Category: Uncategorized
Forced Modifiers for Menu Voting!
Here is a neat idea that we picked up over the years – using a forced modifier for voting with your customers. Most stores will occasionally add a different topping, syrup, drink, food item etc to the menu. A great way to get your customers excited about new items is to welcome their input and have them participate in the selection process.
SP-1 can help with that by using our Forced Modifiers to help your employees engage the customer. In the example below, we want to see what holiday drink we want to start stocking.
Notice that the customer will see their vote on the receipt (assuming you print it). Once you have been doing this for a while, you can easily run the Ingredient report on the Business Summary. 
Posted in Uncategorized
America’s Best Coffeehouse Competition!
Have you heard of America’s Best Coffeehouse competition? SelbySoft is one of the sponsors of this exciting new competition!
This is a competition that will see one coffee shop crowned “America’s Best Coffeehouse” and takes place this year at the Seattle Coffee Fest. The show dates are September 21-23 and it’s free to enter the competition.
Eight finalists will compete for the chance to take the first spot.
Head over to www.coffeefest.com for more information!
Posted in Uncategorized
Sticky Receipt Printers
We have been offering the Sticky Receipt printer for about a year now and thought it would be fun to offer a recap on how it works. This printer is pretty innovative!
The printer itself has the same footprint of most thermal receipt printers. Where the difference lies is in the beefed up cut mechanism. This allows the printer to cut through the special paper that is used for the receipt. This paper has two lines of sticky gum on the back of it. The key is that it does not require a backing like traditional labels. It’s more like a type of Post-It note gum on the back of the paper.
Once the receipt for the kitchen or barista has printed, it can be stuck to a bag or cup. This can used to keep orders together, call out the customer and to help the customer see which item is theirs.
Call us for more details!
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Why Training A New Person Can Be Exciting
I’m training someone new. It’s a new salesperson for what we call “peripheral sales”. In other words, his job will be to contact all of our current customers on a regular basis and introduce new products, keep our company relationship going and generally see how things are going.
It’s time consuming and frustrating in some cases. It’s also a fantastic opportunity for me to re-open my eyes to the things we do and what we have to offer! I wrote once before about this but it bears repeating. . . Sometimes you have to pretend you are new.
So, take a few minutes and call us and ask what is new. Really go back to the reasons you bought a POS to begin with and see if you are using them. While you are at it, ask us about:
- Hands Free Marketing
- MobileDash
- Text Your Usual
- Online Ordering
- Sticky Printers
- Barista Monitors
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged with: Training
SCAA Portland!
SCAA
This week we will be at the SCAA (Specialty Coffee Association Of America) show in Portland, Or from the 19th to the 22nd.
We are in booth 2053!
See you there!
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged with: SCAA, trade shows
Why Haven’t You Bought A POS System Yet?
I’ve given tons of reasons to buy a POS in past blogs. Let’s talk about why you, the customer without our system, doesn’t buy one.
First, I want you to think about all the stores you know of that have a Point of Sale system. Now think of the last time you went to one of those stores and realized that they had swapped their Point of Sale system for a cash register. I’m not talking about a store that has had a change of ownership. I mean a store that actually decided that it was more profitable and efficient for them to use a cash register instead of a POS. Hard pressed to come up with one? You are not alone. In all the years, I’ve been working with POS, I can only come up with a very few situations where this has happened and in each of those, they did it because they had a catestrophic hardware failure and could not afford new equipment. The owners closed up shortly after.
In my experience, you don’t buy a POS for because you don’t believe it will help.
I talk to owners that don’t think a POS can help thier operation at all. In some cases, they might even be right. It’s a rare occurance however that SP-1 can’t help you be more efficient. Here are three things that I guarantee we can help with:
* Price mistakes. If an employee has ever rang up an item at the wrong price, then we can help. You see, the pricing is controlled by SP-1! This allows you to have your employees focus on other things.
* Training time. Simply put, SP-1 is the easiest to use system out there. Nothing beats being able to quickly train an employee and put them to work fast.
* Reporting. Without SP-1, chances are good that you either skimp on the reporting you need or that you spend endless hours calculating what your menu mix should be.
This is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Call us. Ask how we can show you immediate savings that will help pay for your POS and put money in your pocket.
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Big changes at SelbySoft – Happy April Fools’ Day
Ok, it’s a day late . . .
Here are some of the exciting changes we are introducing to you!
1) 27 years ago we started to grow clones of our Customer Service Manager, Eric. Those clones are now of an age that we can send one to each of our customers. His only concern in life is to make sure things are going smooth at your store. We are calling this “Jargoned Operating Kernel Emulation” or J.O.K.E.
2) We are disconnecting all our phone lines for support. From now on, they will only answer questions through Facebook messaging.
3) Our system will now be based on an “app” model and only run on phones and tablets. To make this as fast as possible, there will only be ONE button allowed. It must be called FOOD/Beverage and will only accept one price. We figure this can’t get any simpler.
4) Due to environmental concerns, we will no longer print anything. We will only telepathically place orders into your staffs mind and receipts into your customers.
5) Instead of gift cards, we now have a permenant ink barcode system. Once you apply this to your customers forehead, you never have to worry about buying cards again!
6) Codes, Swipe Cards and Fingerprint are not secure enough. From now on, each person will need to voicematch a 32,768 character password before proceeding. We hope this cuts down on your employee theft.
7) In an effort to simplify your reporting and make it easy for you to deal with the IRS, all sales numbers can be changed on the fly, we won’t actually track anything.
8) To make your POS choice easy, we have contracted with the WWE to have a Battle Royale with all our competitors. Winner takes all. We are pretty sure we can take them.
9) We will be sponsoring a “Work the SelbySoft Booth” contest to get our customers to work trade shows for us. This should result in both cost cutting as well as giving Mike & the guys more time to goof off at shows.
10) We will be cutting our work week to one day. That day will be April 1st.
Happy April Fools’ Day
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged with: April Fools'
Sliding Scales!
Sliding scales
Want some really unusual pricing methods? Often, we run into store owners that have pricing that is not consistent from one modifier to another. There are three scenarios where a sliding scale makes sense:
1) Pricing that changes depending on the number of items on the ticket. For example, if you offer a special where a customer buys one item and then gets the second at a discount. Buy one pizza and get the second half off is a great example of this.
2) X amount of toppings or flavors free. This works for those of you that price a pizza where the cheese, one topping, two topping and three topping prices are all the same. Or, if you offer a drink with up to two flavor shots for the same price.
3) Non-proportional pricing. If you have modifiers or ingredients that vary in price according to the number that are added, then this is a great way to tackle this. This pricing is very common in pizza where you might have a one topping pizza for $10, two topping is $12, three topping $12.50 and four topping $13.50.
With sliding scale pricing, you can specify pricing by the number of items ordered or by the number of ingredients or modifiers added.
Call us with more questions!
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged with: Pricing, sliding scales
Coffee Fest New York – March 9-11th
This week we will be at the Coffee Fest show in New York from the 9th to the 11th. If you happen to be in the area, stop by! We are in booth 224 & 226!
Mike Spence will be hosting a seminar on Tracking Sales with Technology at 9am on the 10th at the New York Coffee Fest as well.
More information on the show can be found at: http://coffeefest.com/Event/Attendee/Default.aspx
Posted in Shows, Uncategorized Tagged with: coffee fest, shows
When’s the last time you changed your password?
When is the last time you changed your password? Want me to guess it?
Is it one of these?
23456 12345
123456789 Password
iloveyou princess
rockyou 1234567
12345678 abc123
Based on research found here. I might be right.
In Version 7.60 and above SP-1 requires a “strong” password that is 7 characters in length with at least one number and one letter. Further these passwords expire every 90 days and you are prompted for a new password. Because you can’t use the same password more than one out of four times in row, you can’t cheat the system by using the same one.
That’s great but what about those of you on previous versions? Well, first, get updated! However, if you can’t for some reason, then please be smart about your passwords! We all see the stories online of the top 100 passwords etc. Please make sure you are following the rules for strong password creation even if SP-1 is not forcing you to.
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