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| Marks and Spencer Cafe Revive: Just page me - that's an order! |
 No need to shout for food at Marks and Spencer's Café Revive
When Marks and Spencer decided to revamp its in-store cafes as Café Revive coffee shops, it had a clear objective - to make them into a perfect environment for shoppers to take the weight off their feet, relax with a superb cup of coffee and grab a quick bite to eat. The idea was to create a calm haven in the frenetic, stressed out atmosphere of shopping.
"We wanted to get away from the traditional idea of self-service and use the modern approach where customers get their coffee, order their food, pay for it and then sit at a table until it is ready," says David Condliffe, Operations Co-ordinator 'Eat In'. "But we didn't want to go down the route of shouting out table numbers when the food is ready or making customers hang around the service area."
Marks and Spencer consulted with Call-Systems Technology about using a paging system for tracking orders in the new Café Revives. CST suggested its CustomerCall option coupled with an electronic order pad as the most suitable solution. CustomerCall is a very simple paging system consisting of a centralised transmitter and handheld pagers.
With the new system, customers are given a pager and make their food choice from either the menu board or the "Heat Me To Eat Me" display counter. The order is inputted into an electronic order pad and the customer is free to go directly to the checkout and then to their table to be paged once their order is ready.
"Two years ago we decided to trial the system in our Gateshead Home Furnishings Lifestore," says David Condliffe. "It was such a success that we knew by the end of the first day that this was the system for us. It's great, there's no hanging about, no writing down table numbers, no shouting out, no food backing up. It couldn't be better."
It didn't take long for Marks and Spencer to install the system into more Café Revives and it is currently in operation in 20 stores and expected to be in a further 30 to 40 stores by the end of this year.
"It's a very reliable system," says David Condliffe. "CST came and explained it all to us, checked with us that it was all working ok and helped with what little staff training was required. It's a high tech solution liked by both staff and customers."
The staff very quickly picked up how to use the system and preferred it over the old system as they no longer had to write down orders. An unexpected benefit of CustomerCall has been that it initiates a friendly dialogue between staff and customers as the pagers are handed out. Because the system streamlines the serving process staff also have much more time to explain menu items to customers.
CustomerCall is operated via a simple desktop transmitter that is easy to operate and install, plugging into any standard electrical socket. The pagers can use vibration, tone or flashing alert depending on user choice and they are stored in a compact rack charging system housing 20 pagers.
Café Revive's 55 seat cafes use about 20 pagers while the larger 100 seaters use 30 pagers. They don't tend to need more as the operation is aimed at a very short cook time averaging about 90secs. In practice most customers have only just reached their table when they are paged but in the rare instances when it takes longer customers are happy to sit and wait for their pager to tell them when the food is ready.
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Call-Systems Technology Ltd, Middlesex House, 29-45 High Street, Edgware, Middlesex HA8 7UU |
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