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customer:
The Tavern Restaurant Group owns 15 restaurants in the Midwest and South of the United States, of which 10 are very successful British pub-themed restaurants called “The Pub”. The waiters of The Pub are dressed in kilts, and the menu includes a variety of classic pub dishes , And provide a variety of beers from the UK, Europe and the United States at the same time. This is a unique experience while maintaining a sense of reality. The company has always been proud of this kind of innovation.
Due to the high rate of customers returning, the Pub concept has been successful. The restaurant manager made the customers love this restaurant more through music performances, special food and some interesting activities, such as a guessing night (a small contest favored by customers) and a unique beer tap on the table. After being opened by the waiter, the guests on the table You can drink happily.
challenge:
In November 2010, Tavern Restaurant Group opened a new restaurant in Tampa, Florida. Opening a store is not an easy task. In addition to a saturated market and a sluggish economy, restaurant owners who decide to open a store in Tampa also have to face many other problems.
Considering the area of the restaurant and the two-story structure, the group feels that the Tampa restaurant should have some room for innovation. Initially, they wanted to install some tables with faucets on the second floor and use them as private rooms or semi-open private rooms for different customers.
In the process of investigating the latest beer table, Atlanta restaurant owner Jose Hevia recommended DraftServ Technologies to Tavern Restaurant Group. In addition to installing a beer management system for Jose, DraftServ Technologies also installed a block in his Cheeky restaurant. The beer wall is very popular with customers, and they can pour their own drinks in a self-service way.
This system makes the Tavern Restaurant Group’s eyes shine. Tavern Restaurant Group hopes to create a unique experience for customers while also better monitoring inventory. Therefore, they commissioned DraftServ to install a beer management system and beer wall for the entire Tampa restaurant. Due to the large area of the restaurant, they required the system to provide 20 self-service faucets.
working principle
Draft beer conveying control and management
All restaurant draft beer delivery systems are basically the same. The beer barrels are stored in the cold storage room, and the beer is transported to every corner of the restaurant through the glycol cooling line, so that customers can drink refreshing beer. Although it seems that the beer delivery is controlled by the last tap, there is usually at least one other valve on each pipeline. DraftServ uses high-quality industrial controllers to manage these internal valves and connects them to a back-end server that can be accessed via the Internet. In this way, they can remotely monitor the precise flow of beer from each tap around the clock.
In The Pub case, DraftServ monitors 52 regular beer taps, mostly in the bar area downstairs, and 20 on the beer wall upstairs.
A new way of conveying draft beer
After improving the management method of beer transportation, DraftServ uses RFID to add a new function: a fully self-service beer transportation system that allows customers to control by themselves. After customers show their proof of age, the waiter will give them a beer card. Customers can take this card to the beer wall with beer taps. After swiping the card, they can taste the beer at will, and pay by ounce at the same time. If they only want to taste one ounce, they can. If they drink slowly, they just want to pour half a glass, and then pour it after drinking, in order to maintain the smooth taste of the beer, it is also possible, no waiter is required, but it cannot be lower than the minimum standard set by the waiter. So as to realize the self-service drinking method of customers.
Technology
In order to make this system run, DraftServ cannot do without Impinj RFID technology. Each beer card contains a Monza RFID tag chip with a unique tag identification number. The waiter at The Pub in Tampa uses Apple iPod Touch devices to access the back-end computer server over the wireless network. After verifying the age of the customer, the waiter will open an interface, assign a card number to the customer’s label (this card can be reused), assign a drinking ration (for example, 40 ounces per person, 80 ounces for two, etc.), and then Close the interface.
High technical content, beautiful appearance. The beer wall of The Pub attracts many customers.
When the customer took the RFID card and came to the beer wall, they could see that there were four Apple iPads in the wooden frame on the wall. The screens of these iPads initially displayed the five beer brands in the beer machine. If a customer clicks on one of the brands, more information about the beer, such as taste, etc., will appear, so that the customer can learn more information and knowledge, which is really an extraordinary experience for the customer.
The Apple iPad in the wooden frame provides customers with information about the beer in the beer machine, and there is an Impinj Mini-Guardrail antenna inside.
There is an Impinj Mini-Guardrail antenna at the bottom of each wooden frame. These antennas are connected to the Impinj Speedway? Revolution RFID reader located under the beer stand. Customers only need to swipe their RFID card in front of the iPad screen, and the Speedway card reader will read the card number through the Mini-Guardrail antenna. Then communicate with the background computer server to transfer the read card number. The server uses the card number to access the customer’s information (such as name and related tags) previously associated with the card through the waiter’s interface, and then sends the information to the iPad, and a welcome message including the customer’s name will be displayed on the screen.
Customers can use a five-ounce “tasting” glass or a ten or twenty-ounce cup to taste any of the five beers in the beer machine within 20 seconds. However, they do not necessarily have to fill a glass. They can pour an ounce and taste it before deciding whether to have a full cup. If the customer’s beer reaches its limit, the beer will stop serving, and the waiter (who will assess whether the customer is still awake) can be refilled.
In this way, it appears that customers with RFID cards are operating the faucet. In fact, the backstage valve used by the industrial controller is the real controller of the beer flow.
Because Impinj RFID products are very reliable, the project chose to use them. The most unbearable thing for restaurant owners (especially those who specialize in draft beer) is that their beer delivery system fails during peak passenger flow. Impinj has been used in a variety of highly reliable systems. DraftServ believes that the RFID part of its beer management system can be as good as other parts. Because DraftServ has already installed a similar system in Atlanta, the process of installing an RFID beer wall at The Pub in Tampa went smoothly.
Results
Tavern Restaurant Group’s new store openings are usually “low-key”, without too much advertising or fanfare. The Tampa store was no exception, but news of the unique self-service beer wall (first appeared in Florida) spread quickly. Several reports about the restaurant paid special attention to the beer wall, which caused the restaurant’s popularity to surge and sales continued to increase. The management also noticed that there are more people booking parties than usual in the private room on the second floor where the beer wall is located.
Return on investment
As the restaurant installed a beer management system and beer wall as soon as it opened, they could not accurately estimate the impact on revenue growth. However, the company knows that if it does not have this technology, it may be a different situation. On the one hand, the cost of beer in the restaurant has dropped. The output of beer per barrel is about 16-20% higher than that of other bars. The sales volume of Beer Wall alone is very impressive. Take February 2011 as an example, the beer wall sold 13.7% more than the traditional beer machine downstairs.
It also allows managers to effectively manage employees. Initially, the system only provided a summary table of beer consumed every night. Managers feel that they need more details so that they can further monitor the consumption and sales of each waiter. With this feature, they can manage better.
By comparing the beer sales of Tampa with other restaurants, it can be seen that the larger sales of Tampa restaurants are due to the beer wall. They also noticed the educational effect of the beer wall, and the function of pouring a small amount of wine is also very popular with ladies. The self-service mode of the beer wall can enhance communication, and it is more relaxed and free than the traditional waiter mode.
Customers come to the beer wall not just to drink beer. After they get the card, they can also order food at the table, watch the game on the 50-inch monitor, talk to others, and add wine at their convenience. In order to maintain the freshness of the beer wall, managers will often change the types of beer. When the system was just installed, the pipes of the bar downstairs (still being poured by the waiter) were connected to the pipes of the beer wall. This means that the types of beers in the beer wall are very limited, because the bar downstairs has only four taps and does not change frequently. But after seeing the growing popularity of the beer wall, they decided to separate the pipelines so that the beer wall could provide more types of beer.
Tavern Restaurant Group is very satisfied with the beer management system and beer wall. Not only has it increased revenue by reducing costs and increasing sales, but the beer wall also brings a special experience that will surely attract more customers.
The average utilization rate of barrel beer in the industry (converted into actual income) is about 75%. The remaining 25% may be lost due to leakage, stolen, gift, or over-pouring (to form a rich foam on the top of the wine glass). Since there is so much room for improvement, restaurant owners naturally refuse to let it go, hoping to find a better way to manage their inventory. DraftServ Technologies’ beer delivery management system can increase the utilization rate of keg beer to more than 90%.
The beer wall not only attracts a large number of beer lovers, but also makes those who don’t drink beer much eager to try it. It uses the most advanced RFID technology to control every ounce of beer. Customers admire it so much, because they can pour whatever they want and control everything by themselves. We plan to promote this beer wall in new bars in the future and replace some of the older equipment with it.
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