Minglewood — A high tech restaurant for a high tech community
A group of us from Amadeus Consulting recently ventured out to try a new restaurant called Minglewood that had opened nearby. The food is delicious and the service is amazing, but what really caught our eye is the iPad/iPod™ point-of-sale system the restaurant uses to take orders.
Being fascinated by new technologies and how they are being used by businesses, we decided to sit down with Tom Nash, the Chef and Owner of Minglewood to ask him about it.
Tom has over 30 years of experience in the restaurant industry and has worked out on the east coast as well as around Boulder. Minglewood specializes in deli-type sandwiches, but offers unique daily specials as well as more robust dinner options. Tom is also especially proud of the bar which has a hand-picked selection of wine, beer, and spirits. Tom and the staff also offered us a selection of free desserts, which were equally delicious.
Minglewood has dropped the traditional cash register that you might see at most restaurants and uses a point-of-sale iPod/iPad app called Ambur to manage orders, reservations and seating.
If you place an order at the bar or counter, the server will use an iPad to type in the order and calculate payments. During happy hour and dinner times, the wait staff uses iPod Touches to place orders from the tables which then wirelessly sync to the chef in the kitchen.
“Ambur lets us do two things which are important to us,” Tom said. “First, it allows our wait staff to spend more time at the tables to ensure everyone is being served properly, and second, it is much less expensive to implement which saves us money.”
All totaled the hardware and software costs of using an iPad/iPod point-of-sale system is approximately a fifth of what a traditional cashier system would cost.
For processing credit cards however, Minglewood still uses a traditional credit card scanner rather than Square or other payment systems specially designed for mobile transactions.
“We were not comfortable with some of the partners and options that these services lock you into,” Tom said. “Plus we needed the ability to print receipts, which is something Square does not offer.”
There are multiple point-of-sale systems available for the iPad and other iOS devices, as well as a couple for other platforms. Between all of them, Minglewood chose Ambur because it was the least expensive, it was entirely self-contained, and it worked within a Wi-Fi network rather than a 3G or other data connection. The restaurant also used the help of a Colorado technology consulting firm to set up and install the system.
“There’s been a learning curve, and as with any new system, there have been some bugs we have to work out, but overall we’re very happy with it,” Tom said.
Minglewood is only the third restaurant in Colorado to implement a mobile ordering system like this, and the first in Boulder. We definitely recommend stopping by to check it out, as well as enjoying the food and the atmosphere. It’s very delicious!
