What Happens When The Lights Go Out?

I waited tables last night during a POS failure. We had to hand-write everything, verify all cards by hand, and communicate our orders directly to the kitchen. And you know what? I actually enjoyed it! I felt more connected to process, more engaged with the information that I was handling, and actually, more attuned to my tables.

That is, until the system came back up and I had to rectify all my orders. That was a major headache.

What sort of system does your restaurant have in place if the lights go out, the system goes offline, or some other event takes down your POS? Does your staff know how to smoothly transition into Plan B? Do you keep credit card slips and order pads close by?

Tell us about it...

Tags: FohBoh, POS, restaurant, waiter

0 members like this

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jeffrey J Kingman on May 20, 2010 at 7:06pm

Michael,

I've worked for a few operations that had generators, purely for this situation. Everyplace I've been part of management, I've made sure to keep old school chits and credit card pads tucked away. It's that difference that customers and staff notice.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Paul Green on May 21, 2010 at 12:51am

Was the outage just the POS ? If it was a power outage Jeffrey Kingman nailed the solution. A generator is a great help for maintaining refrigeration and can provide total power if large enough.

Check out the Vegawatt generator.

Sarandis Karathanasis, owner of the Red Blazer, Concord, N.H., has gone several steps farther.

The Red Blazer is the recipient of the 2008 NH Sustainable Business Award.

.....( the Red Blazer), used the fifty gallons of WVO,(waste vegetable oil) it generated every week to fuel a modified boiler that it purchased to heat all the hot water needed by the restaurant. But running the boiler required more WVO than the Red Blazer generated. So it decided to buy new vegetable oil in bulk and sell it to local restaurants—then collect the waste oil, filter it using proprietary technology, and resell and reuse it.

This effort spawned Amenico, an energy company led by Karathanasis, Tony Giunta (a former politician and energy consultant), and others. Amenico now collects, processes (filters and spins in a centrifuge), and markets more than 150,000 gallons of WVO annually.

It hopes to eventually process eight million gallons of WVO a year.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Paul Paz on May 21, 2010 at 3:25am

As a waiter, I always print a fresh receipt everytime I add a sale to a guest check. Just for protection against a power outage.

This is good for our printer paper supplier , me. and the managers!

It eliminates the hand caculations (usually incorrect) necessary in a power outage.

Most restaurants do not have a manual guest check and credit card processing plan of any nature, so when it happens it is NUTS!

Paul