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Bar automation in 2022

An automa­tion sys­tem is a soft­ware pack­age thanks to which the own­er of a cater­ing estab­lish­ment can con­trol and man­age all busi­ness process­es. This is much more effi­cient than try­ing to do every­thing by hand. The pur­pose of such soft­ware is to see visu­al indi­ca­tors and make the right deci­sions to improve them.
Bar automation in 2022
Bar automa­tion. Pho­to: glob­al­look­press

The automa­tion sys­tem helps to build sales ana­lyt­ics and under­stand which items on the menu should be empha­sized and which should be removed from it. With the help of the soft­ware, you can track the bal­ance of prod­ucts and goods and make an order on time, cal­cu­late the salaries of employ­ees, main­tain finan­cial state­ments and see prof­it indi­ca­tors, as well as main­tain a cus­tomer base and even take into account the pref­er­ences of a par­tic­u­lar guest.

So which sys­tem to choose for your insti­tu­tion? The KP edi­tors stud­ied this mar­ket and com­piled their own rat­ing of automa­tion sys­tems. You can choose any of them, tak­ing into account the needs of your bar.

Editor’s Choice

iiko

iiko

iiko is the soft­ware of a domes­tic man­u­fac­tur­er, so the sys­tem was devel­oped tak­ing into account the specifics of Russ­ian cater­ing estab­lish­ments. The sys­tem is most often used by pro­fes­sion­als who need a clear con­struc­tion of process­es, advanced report­ing, as well as main­tain­ing enter­prise stan­dards.

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Edi­tor’s Choice
iiko sys­tem
Pro­gram for bar automa­tion
Record all trans­ac­tions, con­trol employ­ees, plan pur­chas­es and deliv­er­ies in real time
Ask for a priceAll sys­tem fea­tures

In addi­tion to them, the sys­tem is suit­able for use by enter­pris­es for the deliv­ery of ready meals, as the func­tion­al­i­ty allows you to quick­ly deploy your web­site, take orders and con­trol the work of couri­ers. iiko can also use can­teens in a busi­ness cen­ter or at an enter­prise, fast food out­lets, cof­fee shops, and oth­er cater­ing estab­lish­ments.

Sev­er­al bars can be con­nect­ed to the sys­tem at the same time, which will be espe­cial­ly con­ve­nient for own­ers of a net­work of estab­lish­ments. Scal­ing from one insti­tu­tion to sev­er­al is quite easy, in addi­tion, you can get cen­tral­ized report­ing both for all insti­tu­tions as a whole, and for each sep­a­rate­ly. It is pos­si­ble to set up advanced man­age­ment reports.

You can con­nect the sys­tem with­out stop­ping the work of the insti­tu­tion, and you can con­fig­ure the soft­ware remote­ly. Equip­ment, if required, must be set up on site.

Thanks to the pro­gram, you can auto­mate pur­chas­es, pre­dict and ana­lyze sales, increase labor pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, get inven­to­ry results faster, cre­ate and man­age a loy­al­ty pro­gram, and see the results of mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties. The iiko pro­gram is equipped with an event-based video sur­veil­lance sys­tem that will help resolve con­flict sit­u­a­tions and iden­ti­fy the per­pe­tra­tors.

With iiko, you can con­trol table reser­va­tions, plan seat­ing for guests, and man­age large ban­quets effort­less­ly. In addi­tion, the func­tion­al­i­ty allows you to con­stant­ly mon­i­tor the work of staff — to see their actions in real time. Also, the own­er of the estab­lish­ment has access to any reports and noti­fi­ca­tions of sus­pi­cious trans­ac­tions.

Thanks to the built-in staff moti­va­tion mod­ule, pay­roll cal­cu­la­tion is much eas­i­er, and fines for vio­la­tions and bonus­es for good sales are cal­cu­lat­ed auto­mat­i­cal­ly.

The own­er of the estab­lish­ment will be able to plan expens­es online in a time­ly man­ner, con­trol prof­its and loss­es, and respond to any devi­a­tions in indi­ca­tors thanks to pro­fes­sion­al report­ing.

Thanks to flex­i­ble pric­ing, not only large enter­pris­es, but also small ones can get the basic func­tion­al­i­ty, and invest­ments pay off in a short time.

You can pur­chase a cloud ver­sion, the cost of which is from 1,490 rubles per month, depend­ing on the func­tion­al­i­ty. It is also pos­si­ble to pur­chase a local ver­sion for your serv­er at a price of 90,000 rubles.

In addi­tion to the basic func­tion­al­i­ty, the sys­tem can be inte­grat­ed with third-par­ty ser­vices, there­by expand­ing its func­tion­al­i­ty. You can con­nect a mobile appli­ca­tion for a guest or a wait­er, a deliv­ery site, third-par­ty loy­al­ty pro­grams, and much more. Local add-ons and exten­sions can be pur­chased at a price of 2,400 rubles. If you use the cloud ver­sion, the price starts from 290 rubles per month.

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Top 9 Best Bar Automation Systems in 2022

1.R‑keeper

R-keeper

The com­pa­ny that devel­oped this sys­tem has been on the mar­ket for more than 30 years and is rep­re­sent­ed in more than 40 coun­tries around the world. The soft­ware has been suc­cess­ful­ly imple­ment­ed by many large com­pa­nies. The sys­tem includes all the most nec­es­sary mod­ules that are suit­able for both a mini-bar and a net­work of estab­lish­ments. It is also con­stant­ly being improved, and the func­tion­al­i­ty is so exten­sive that not all bar own­ers can even assume that some of it can be use­ful, but lat­er they agree that it has become much eas­i­er to work and con­trol all process­es. There are also dis­ad­van­tages — the sys­tem is dif­fi­cult to inte­grate with third-par­ty pre-order ser­vices, bonus sys­tems, book­ing. In addi­tion, fed­er­al tech­ni­cal sup­port is a very expen­sive plea­sure.

The cost of the ser­vice starts from 2,000 rubles per month.

iiko pro­gram

Step-by-step instruc­tions and expert advice when work­ing with iiko

2. Tillypad

Tillypad

This is a sin­gle automa­tion sys­tem for a bar or oth­er cater­ing estab­lish­ment. Accord­ing to the devel­op­er, Tilly­pad is the fastest POS sys­tem that can work sta­bly with a large flow of guests. The pro­gram is easy to learn, and it has rich func­tion­al­i­ty.

With the help of soft­ware, you can take orders, pay guests, inter­act with the kitchen, imple­ment loy­al­ty pro­grams, reduce costs, and there­by increase prof­its.

Tilly­pad is dis­trib­uted both by sub­scrip­tion for 2,500 rubles per month, and by a life­time license for 25,000 rubles. life­time is a met­ric, trans­lat­ed as “user life­time”. That is, you can buy a life­time license and use the pro­gram until the restau­rant clos­es, you won’t have to pay extra in the future.

3. Poster

Poster

One of the first sys­tems in the field of cloud soft­ware. This pro­gram will be an ide­al solu­tion for a small estab­lish­ment. Instal­la­tion takes no more than 15 min­utes, and the func­tion­al­i­ty involves load­ing invoic­es, also includes a bonus sys­tem mod­ule, and in addi­tion, it involves a set of equip­ment for cash reg­is­ter automa­tion. When using the ser­vice, you can not be afraid to do some­thing wrong, since there is a sin­gle tech­ni­cal sup­port through­out the coun­try. In addi­tion, the sys­tem works in accor­dance with 54-FZ and EGAIS, which allows you to take into account the sale of alco­holic bev­er­ages.

The cost of the ser­vice starts from 1,520 rubles per month.

4. VLSI Presto

VLSI Presto

This is a cloud prod­uct from the com­pa­ny SBIS, which is engaged in elec­tron­ic doc­u­ment man­age­ment. The main advan­tage of the soft­ware is the abil­i­ty to upload incom­ing invoic­es via EDF VLSI. In addi­tion, the func­tion­al­i­ty includes the trans­fer of fis­cal data to the tax office, mod­ules for cooks and deliv­ery, CRM and the Mobile Wait­er wid­get. There are sev­er­al options for using the sys­tem: you can con­nect the basic func­tion­al­i­ty, and then add only the nec­es­sary func­tions. An inter­est­ing func­tion has also been imple­ment­ed — video record­ing of each punched check.

The cost of the ser­vice starts from 2,300 rubles per month.

5. Contour

Circuit

A pro­gram for a bar or oth­er cater­ing estab­lish­ment that auto­mates account­ing, estab­lish­ment menus and order­ing sup­plies. It is pos­si­ble to work EGAIS and “Mer­cury” in one win­dow. The func­tion­al­i­ty involves the cre­ation of tech­no­log­i­cal maps of dish­es. The pro­gram itself counts stock bal­ances, keeps records of prod­ucts, there­by increas­ing prof­itabil­i­ty, reduc­ing costs, sim­pli­fy­ing the con­trol of the activ­i­ties of staff and estab­lish­ments, and reduc­ing the num­ber of errors of work­ers.

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The cost of the ser­vice is from 6,200 rubles per year.

Free tri­al peri­od of 14 days.

Restau­rant automa­tion

Choos­ing pro­grams for restau­rant busi­ness automa­tion

6. Athol Food

Athol Food

The sys­tem works only on a monoblock SIGMA, which con­tains a fis­cal print­er in the case. That is, in fact, the own­er of the estab­lish­ment buys a monoblock, a fis­cal print­er and soft­ware only once. The pro­gram fea­tures are stan­dard, there are no spe­cial fea­tures. At the same time, the sys­tem itself is not very pop­u­lar, and the com­pa­ny can car­ry spare parts for a long time if the equip­ment fails. In this case, sales will not be tak­en into account dur­ing all this time.

The equip­ment costs 17,400 rubles, and you can choose from sev­er­al tar­iffs, the ini­tial price is 2,900 rubles per year.

7. Yuma

Yoma

A com­plex sys­tem for automat­ing the activ­i­ties of a bar or oth­er cater­ing estab­lish­ment. It includes: a back office, which can be accessed from any device and at any time see up-to-date infor­ma­tion about stock bal­ances, dis­counts, gen­er­ate the nec­es­sary report, as well as an online check­out.

Bar staff will be able to inde­pen­dent­ly receive infor­ma­tion about orders in real time. Judg­ing by the reviews of restau­rant own­ers, when using this sys­tem, labor pro­duc­tiv­i­ty increas­es, and it also sim­pli­fies the analy­sis of the insti­tu­tion’s activ­i­ties.

The cost of the soft­ware is 28,000 rubles, in the future you do not need to pay any­thing extra.

8. Paloma 365

Paloma 365

Com­plete­ly secure automa­tion sys­tem for cater­ing estab­lish­ments. This is pos­si­ble due to the fact that all infor­ma­tion is stored in the cloud, and syn­chro­niza­tion occurs every 2 min­utes. The pro­gram can work with­out Inter­net access for two weeks and save all the data dur­ing this time. Thanks to the sys­tem, you can estab­lish con­ve­nient con­trol over the activ­i­ties of the insti­tu­tion, man­ag­ing all process­es in one appli­ca­tion.

The cost starts from 1,100 rubles per month.

Free tri­al peri­od of 15 days.

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9. Dooglys

dooglys

This automa­tion sys­tem is cloud-based and includes a full cycle of work of a cater­ing estab­lish­ment and is capa­ble of automat­ing the entire oper­a­tion of the estab­lish­ment. It is pos­si­ble to con­nect addi­tion­al equip­ment to the soft­ware, as well as inte­gra­tion with EVOTOR and MSPOS online cash reg­is­ters, POS ter­mi­nals on Win­dows OS, 1C Account­ing — one-way from Doo­glys to 1C. In addi­tion, you can con­nect a scan­ner, scales and a label print­er to it. There is a mobile appli­ca­tion for the man­ag­er and sep­a­rate­ly for the dri­ver, as well as a client appli­ca­tion. The head of the bar can use the soft­ware to receive any reports on rev­enue, the move­ment of goods in ware­hous­es. You can con­nect sev­er­al estab­lish­ments at once.

The cost of the sys­tem is from 300 to 2,200 rubles per month, the con­nec­tion of a sec­ond cash desk is 1,100 rubles per month, main­te­nance is from 1,000 to 1,500 rubles per month.

How to choose a bar automation system

Before you decide on a spe­cif­ic sys­tem, you need to know what a stan­dard automa­tion sys­tem includes. It usu­al­ly con­sists of three mod­ules:

  • Cashier mod­ule. With its help, the employ­ees of the hall dis­trib­ute orders to the tables and car­ry out sales in the for­mat of a quick check.
  • Mod­ule for the man­ag­er of the insti­tu­tion. It implies the pos­si­bil­i­ty of cre­at­ing and adjust­ing menus, as well as upload­ing sales reports using dif­fer­ent fil­ters and cat­e­gories.
  • Ware­house mod­ule. Here you can cre­ate a new recipe, cal­cu­late the cost of a dish and find out the food left­overs.

The list­ed blocks are basic, they are usu­al­ly found in most automa­tion sys­tems. At the same time, some soft­ware includes addi­tion­al mod­ules that fur­ther sim­pli­fy bar man­age­ment. For exam­ple, it can be a bonus sys­tem mod­ule, a mod­ule for chefs, a book­ing mod­ule, a deliv­ery mod­ule, and oth­ers. Choos­ing one or anoth­er func­tion­al­i­ty is based on the real needs of the insti­tu­tion, oth­er­wise there is a high risk of over­pay­ing for unnec­es­sary soft­ware fea­tures.

Popular questions and answers

The edi­tors of Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da asked an expert to answer the most fre­quent ques­tions of own­ers and man­agers of bars, San­dul­sky Alexan­der Alexan­drovich, head of the Finoko project.

How long does it take on aver­age to auto­mate a bar?
It can take from a cou­ple of days to sev­er­al months to auto­mate a bar. Depends on what needs to be done. The sim­plest is account­ing automa­tion. Installing and con­fig­ur­ing the pro­gram will take sev­er­al days. This must be done at a very ear­ly stage — with­out well-estab­lished account­ing, the insti­tu­tion sim­ply will not open. As a rule, in this case, 1C indus­try solu­tions are imple­ment­ed. You can call it a manda­to­ry, “zero” stage.

The next step is to auto­mate the account­ing of rev­enue, the work of the hall and the trans­fer of orders to the kitchen. Today, with­out this, not a sin­gle cater­ing estab­lish­ment will be able to become com­pet­i­tive. Such automa­tion, tak­ing into account the pur­chase of equip­ment, lay­ing net­works, train­ing staff and set­ting up soft­ware, can take about a month. As a rule, prepa­ra­tion begins even in the process of repair­ing the premis­es: net­works are laid, print­ers and sta­tions for wait­ers are installed. The mar­ket for such automa­tion is divid­ed between the two largest play­ers — iiko and r_keeper. The instal­la­tion of these soft­ware and hard­ware sys­tems will cost about half a mil­lion rubles.

The next lev­el of bar man­age­ment account­ing automa­tion solves the prob­lem of syn­chro­nous cost account­ing (1C: Account­ing) and income (select­ed sys­tem). Thus, on a dai­ly basis, the own­er and direc­tor of the bar-restau­rant can see how much mon­ey he actu­al­ly earned. Such top-lev­el man­age­ment account­ing, con­sol­i­dat­ing data from all infor­ma­tion sys­tems, is absolute­ly nec­es­sary for devel­op­ing com­pa­nies that open new estab­lish­ments. Such automa­tion takes up to three months after the open­ing of the bar, because it takes time to form tech­no­log­i­cal maps and run busi­ness process­es.

Anoth­er class of infor­ma­tion sys­tems can be called aux­il­iary — these are var­i­ous ser­vices for man­ag­ing loy­al­ty, deliv­ery and mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties. Such solu­tions are rel­a­tive­ly inex­pen­sive and are imple­ment­ed quick­ly enough — with­in a cou­ple of weeks, said Alexan­der San­dul­sky.

How effec­tive is the intro­duc­tion of automa­tion sys­tems in bars?
If we talk about the automa­tion of rev­enue account­ing, then sys­tems of this lev­el are need­ed to con­trol the integri­ty of the staff. And this prob­lem can­not be solved by instal­la­tion alone, even if it is the best pro­gram. In any case, human con­trol on the part of man­agers will be need­ed, the expert believes. And in this case, the effec­tive­ness of automa­tion is deter­mined by the qual­i­fi­ca­tions of man­age­ment and the sys­tem for orga­niz­ing all the work of the staff. The pro­gram is just a tool, and for the bar to work well, you also need peo­ple who know how to use it. By itself, the soft­ware will not cre­ate any mir­a­cle.

How­ev­er, the expert added that the human fac­tor plays a much greater role in the con­trol of the bar. After all, it is known that if cooks bring food home, then bar­tenders bring alco­hol to work and sell “left­ists”. This is often very poor­ly con­trolled. In addi­tion, there are prac­ti­cal­ly no pric­ing cards in bars. How many grams in which cock­tail is poured to under­stand and con­trol is quite dif­fi­cult. And in gen­er­al, it would be nice to first achieve that all checks made their way. The real­i­ty is that bar cus­tomers are under­stand­ably obliv­i­ous to this. The per­cent­age of punched checks in a bar is very dif­fer­ent from, for exam­ple, a cafe. Because of all these fea­tures, bar automa­tion is usu­al­ly lim­it­ed to rev­enue account­ing and turnover con­trol, says Alexan­der San­dul­sky.

Man­age­ment account­ing of the high­est lev­el, which would give infor­ma­tion on a dai­ly basis how much this or that insti­tu­tion has earned, is extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to imple­ment, if at all pos­si­ble. It is very dif­fi­cult to ade­quate­ly cal­cu­late the cost and write-offs. Con­duct­ing an inven­to­ry in a bar is a non-triv­ial task, to put it mild­ly. How to cal­cu­late how much is left in the set of half bot­tles? Not to men­tion the preva­lence of all sorts of fraud on the part of the staff. Of course, there are con­trol meth­ods — this is pho­tograph­ing bot­tles, fol­lowed by cal­cu­la­tions of the bal­ances and video mon­i­tor­ing of the work of employ­ees. But these are quite com­plex and expen­sive sys­tems. The cost of hard­ware, soft­ware and human labor will be quite high. Per­haps only bars at hotels can real­ly afford to count the bal­ances to the near­est mil­ligram.

Such account­ing sys­tems are not wide­ly used. Not only because of their com­plex­i­ty — when these tech­nolo­gies meet the human fac­tor, this meet­ing does not always end in mutu­al love. And this is espe­cial­ly true in bars. Thus, the com­plex­i­ty of the top-lev­el account­ing sys­tem in bars exceeds its real need, the expert believes. It is eas­i­er to nego­ti­ate with bar­tenders, who, as a rule, sim­ply set tar­gets for rev­enue and turnover of var­i­ous types of prod­ucts.

Is it pos­si­ble to cre­ate a bar automa­tion pro­gram your­self?
Can. If the own­er of the bar has a lot of extra mon­ey and time. Tens of mil­lions of dol­lars have been invest­ed in the devel­op­ment of soft­ware solu­tions like iiko or r_keeper. There are enough automa­tion prod­ucts on the mar­ket for any wal­let. It is not clear from whom it is not clear to order “cus­tom” crafts, it makes no sense, he believes San­dul­sky Alexan­der. For exam­ple, mak­ing an account­ing pro­gram is rel­a­tive­ly easy. How­ev­er, the leg­is­la­tion in this area is chang­ing so inten­sive­ly (which means the pro­gram must be con­stant­ly changed) that invest­ments in keep­ing it up to date will exceed devel­op­ment costs in a year. There is some sense in order­ing the indi­vid­ual devel­op­ment of addi­tion­al ser­vices: for loy­al­ty man­age­ment, for account­ing for deliv­ery, table reser­va­tions and mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties. In this mar­ket, there are many small devel­op­ers, small bud­gets and a huge amount of “raw” soft­ware prod­ucts. So, if you want some­thing spe­cial, you can look in this direc­tion, but an attempt to “rein­vent the wheel” by get­ting involved in the devel­op­ment of solu­tions for account­ing and man­age­ment account­ing can result in mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar costs with zero results.

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