Bruno's Bistrot

Bruno’s Bistrot is cosy and unpretentious, with popular dishes written in chalk on the walls, good wines and lovingly made terrines for takeaway. This well-loved restaurant serves Italian and French cuisine that taste like your imaginary Italian Nonna made by hand. Interesting fact – Bruno’s has never advertised to attract customers and relies solely on word-of-mouth. The food speaks for itself.

Full-service restaurant, fast food pace

At most full-service restaurants, waiters:

1. take the order at the table on paper
2. key it in at the counter
3. send the order to the kitchen printer

When billing, the waiters

1. bring the receipt to the table
2. get the customer to check the order
3. bring receipt and credit card back to the counter
4. processes the payment
5. bring the bill folder back to the customer.

Not at Bruno’s.

Their waiters use iCHEF to key in orders on iPads at the table as the customers order. Once confirmed, these orders go straight to the kitchen. That’s it. No waiting at the counter to key in orders while another table is billing, no missing orders, no extra staff stationed at the counter at all times.

Manage your POS, not the other way around

Full-service restaurants get customers who expect to be fully served, and Bruno’s gets special requests from customers pretty often. While their previous POS system had pre-set modifiers like “more spicy” and “less salt”, creating new modifiers was harder than appeasing a difficult customer.

iCHEF is user-friendly enough for you to edit the menu and dish options without having to call for tech support.

See where your mushrooms are going

Wondering why you’re always running out of mushrooms?

With iCHEF, now you’ll know. Bruno uses iCHEF to understand discrepancies in his inventory. When there is a sudden spike in the number of prawns used, for instance, he can check if it tallies with the dishes sold. There is also a function that shows which dishes are most profitable.

Well Dressed Salad Bar & Cafe

Well Dressed Salad Bar & Café is next to the iconic Buddha Tooth Temple in Chinatown, housed on the ground floor of Eight Treasures Vegetarian Restaurant. Part dessert café, part salad bar, and all vegetarian, this three-year-old small business is run by two young owners who are an active part of day-to-day operations. Zenna painstakingly makes the vegan bakes herself; the menu is surprisingly diverse for a little café, and customers always feel at home in the laidback space.

For small businesses with a big appetite

In June 2015, Zenna and June expanded the café, to include a dessert section and the main café. But they had a problem: the menu had many new items, but the cash register they were using all along could only accommodate a fixed number. The daily closing and inventory checking was particularly tedious for the owners, who had already been at work all day, running the operations.

So they searched for a POS that was flexible and would save time for multi-tasking café owners. They use iCHEF because it caters to owners determined to be self-sufficient: you can do everything yourself and not have to seek help and pay people to do it for you.

Ever used a smartphone?

Then you know how to use iCHEF. With non-English-speaking staff, Zenna realized that iCHEF is so straightforward that anyone who uses a phone will know how to use it – all they have to do is swipe and tap. Her staff picked it up very quickly even though they couldn’t read the items’ names in English, because they could recognize them by their photos on the iPad.

Captain Hook Food Shack

More than a typical “Western stall” in a coffee shop, Captain Hook Food Shack is styled as a neighborhood gastrobar with restaurant-level food at accessible prices. Guinness and Erdinger are on tap at $8 a pint, and all its grub (from ribeye steak to chilli crab pasta) are under $10.00. Not content with just one successful outlet, the young and innovative owners are planning to scale their business.

Supersize with data

Even before he knew it was available in Singapore, Frank wanted iCHEF. He didn’t want any ordinary POS or cash register; he wanted effective reporting so he could have more control over his business.

Why guess what customers want when you can make objective decisions based on data? He believes the ability to track items’ sales, identify trends and control cost, are the key to growth. That’s why he got iCHEF, which has analytics designed specifically for F&B.

Make your staff love you

Working at a coffee shop is tough. There’s no aircon, the workspace is tiny, and it’s unglamorous. You could make life better for your staff. Before using iCHEF, Captain Hook’s staff were writing orders on paper, using a calculator and everything was messy. Worse, it cost them one extra staff every dinner shift. Having a POS made a big difference. Suddenly there was a system, and operations were smooth, and they stopped giving out the wrong change.

An iPad takes up much less space than a traditional POS. It’s also portable, so the staff don’t do the closing at the counter. They take the iPad out and sit at one of the tables, which is not possible with a traditional POS and all its wires. Simple things like this make the job a lot more pleasant for staff.