Hale & Hearty Soups, a gourmet fast-casual restaurant chain with 21 locations in New York City, Long Island, and Boston, reported significant improvement in point of sale issues chainwide after deploying Appetize solutions (90+ devices) between November 2020 to February 2021. Point of sale issues at all restaurant locations have dropped from approximately 5 to zero on a daily basis for 2021.
“While our old system would typically have 3-5 issues on a given day, Appetize averages 0-2, which is a substantial 60 to 100% drop,” says Matthew Epstein, IT manager of Hale & Hearty.
Appetize, a leading cloud-based ordering platform, helped Hale & Hearty reach an optimal 100% issue-free point of sale operation with its customizable options that include enhanced combo and modifier support that was crucial for simplifying Hale & Hearty’s menu of 600+ combinations.
Appetize also helped Hale & Hearty navigate complicated PCI compliance and manage on-site file servers for each location, especially P2PE technology with its Elavon partnership.
Strategic platform integrations also played a major role in Hale & Hearty’s point of sale success. For instance, the NetSuite integration helped Hale & Hearty’s accounting team visualize and report finances faster, and the ItsACheckMate integration helped employees reduce the time spent entering delivery and pickup orders from multiple 3rd-party delivery platforms.
Further, Appetize’s integration with LevelUp enabled employees to easily clock in and out, accept credit cards or level up customers without a manager’s assignment. When large crowds formed outside locations, employees could enter their PIN and instantly help manage lines. As lines shortened, employees simply logged out and continued performing other important tasks with no time wasted — resulting in happier customers.
“Our former POS system was unable to cater to the growing list of integrations that Appetize could provide as an agile and forward looking company,” says Epstein. “Appetize’s cloud-based platform and vast number of integrations, P2PE technology with Elavon that simplifies our PCI Compliance, and competitive credit card processing fees were the key factors in our decision to make the switch and implement Appetize as our new POS solution.”
Appetize also improved the amount of time team members and delivery specialists used to spend manually inputting orders from various delivery platforms, according to a recent case study provided by Appetize. Additionally, Appetize Payments’ competitive credit card processing fees helped streamline payments for all Hale & Hearty restaurants.
“We’re thrilled that Hale & Hearty, one of the most iconic restaurant brands in the Northeast, has achieved tremendous success through our partnership,” says Brian Whitney, SVP of Hospitality at Appetize. “Our cloud platform is designed to reduce friction for guests and simplify ordering for staff, and we remain committed to delivering a hassle-free and intuitive experience both guests and staff now expect.”
Following a successful October 2020 pilot at its Herald Square location in Manhattan, Hale & Hearty completed its roll out of Appetize solutions across all 21 locations by February 2021. Despite being in the midst of a pandemic, Appetize project managers and engineers remotely helped their team implement and troubleshoot the system every step of the way. Hale & Hearty took advantage of both: simple features like controlling text size on terminal screens, and complex ones like menu and inventory management via the Connect enterprise portal.
