Nobody with half a brain would argue that the retail customer experience hasn’t changed markedly. From EMV pressures to pay at the table to the proliferation of online ordering and delivery, customers are driving the technology adoption more now than any time in the history of retail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet despite this rapidly evolving landscape POS companies still seem to be far, far behind the times. And to prove our point we’ll introduce OneDine<\/a>, a restaurant tableside ordering and payment platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let’s start with some high level stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Too many table service restaurants – especially of the enterprise variety – have held on to their legacy POS systems. Given the dearth of viable replacements (no, locked-in payments isn’t workable no matter how good the features) it’s actually fairly understandable. But the other side of this coin is that they’re effectively patching broken solutions that don’t offer anywhere near<\/em> the capabilities to be relevant in today’s market. Non-functioning EMV. Lack of native tableside ordering. Broken or unworkable connections with third parties. The list here is long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n OneDine saw this opportunity three years ago and began working on a solution. While their founders would agree in principle that OneDine should have been something POS companies developed, they also knew POS companies would fail to build what the market needed. “Through our work with enterprise customers at Marketing Vitals we noticed a large gap in the market,” shared Rom Krupp, Marketing Vitals Chairman and now-founder\/CEO of OneDine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We’ve been on the record before saying that tableside ordering<\/a> (and general EMV compliance) should be native to the POS company. Just like ownership over your API, kiosks and tablets are an extension of your ordering interfaces. If a POS can’t even keep their basic house in order, what the hell are<\/em> they doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Oh, they’re working on a bunch of fringe crap to verticalize the stack<\/a> and financial engineer their way to a win for investors?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Got it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, customers have gotten a little bit smarter on the walled garden game. Yes, cloud POS introduces a new set of integration challenges<\/a>, but merchants didn’t suddenly forget that the SaaS explosion happened and that they could source high quality software for monthly payments without a long term contract: that they could get the best in marketing, labor, inventory, online order, you-name-it and not have to suffer under some subpar solution offered by their POS provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n OneDine saw the gaps POS companies were leaving open and built something to plug those holes. That\u2019s the diplomatic way of saying that OneDine might have known the POS would shit the bed on something that was supposed<\/em> to be core to the business model of POS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why would a merchant use OneDine? In a nutshell, OneDine provides a way for guests to order and pay at a restaurant. It sounds so profoundly simple yet if you’re dealing with a legacy POS you know how much hair is on this dog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n OneDine first devised a very clever way to integrate into the POS and extract the menu data. In doing this OneDine has sidestepped one of the largest pitfalls of online ordering: building a menu taxonomy and hierarchy that doesn’t take a boatload of human effort. “OneDine pulls menu data in real-time so any new changes are automatically reflected in the OneDine experience,” explains Vance Miller, CRO at OneDine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We asked how OneDine intended to integrate with some of the legacy POS companies knowing that at least one of them (Aloha) has a reported two-year integration lead time per third parties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “We’re using Omnivore to get integrated into POS systems quickly. They’ve gone through the headache of integration.\u201d This is a quick-n-dirty hack but we think Omnivore’s expensive business proposition<\/a> makes it so partners like OneDine have to go direct to the POS companies eventually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once integrated, OneDine accomplishes its goal with two primary interfaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n First, every table has an NFC and QR code sticker that a guest can use to order. Nearly every mobile device made in the last five years recognizes a NFC or QR code. If a guest puts their phone over the NFC code the restaurant’s HTML5 web app will load and present the user with a menu. The user can then order and pay on the HTML5 app or use the native OneDine app. The NFC code is unique to restaurant brand, location, and even table or seat number, so the server or cashier knows where you are. You can think of the use case here even for quick service and fast casual brands: like what if I don’t want to wait in line again? OneDine automates the Larry David guidelines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n