(For those new to the column, Forward Migration is our term for companies moving from Wintel machines to Macs — or at least adding or increasing the number of Macs they use. A Forward Migration Kit is an overview of Mac OS products for a particular occupation, such as photography, optometry, etc.)
This week we conclude our two-part series that looks at Macintosh software suitable for restaurant owners and operators.
QuickPlan
QuickPlan is restaurant business plan software that runs on both Macs (the traditional operating system, not Mac OS X) and Wintel machines.
Designed to help restaurant owners develop a comprehensive five-year business plan, it includes years of budgets, income statements, balance sheets, cash flow analysis and “key financial ratio analysis.” With QuickPlan2000 you can edit and fill in the details of an already written and organized sample restaurant business plan and outline.
The included analysis is written based upon current sources including the National Restaurant Associations’ Food Industry Analysis. You can use your Mac’s word processor to turn this sample plan into your own. Once you have finished editing, you can print your plan and insert it into an included three ring binder, indexing it according to the pre-labeled inserts for a professional presentation.
ProZk
ProBe Software makes ProZk touchscreen point of sale software for the Mac. The software is in use in restaurants, cafeterias, juice and coffee bars, as well as health clubs. The company plans on releasing a Mac OS X version of ProZk within the next two months.
“It will run in Mac OS X, OS 9, and even Windows and Linux,” Karl Rueby, vice president of ProBe, told MacCentral. “As always, the software will support multiple kitchen and bar printers, full ingredient control, sales reports, time clock, tip reporting, multiple sales screens (restaurant, bar and telephone orders), and all the rest of the features restaurant owners expect of a full-featured POS system. We supply hardware as well, as part of a complete package.”
ProBe will also be releasing a Mac OS X version of ProBe, their retail/inventory software for retail stores.
Sixth Sense Cafe
Sixth Sense Software has POS software for restaurants as well as retail stores. Their restaurant software is called Sixth Sense Cafe, of which a demo is available.
Sixth Sense POS is a software program to turn the Mac into a cash register. All functions of a cash register have been duplicated and enhanced in this program. You are able to make a normal sale printing out to a receipt printer or do refunds, discounts (custom, item or general), look up information on a particular item, receive payments on an account (Sixth Sense POS handles personal or corporate accounts including generating statements) or record any paid outs, all from one screen.
Sixth Sense Cafe has all the features of Sixth Sense POS; the method to enter a sale is the main difference between the two programs. And with Sixth Sense Cafe, when you press the ‘Take Order’ button you are presented with screens with the names of everything on the menu, for entering items into the sale. The taking of an order can be completely done with the mouse or touch screen. There are no PLU (bar code) numbers to remember. The orders are automatically printed to the bar, cold kitchen or hot kitchen depending on the type of preparation the item needs.
With Sixth Sense Cafe you can print checks in three different ways. Print a single check with one total, print a single check showing each guests total and one grand total or print a separate check for each guest. With inventory control you can automatically deduct from stock the items used to make a menu item.
Miscellaneous
The folks at Spisekartet run a Web site that features Oslo’s largest, and most complete restaurant guide. The site is hosted on their in-house G4 running Mac OS X Server and Lasso 5. The database started off in FileMaker, but last month they completed their transition to LassoMySQL, which greatly sped things up, Web designer Adrian Enok Fris told MacCentral.
In addition to providing a restaurant guide, Spisekartet also provides online menus for restaurants. These are available at the restaurant’s own Web pages (such as http://www.la-petite-provence). The menus are administered by the restaurants via a Web user interface and can be updated as often as needed.
“We started this project four years ago, and were up and running within six months,” Fris said. “By using the combination of Lasso, FileMaker and now MySQL on the Mac platform (what else?), we were able to put this site together with no previous database experience. Today it has evolved into a powerful and modular solution with a quick turnaround time, thanks to software that lets us focus on the bigger picture (functionality, features, designer), rather than coding in arcane software languages.”
Ben Rosenthal said that Squirrel Systems, makers of SQUiRREL, have a Linux version. He’d love to see it brought to Mac OS X. He also pointed out that EES Companies has software for point of sale (among other tasks) that’s Mac compatible.
“It looks like it’s also a few years old and could stand to move forward to Mac OS X,” Rosenthal said. “It also serves POS/OE 4 PDA.”
The Chef’s Desk Web site offers a list of software programs and POS systems available to the food service industry.
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