For electric vehicle owners in British Columbia, Tim Hortons is now fueling road trips in more ways than one.  The company has announced the expansion of its electric vehicle charging station pilot launched earlier this year in Oakville, Ontario, by unveiling six new charging stations at restaurants throughout  British Columbia.

Tim Hortons announced the pilot in February in an effort to study the technology, its usage and opportunities.

"We have been thrilled with the results of the pilot so far.  Usage of the charging station in Oakville has surpassed our expectations and we received many calls with requests to expand the pilot," said Paulo Ferreira, Senior Director, International Strategic Restaurant Design and Building Standards, Tim Hortons. "With more than 3,300 eligible restaurants across the country, we continue to look for opportunities to expand the pilot and contribute to the EV infrastructure."

The BC expansion, supported by the Province of BC's Community Charging Infrastructure Fund and Koben Systems Inc. (KSI), placed charging stations strategically in Nanaimo, Langford, North Vancouver, Burnaby, Abbotsford and Coquitlam to create paths within the province, allowing guests to travel from restaurant to restaurant strictly on electric power.

Tim Hortons offers charging stations as a courtesy to guests at six locations.  As of March 31st, 2013, Tim Hortons had 4,288 system-wide restaurants, including 3,453 in Canada, 808 in the United States and 27 in the Gulf Cooperation Council. 

CyberTek MSSP announced that it will be partnering at HITEC with leading companies in the information technology and cybersecurity space to bring unique, unparalleled expertise to its hospitality clients. Joining CyberTek’s booth at the 2023 show will be representatives from AppRiver, Fortinet, and Kaseya—three world-class providers of security tools and services. They will be available for the duration of the event to meet with attendees and answer questions about their products.

AppRiver is a Microsoft Solutions Partner who provides tools such as Microsoft 365 to improve productivity, resiliency, and compliance of businesses. This operates in support of core CyberTek services like Email Security.

Fortinet offers enterprise-grade cybersecurity products. CyberTek partners with Fortinet to provide elite threat detection and firewall management solutions to its clients.

Kaseya is a global provider of comprehensive IT security software tools. CyberTek uses their products to provide Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR), Managed Detection & Response (MDR), Log and Threat Monitoring, and Remote Monitoring and Management.

CyberTek leverages the products offered by these partners and more and combines them with its in-house expertise and deep knowledge of the hospitality industry to deliver exceptional managed security services to its clients.

“We’re thrilled to be able to partner with AppRiver, Fortinet, and Kaseya at this year’s HITEC,” said Josh Bergen, President of CyberTek. “Many of our clients have come to know and rely upon their products, so we’re pleased to be able to bring representatives from their companies onsite to be able to meet and answer questions in person.”

“Partnerships such as these are part of CyberTek’s ongoing efforts to bring world-class resources to our clients. We’ll continue to seek out the best products and collaborators and bring them to the hospitality industry.”

Attendees who are interested in learning more about the products of CyberTek or its partners can stop by Booth 2115 at HITEC.

Delivering on the promise of better visibility, VENZA announced the release of the VENZA System—a new platform that centralizes several of its industry-leading data protection functions. The VENZA System will be capable of generating even more impactful results, greater precision in reporting, and an ultra-smooth user experience.

Beginning soon, VENZA will offer one combined node that turns VENZA Learning™ and VENZA Phishing™ into a unified instrument with customizable reports. The platform, developed in-house and tailored to the needs of the hospitality industry, updates dynamically in real-time. Users will be able to select data by type and filter by level, from organizational, to individual properties, down to work groups. With this, VENZA will now more than ever produce the information you need when you need it.

“We are constantly working to produce new tools, as well as enhancements to our existing ones, that respond to ever-growing cybersecurity threats and regulatory compliance needs,” said Barbara Espinosa, Product Manager at VENZA. “Our platform will be a step-change in capability and responsiveness. We’re very pleased to deliver this product to our clients but also extremely excited about how this platform can evolve the VENZA system moving forward. We have big plans for 2024, so it is a great time for early movers to experience it and get the opportunity to participate in its design.”

Further additions to the VENZA system are under development. A range of governance, risk management, and compliance features will be rolled out in further stages over the coming year. This will include products that provide automatic vendor risk assessments, SAQ and audit functions, tasking and project management, and more. The user experience will also become simpler with mobile support and support for single sign-on (SSO) log-in.

Ultimately, VENZA will offer a wholistic governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) platform with an open API that allows users to plug in their own data and fully customize the system to their needs.

Bite Ninja  introduces NinjaQ, a queuing system that allows restaurants to deploy workers remotely across multiple locations. By utilizing Bite Ninja's Customer Detection System and remote staffing capabilities, the company's latest technology innovation gives restaurants the ability to leverage their own employees and adjust staffing levels to match in-store demand, reducing the number of cashiers and customer-facing employees in the queue during slow periods or adding more during peak times.

Bite Ninja was part of  Restaurant Technology Network's Virtual Start-Up Alley in 2021  and went on to  raise $15M last year.

The introduction of NinjaQ aims to revolutionize the way quick-service restaurants operate by providing an effective and efficient ordering process that minimizes labor costs. When a new customer is detected by the system, a remote cashier in the NinjaQ is routed to the station to take their order. Once the order is complete, the cashier is then placed back into the queue to await the next customer, bouncing remotely between restaurant locations and stations as needed.

Bite Ninja's newest advancement in restaurant technology offers restaurant owners the ability to integrate their existing staff into Bite Ninja's remote platform, or tap into Bite Ninja's certified online professional workforce, better known as 'Ninjas'. Bite Ninja's technology has proven to be instrumental in helping restaurant operators increase sales through faster lines and upsells, both at the drive-thru window and front counter.

Airvine has developed a multi-Gigabit-speed wireless backhaul system for indoor connectivity, is introducing its WaveTunnel product line to the hospitality sector at the HITEC conference and exposition in Toronto, June 26 – 29^th.  HITEC is the leading technology solutions event for the hospitality industry. 

Hotels, conference centers and related facilities need higher-bandwidth backbone networks to support higher-speed Wi-Fi for guest rooms, growing IoT systems (including security cameras) and new entertainment platforms with more HD and on-demand options.  This means upgrading the existing wired indoor infrastructure, which to date has meant laying new cables or swapping out new for old (such as Ethernet CAT 5 cable).  This process can result in lengthy construction projects, which result in lost revenue while blocks of rooms, or even entire floors, are out of service during this time.  In addition, these projects are inconvenient for hotel guests as well.  

The Airvine WaveTunnel represents a significantly faster and less expensive option, as the shoebox-sized modules are mounted on ceilings and other interior high points to provide multi-Gigabit links that pass through walls, down corridors and around corners with minimal construction and personnel. 

WaveTunnel operates in the interference-free 60 GHz band, where there is also plenty of spectrum to provide on first release a multi-Gb/s backbone connectivity capability.  Furthermore, 60 GHz systems operate on a line-of-sight (LOS) basis. WaveTunnel, however, can penetrate most indoor walls as well as ”beam steer” around corners, making it a true non-LOS 60GHz system. This breakthrough capability greatly simplifies and expedites network set-up and operational readiness.

“We’ve met with many of our MSP partners in the hospitality sector over the last year and they hear a common theme from their hoteliers – they need to upgrade their broadband connectivity, and at the same time need to keep rooms open to maintain revenue and make up for money lost during the Covid lockdowns,” Zach Hubeck, Executive Vice President of Marketing for WAV, an Airvine partner and a leading distributor of end-to-end broadband network systems who is also participating at HITEC. “The Airvine WaveTunnel is a great way to create a multi-Gigabit, interior backbone network with minimal disruption to hotel operations.” 

Next week at HITEC® Toronto, Aptech will reveal a series of upgrades to its three innovative financial-management solutions, PVNG, Execuvue, and Targetvue. Produced by Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals (HFTP®), this premier hotel technology tradeshow is the ideal forum to shop for the latest in financial-management software designed to help operators cut costs and improve their bottom lines. Aptech’s 100% hospitality focused, customizable solutions enable hoteliers to access, view, compare, and analyze performance data of a single hotel or a multi-property/multi-brand enterprise.

Aptech will showcase its Enterprise Accounting, Business Intelligence and Budgeting/Forecasting solutions in Booth 1301 at the Metro Toronto Convention Center – South Building, June 27 to 29.

NEW Enterprise Accounting

PVNG version 1.7 was released to Aptech customers this week. PVNG features the Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, General Ledger, Statistics, Financials, and Bank Reconciliation that today’s hotel operators are seeking with much-needed browser navigation. Its OCR invoice processing, myriad of payment options, drill-down capabilities in financial statements and reports, ability to handle single or multi-property accounting, and the fact that it can be deployed as a hosted service, explains why this accounting solution is in such high demand.

PVNG V 1.7 enhancements to be on display at HITEC include:

• Invoice Automation
• New drill down capabilities
• Plus, a myriad of client requested enhancements to improve efficiency and reporting

Also NEW at HITEC, Aptech will reveal an integration with one of the world’s leading data networks powering the digital financial ecosystem. By connecting Aptech’s PVNG enterprise accounting solution to the platform, hotels will achieve seamless and secure access to thousands of financial accounts for financial reconciliation. Now properties running on PVNG can leverage their security measures and minimize the risk associated with handling sensitive financial information.

NEW Business Intelligence

Execuvue was upgraded to IBM Cognos Analytics 11.2.4 with Watson AI and released to customers on June 1, 2023. Execuvue is an IBM Cognos-based ASP BI application that features a dashboard platform that delivers stunning images of financial and operational data that hotel accounting teams can act upon. Leveraging AI-powered analytics, Execuvue is helping operators make smarter business decisions and respond to commands, such as “Show Me Room Revenues by State and by Property.” The AI tool links relevant data elements (number of rooms rented, ADR, RevPAR, occupancy, rooms out of order, etc.) with a list of properties or brands to analyze the information in visually compelling ways. It also configures data regionally, giving hoteliers a performance snapshot portfolio wide, as well as by region, brand, and property.

Execuvue + IBM Cognos Analytics 11.2.4 with Watson AI enhancements on display at HITEC include:

• New and enhanced visualizations
• Cascading Filters
• New Analytics panel to view forecasting and Narrative Insights features

NEW Budgeting & Forecasting

Targetvue provides hotel accounting teams with “one version of the truth.” It consolidates reports, identifies trends, and eliminates the maintenance and distribution of Excel spreadsheets throughout the organization. Automated forecast snapshots offers users ad-hoc capabilities to previous and future performance projections. 

Targetvue enhancements to be on display at HITEC include:

• New release of Targetvue cloud with predictive analysis
• Additional data source integrations
• Enhanced audit log – who did what when

“Aptech is known industrywide for our willingness to listen to our customers and quickly develop new features to meet their specific needs,” said Aptech Vice President Cam Troutman. “The recent enhancements to PVNG, Execuvue and Targetvue that will be seen for the first time at HITEC are proof of our ability to develop on demand. In addition, our new data network integration will give Aptech users the financial reconciliation they have been asking for. We are eager to see everyone in Toronto.”

For more information on Aptech solutions, visit them at HITEC Toronto. To pre-schedule a booth appointment, reach out to Kim Sieminski by clicking here.