How Hale & Hearty is Delighting Customers and Improving Operational Efficiency

The Challenge: Modernization During a Pandemic

When modernizing a business to fit the times, few things are as important as the point of sale system. Hale & Hearty needed a modern solution to their antiquated POS that could scale and grow with them to make the brand more agile and forward-looking to improve both employee and guest experiences. In addition to this, they were also navigating complicated PCI compliance and the management of on-site file servers for each location. All of this needed to be rolled out during a global pandemic that resulted in staff shortages, increased volume of online ordering and pickups and new rules for having vendors onsite. 

Appetize’s partnership with Hale and Hearty also came at a time when many fast casual restaurants were upgrading their point of sale with digital cloud solutions to optimize on-premise experiences and cater to the huge increase in mobile/web and third-party app ordering for pick up and delivery. Restaurants were prioritizing increased safety and convenience for both staff and customers and modernizing their point of sale to future-proof operations.

This iconic fast casual brand needed a POS that could:

• Support a complex menu of 640+ recipes
• Handle high order volume and to-go orders
• Support enhanced combo and modifier support
• Aggregate their online and 3rd-party orders
• Offer enterprise-level controls and analytics
• Support immediate promotions and rewards

The Appetize Solution Tailored for Growing Brands

Appetize is a cloud-based POS solution for enterprise brands that want to elevate the guest ordering experience for today’s customers. Appetize provides all of the benefits and flexibility of the cloud, including easy deployment, scale-up, reconfiguration, and upgrade capabilities. Following a successful October 2020 pilot at the Herald Square location in Manhattan, Hale & Hearty completed its roll out of Appetize’s advanced cloud technology across all its locations by February 2021. Despite being in the midst of a pandemic, Appetize project managers and engineers were able to remotely help the Hale & Hearty team implement and troubleshoot the system every step of the way. The Hale and Hearty team took advantage of simple features—like being able control the text size on terminal screens, plus more complex ones —like intuitive menu management and inventory tools via the Connect enterprise management portal.

Better Menu Management For Increased Efficiency

Appetize offers a customizable design that includes enhanced combo and modifier support. This was crucial for simplifying Hale & Hearty’s menu management process of the 600+ food item combinations. As pickup and delivery orders soared during the lockdowns, Appetize’s menu allowed for faster checkout and payment processing to combat rush periods throughout the day and improved the overall guest experience.

Beating Rush Hour With the Right Third-Party Integrations

One of the key features that drew Hale & Hearty to Appetize was the vast number of partner integrations, including P2PE technology with Elavon, that significantly simplified their PCI compliance. In addition, Appetize Payment’s lower credit card processing fees and reporting transparency were important factors in their decision to partner with us. A NetSuite integration also helped their accounting team visualize and report finances much faster, while an integration with ItsACheckMate helped store employees reduce the amount of time spent entering delivery and pickup orders from numerous 3rd party delivery platforms.

LevelUp, another Appetize integration, gave Hale & Hearty employees the ease to clock in and out, accept credit cards or level up customers without the need for a manager to assign them. When large crowds would form outside their locations, employees could enter their PIN and instantly help manage lines. Then as the lines shortened, employees could simply logout and continue performing other important tasks for the stores’ operation with no time wasted, and less frustration for customers.

Implementing a New POS in Record Time - During a Pandemic

Hale & Hearty’s team was able to perform most of the installs themselves, enabling a rapid deployment even under the pandemic’s strict lockdown conditions. Appetize prioritizes their customer experience and wass there to guide their team every step of the way. Our project managers and leads helped the Hale & Hearty team make the much-needed switch from their legacy POS to a modern, cloud-based one in just weeks. Since then, Appetize’s omni-channel solutions have helped significantly ease day- to-day operations.

All-In-One Solution for Smarter Restaurants

Ever since launching 90+ Appetize devices and rolling it out to all of their stores in February 2021, Hale & Hearty has been able to exponentially improve both the guest and employee experience. From faster delivery times and better backend processes to eliminating a lot of technical issues they were facing with their old system, Hale & Hearty was able to more than achieve their goal to modernize an antiquated POS.

Appetize addressed items high on their list and delivered on all of Hale & Hearty’s goals. From an IT perspective, the number of POS issues decreased noticeably in the months since the final store was rolled out. While their system would typically have 3-5 issues on a given day, Appetize generally averages 0-2. Managers and employees were able to quickly adapt to the intuitive, new system, typically taking less than a week or two to transition completely, even after using the older system for 10+ years. In addition, employees now have more time to make sure orders are correctly made, packaged, and delivered efficiently and with the highest quality standards.

Enhancing Customer Experience With a Modern POS

Hale and Hearty is one of the most recognizable and loved restaurant brands in New York City that was ripe for a modern ordering and payments solution. By utilizing Appetize’s next-generation ordering and payments platform, they’re continuing to delight customers, improve operational efficiency and deliver a streamlined payment experience, all at a lower cost.

Click here to learn more about how Appetize can help your restaurants decrease friction and increase sales, without additional overhead.