“We also had a separate clocking in/staff rota system, and we didn’t have a booking system at all,” adds Alison. The core appeal of the Tabology bar and restaurant EPOS, was that all these functions, as well as other applications, were available in one system. “When you look at the cost of having different systems for all these things, it’s prohibitive. Having everything in one place, which everyone knows how to use, makes so much more sense.”

Having hosted a number of pop-up food providers, Stonehouse decided to take the food offer in-house, and installed the kitchen just before the initial Covid lockdown. “Doing our own food, we’ve found that people treat us very much as a casual dining restaurant as well as somewhere to come for a drink, so being able to manage bookings is now very important.”

The Tabology bookings widget is embedded in the Stonehouse website, so online bookings come directly into the EPOS and back office. “We decided against having live booking. We review and confirm bookings as they come in.

“We prefer to keep that control, as the kitchen is relatively small compared to the overall size of the establishment. It would be very easy for us to be overbooked, especially as we have a lot of walk-ins. We review each booking request and confirm back, usually within a few hours.” The system is also used to automatically send email reminders to customers as their booking approaches.

“During the week, we tend to be very busy in the brewery, and we’ve noticed that we’re now having to deal with far fewer phone calls from customers making bookings, which can be time consuming, because they’re booking via the website instead.“   

Food and drink menus can be easily updated on the Tabology EPOS when new products are added, and pricing can be automatically changed according to the time of day. “We have a happy hour during the week, up to 5pm, when the beer’s a bit cheaper, and that ends automatically as we move into the busier evening trade.”

Using the Tabology gift card functionality customers can top up their own or someone else’s balance, generating an email link to download the gift card to an Apple or Google wallet, which is scanned by the EPOS in the venue to redeem the value. “That’s very popular with regulars, buying both for themselves, and as gifts,” says Alison.

Back of house, Tabology’s staff scheduling system is fully integrated into the EPOS, and recently it's been paying dividends. Alison says, "We used to just use it keep track of hours, but in the last few months, we've started using it to forecast wage percentages against sales forecasts. With things like National Insurance going up recently, it's really helped us keep on top of margins and find that balance between having enough staff if it gets busy, and keeping in profit."

The ability to compare specific days - for example, to compare wage/sales percentages on Saturdays - is a new feature that's been really helpful.

With Alison and Shane often busy in the brewery, it's the managers who are mainly responsible for staffing. "They are not the most techy, by their own admission, but they've found it really user friendly. We share management reports every week so they can see how their staffing decisions are saving the company money, and where we could be doing better."