NOW Group, social enterprise
"I'm a huge fan of the Tabology system, in terms of its ease of use and the reports that we can get. It has streamlined our organisation." Dwayne Kettlewell, Head of Operational Delivery for NOW Group.
NOW Group is a social enterprise, based in Belfast, which supports people with learning difficulties and autism into jobs with a future. As part of a broad range of services, NOW operates Loaf Catering, which currently runs five cafés.
These include three in Belfast - The Bobbin, Olympia, and Loaf Café and Bakery. There is also a café and pottery in Crawfordsburn, Co Down, and a café at the Ulster American Folk Park in Omagh.
The cafés serve coffee and drinks, snacks, and light meals, and a core part of the ethos is offering jobs and training in the skills needed to work in the hospitality sector. The offer is also being expanded to allow customers to order online for delivery and collection, which will be linked online to the group’s corporate catering business to offer an integrated ordering and delivery service.
Loaf uses the Tabology Cafe EPOS system, which is linked across all its sites and managed centrally by Dwayne Kettlewell, Head of Operational Delivery for NOW Group. “One key benefit for me is the ease with which I can operate the system centrally,” he says. “Our previous EPOS made it very difficult to makes changes; if we wanted to raise the price of a cup of tea, we had to make the change to each individual till system.”
Using Tabology, Dwayne is able to maintain a single database of products and pricing for all the food and drink items sold across the group, and tailor the EPOS for each site so that only relevant products are displayed. “For example, we only have one outlet that currently sells pizza, so it’s only on their EPOS, but if we want to add it to the menu at another site, I can do that instantly from my desk.
“Tabology is growing with us, so when we opened our fifth site recently, the whole finance piece in terms of setting up the till and the menu was done already, so I just had to press the button. I was able to set up all the options, and it’s really easy to add a new product or change the pricing. The staff in the outlets also find the EPOS very easy to use, and were able to start using its straight away.”
The Tabology system has also proved an asset to the back office. “Previously, a stock take was carried out at the end of the month, typed up, and handed to finance three days later. It’s now available instantly, so we’ve gained three days in our financial month. I’m a huge fan of the Tabology system, in terms of its ease of use and the reports that we can get. It has streamlined our organisation.”
Dwayne plans to introduce the takeaway and delivery functionality of Tabology’s EPOS.
“The Tabology WhatsApp group is very useful when we need that kind of support, and their online training manuals are also excellent.”
To find out more about our Cafe EPOS system, and how it could work in your venue, get in touch.
