Monthly Archives: March 2026

The Benefits of POS Integration for a Restaurant

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Every restaurant wants to have the success that they have seen Papa John’s achieve. The way that Papa John’s has been able to be so successful is by keeping up with the new trends in the restaurant industry and learning the best ways to increase their sales. One of the things that they have adopted is POS integration for their online ordering system. QSR stated in their article “Point and Click” that Papa John’s has received over 1 billion online orders since 2001 and the increase in sales has been 50 percent every year since. It’s no wonder why they have taken advantage of such a useful tool as POS integration to help with their increased sales. With the aid of integration, they have been able to keep up with their customers and offer excellent service time and time again.

Some restaurants may not even know they have the ability to use POS integration. The first thing that is important is to obviously have a POS system. Without one there is no need for integration. Once a restaurant has chosen and setup their POS system then can then have someone integrate it for them. This can be their online ordering provider or another company that deals specifically with POS integration. What restaurants should be aware of is that there are hundreds of different POS systems out there and having to ingrate each one is time consuming. It can take anywhere from a few months to almost a year to fully integrate a POS system. However, once it is completed it will be invaluable to a restaurant.

The procedure for using a system that is integrated is similar to one that is not except for one important step. Once a customer has visited a restaurant’s site and ordered, the order will be sent to the restaurant to be made. Now without integration, the order will be sent by email, fax, or even some other software which is designed for receiving orders. Next the restaurant will have to print out the order, have an employee take that order and manually put it into the POS system, and finally send it to the kitchen to be made. While this gives the restaurant a back up copy of the order, it allows for employee error and can slow down the ordering process. With POS integration, when a customer places an order online, the order is sent directly to the POS system and automatically put into the system. Then it will be printed out in the kitchen which will then begin making the order. This removes the “middle man” and is faster and more efficient for the restaurant. There is no room for error and it is almost instantaneously printed once the customer places the order online.

While this may be something that is not new, restaurants are still a little iffy when it comes to online ordering and POS integration. However, it can be seen that it has the potential to do great things for restaurants if they take the time to learn the steps involved and give it a chance to get going in their business. Who knows, maybe some restaurants will follow Papa John’s example and rise to the top of the restaurant industry.

 

Organisational Culture Design Part 2

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Organisational Culture Continued

We started this series looking at a number of aspects of organisational culture, such as aligning organisational and individual missions, time allocation for creative projects and personal development, and transparency. In this second part of how to design organisational culture, we will look at some additional components that will help to create a collaborative, creative and dynamic culture.

Components of Organisational Culture

Empower your employees. Linus Torvalds who is the initiator of Linux – used in the top ten fastest computers in the world and the Google Android system – stated what has now become known as Linus´ law “with enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”. The Open Source software movement has revolutionised the world. No traditional company could keep up with Wikipedia; Microsoft Encarta soon had to pull out of that race. Open Source brings us Apache, which runs on 65% of internet servers, and Mozilla Firefox, which is arguably safer than proprietary software not only because it has such an extensive amount of people continually developing it, but also because the sunlight of transparency shines into its code. This can equally be achieved by fundamentally considering employee empowerment and then evaluating the ethos and principles of the organisation, the decision making processes, the underlying motivations and adapting them accordingly.

Develop a learning culture. For an organisation to learn, its employees must be continually learning. The learning capabilities of an individual and the team rest upon three key legs: aspiration; reflection: and systems. Seek individuals who have the aspiration to grow their skills, then feed this desire with learning opportunities and carefully rewarding key events. Setting aside time for the employee to undertake personal development will encourage this. Include learning schemes such as acquiring books and then having employees teach what they learnt to others, or reading, writing reviews and then implementing what was learnt. Regular reflection allows us to recognise where things went wrong and what was done well, enabling us to become more efficient and effective. Finally, teams are complex systems, with ongoing changes, decisions and interactions – this means careful consideration should be put into anything that affects the dynamics of the team.

Crowdsourced Performance Reviews. Most performance reviews are held once a year, they summarise the employee´s performance down into 10 categories which are rated from 1-5 and the manager may note some particular things that were good as well as areas for improvement. The issue with this is that, firstly the manager is not able to monitor every interaction made by the employee, all the things they done well, and all challenges overcome. It´s also not very useful having one person´s opinion of someone´s skills placed on an arbitrary scale of 1-5. Also the fact that these are only conducted once per year, with some who may carry out one or two follow up reviews through the year, lacks any real opportunity for effective monitoring and tracking. The solution is to make the performance review crowdsourced – the employees will have more power to reward performance. The model will move from a once a year activity to one which is updated every day, meaning it´s viewable in real-time, and as everyone will log the performance of each other’s´ activities, it is much more accurate, efficient and effective than one manager´s opinion about how the year went.

Encourage your employees to bring their hobbies and interests into the workplace. Without you knowing it, many of your employees could be prolific bloggers, do web-design, PC repair, enjoy writing, have experience of teaching, have connections to key countries where your business wants to expand, organise events for charity and the community, or do other such activities. All of these could be valuable to your business and your employees may relish the chance to share their passion. When hiring, ask specifically for hobbies and interests. For people who are already working in the organisation, ask them directly, it´s a great way to start talking to people, get to know them even better, and potentially find great opportunities.

 

Discover the Health Benefits of Surf Camps For Kids

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Many people seem to be considering surfing summer camps in addition to, or as alternative for, traditional summer camps. And why not? Surfing (or surf) camps offer all the important benefits traditional camps offer, such as the opportunity to make new friends and increase self-confidence and esteem, but surf camps offer something more: incredible health benefits for kids.

Not only is surfing a total blast and easily learned with a qualified instructor, but when kids go to surf camp, they get a total body workout from cardiovascular exercise to arm and leg strength to increasing their balance.

When kids paddle out on their surfboards toward the ocean to catch a wave, this is where they are developing upper body strength (including their arms and shoulders) plus getting a cardiovascular workout. Then, when they are doing the actual surfing, they are using their leg muscles and developing important balance skills.

There are several sites on the internet to find a surf camp. You can do a general search for “kids surf camps” on Google, or you can visit a site-specific search engine where you’ll find many available surf camps for kids and teens everywhere in the United States and abroad. (You might type “surf camp directory” into Google and see what comes up.)

It doesn’t matter if your child is a beginning surfer or experienced and learning to pick up tips from a pro, there’s a safe and fun surf camp out there for you…and the amazing healthy benefits can’t be denied.