
The ordering service can not only communicate directly with the printer to create print jobs, but also receive the status of the printer estate. An online dashboard provides a complete overview of all devices and activity with webhook based notification of device status changes, barcode scans, new print job results, device connections to a group, etc. Additional printers and peripherals can simply be added without the need for server upgrades.
Dil Hussain, CEO at Dines explains how the technology helps to expand their offering to venues and the key benefits it provides.
How does StarPrinter.Online enable Dines to provide mobile ordering?
With StarPrinter.Online, our clients are no longer limited to local networking and short ranged Bluetooth connections. Whatever their setup, wherever they may be in the world, StarPrinter.Online can support them. For example, if a theatre patron is heading to a matinee and wants to pre-order their drinks as they get off the tube, they can. They order and pay from their phone using Dines, then a ticket is sent directly to the venue for preparation via StarPrinter.Online. Drinks are prepared and ready to be collected on arrival. It’s never been easier to manage orders, no matter which channel they come from, and we have seen this technology thrive in a range of venues including Winter Wonderland, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and The Shard.
How can StarPrinter.Online help with order and queue management in-house?
Ordering in-house could not be simpler. The customer can order at their table without having to wait for a server to place an order and then pay later, whilst queues at the bar are reduced allowing bar staff to focus on other tasks. This becomes even more versatile when different printers fire out tickets for different stations (drinks/food/salads), reducing bottlenecks during peak times.
How does StarPrinter.Online help venues to manage the printer estate?
With data on printer status, jobs in the queue, last online timestamps (and even if there’s a paper jam!), debugging issues and managing multiple printers, completely online, is now effortless thanks to StarPrinter.Online.
In summary, what are the key benefits of StarPrinter.Online?
Key to StarPrinter.Online is flexibility for both customers and venues. Customers can order not just where they want but how they want using any kind of device, whilst venues have a central point to receive and manage orders. With no restrictions imposed by cabling or local networks, or even limited Bluetooth ranges, StarPrinter.Online allows venues worldwide to print receipts and manage orders anywhere with Internet access.
When outdoors serving food at a busy festival stall, or whilst pouring champagne from the Top of the Shard overlooking London’s skyline, all modern hospitality setups can rely on StarPrinter.Online.
For further information, visit:
Dines.co.uk
Star-EMEA.com
