When looking for BOS solutions in the realm of the quick-service, it may be helpful to seek the services of a company that’s familiar with those unique challenges inherent in that format. Enter Greg Waddell, vice president of sales and marketing, Restaurant Technology Inc (RTI). The company specializes in quick-service solutions. This “bottom up” approach “has enabled us to develop a very scalable solution, with quality technology solutions that are affordable for the average user, and that do not require a significant amount of technical overhead,” Waddell says.

Waddell took a few moments to chat with QSR magazine about the state of BOS today, the characteristics of a good BOS design, and how the quick-service format presents challenges different from any other. Following is what he had to say.

How has back-of-house operation changed in the last 10 years or so? Has functionality changed much? What about design of the back-of-house?

Initially, back-of-house functionality was offered primarily on the POS system, and it was stand-alone. Today back-of-house is most often in a central database that is available on an enterprise level. Back-of-house also used to be mostly corporate or office driven, but with more PCs in the restaurants, it is now engaging the restaurant manager. As a result, the restaurant manager has more and quicker visibility into the operating performance of his or her restaurant. Probably due to restaurant competition and the resulting need to drive unnecessary costs from the business, both franchisors and franchisees are much more committed to putting in a back-of-house solution. As back-of-house systems have evolved, there are considerably more integration points: electronic ordering with vendors, payroll software or services, human resources/personnel systems, and general ledger systems, to name a few.

Describe the essential needs for designing and running an efficient back-of-house system.

First, there must be adequate integration with the POS system. There also must be integration with vendor order guides so as to automate pack/size changes and retrieve the most current prices. Also, there has to be an efficient means of delivering new recipes to an entire organization quickly. The design of the BOS system must be flexible so that it allows BOS to mirror existing restaurant operating procedures. This makes it easier for the other store employees to understand and adopt the system from a usability standpoint.

What are some things that restaurants should avoid when designing/running back-of-house?

First, [a restaurant operator] should avoid any system that does not access a central database. Central databases are very important. Avoid any system that takes a one-size-fits-all approach. This doesn’t work on the franchisee level because even though operating procedures are similar for quick-service restaurants, they are not the same. Different concepts—and even different operators within the same concept—have unique needs that must be addressed by the back-of-house. To really get value from the system, the back-of-house must fit the company’s operational model, reporting structure and their integration needs.

What are the characteristics of a good back-of-house design?

Ease of use, a system that includes role-based security, roll-ups, and comparison reporting, and scalability, to allow for quick growth.

Discuss how the setup/structure of a quick-service—with regard to BOS – is different from that of a fast-casual restaurant, fine dining restaurant or sports bar/grill.

Quick-serves typically have more static menus, meaning there isn’t a lot of daily change or such things like “daily specials.” Quick-serves also have a lot of small transactions that add up to large sales volumes, and they handle more cash than other types of restaurants. And they also have little flexibility in purchasing, and most of the food preparation is for the day’s business, so there’s very little carryover.

Discuss the interaction between back-of-house and the point-of-sale.

Back-of-house and POS integration is key, with the POS providing sales, product mix, and in many cases, timekeeping data to the back-of-house.

What do you think the future holds for back-of-house? Are there any functions that might be added or taken away from current back-of-house infrastructure?

Every restaurant is going to be connected, meaning that outlying locations will no longer be a problem. Back-of-house systems will continue to become more proactive, with capabilities like alerting the operator to problems instead of having them look for the problems in their data. This is ideal because operators want more proactive systems that do the monitoring. More operators are outsourcing the technology component to reduce their hardware costs, and also because they might not have an IT staff to handle the routine maintenance associated with servers, backups, connectivity and other technical issues. Hosted back-of-house solutions provide some advantages in these areas.

You will also see more wireless devices being integrated into back-of-house solutions, some from the restaurant equipment to monitor temperature and other parameters, or even to drive equipment automation. As labor costs increase, this will become more important.