Cal'z Pizza Drives Business with Web-Based POS
Cal'z Pizza may push the palate with its famous "suicide" Buffalo wings, but as owners of nine stores, we know it's suicide to do business without a reliable point-of-sale system. So when our 10-year-old DOS system became slow and outdated, we knew it was time to shop for a replacement.
After researching a number of vendors, we selected Phoenix Point of Sale, a web-based POS system from FireFly Technologies. Although we installed the system ourselves, because that's how we like to do things, we have found FireFly's technical support to be good, thorough, and reliable.
Key benefits
For Cal'z Pizza, the biggest benefit of Phoenix is the system's web-based remote access feature. From the corporate office, we can get instant numbers on individual locations and print reports so that we can consolidate store data. This helps us to identify problems, and I can compare this year's numbers with last year's data. For instance, I know that due to the economic downturn, the number of orders and deliveries are down, but that ticket averages are up. I also use the remote access feature to verify orders, check tickets, make menu and pricing updates, and call customers.
The Web is considered to be another storefront for our business, so all of our stores have online ordering capabilities. Customers can order at their leisure, which increases ticket averages. Plus, the integration with Phoenix enables Web orders to be printed directly to the makeline. Each Web order saves our cashiers three or four minutes per phone call. The numbers of online orders just keeps increasing. It's really exciting.
Cal'z Pizza has also seen other benefits from the Phoenix system, including ease of use with the touch-screen system, early log-in prevention, graphical labor scheduling, Caller ID to expedite orders, printable maps for drivers, and integration with an online ordering provider.
Buying suggestions
When looking at different POS systems, I recommend that you test drive a potential purchase, usually through a vendor's Web site. Make sure the software and support are good. And if you don't like it, don't get it.
After selecting a system, it's time to clear out the old equipment and make place for the new hardware. Get good, reliable hardware and protect it from all potential problems. At Cal'z Pizza, we built special boxes to put the computers in.
Don Calway served in the Army before opening the first Cal'z Pizza with his brothers in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1982. Today, Don, his brothers Sean and Brian, and Elisabeth Zarbo own and operate nine stores in the Tidewater communities of Norfolk, Chesapeake, and Virginia Beach, Virginia.
After researching a number of vendors, we selected Phoenix Point of Sale, a web-based POS system from FireFly Technologies. Although we installed the system ourselves, because that's how we like to do things, we have found FireFly's technical support to be good, thorough, and reliable.
Key benefits
For Cal'z Pizza, the biggest benefit of Phoenix is the system's web-based remote access feature. From the corporate office, we can get instant numbers on individual locations and print reports so that we can consolidate store data. This helps us to identify problems, and I can compare this year's numbers with last year's data. For instance, I know that due to the economic downturn, the number of orders and deliveries are down, but that ticket averages are up. I also use the remote access feature to verify orders, check tickets, make menu and pricing updates, and call customers.
The Web is considered to be another storefront for our business, so all of our stores have online ordering capabilities. Customers can order at their leisure, which increases ticket averages. Plus, the integration with Phoenix enables Web orders to be printed directly to the makeline. Each Web order saves our cashiers three or four minutes per phone call. The numbers of online orders just keeps increasing. It's really exciting.
Cal'z Pizza has also seen other benefits from the Phoenix system, including ease of use with the touch-screen system, early log-in prevention, graphical labor scheduling, Caller ID to expedite orders, printable maps for drivers, and integration with an online ordering provider.
Buying suggestions
When looking at different POS systems, I recommend that you test drive a potential purchase, usually through a vendor's Web site. Make sure the software and support are good. And if you don't like it, don't get it.
After selecting a system, it's time to clear out the old equipment and make place for the new hardware. Get good, reliable hardware and protect it from all potential problems. At Cal'z Pizza, we built special boxes to put the computers in.
Don Calway served in the Army before opening the first Cal'z Pizza with his brothers in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1982. Today, Don, his brothers Sean and Brian, and Elisabeth Zarbo own and operate nine stores in the Tidewater communities of Norfolk, Chesapeake, and Virginia Beach, Virginia.