ChowNow vs. Oracle Simphony POS Systems

The ChowNow platform is rock solid with daily use. It is easy to set up and train new staff. Lower pricing with competitors is the only reason for the 8 of 10

Incentivized

In my experience, there has not been a resolution on outstanding tickets opened two years ago during the initial implementation. Simple things like time reporting, creating buttons, and marking items as "unavailable" have issues. The system has a lag when servers log out of checks that prevents them from opening the checks on another terminal without a wait that feels like an eternity in the restaurant industry and with direct impact to the guest. Good luck calling support. Most of my experience involves the person I spoke with having no idea how to fix my issue and having to "escalate the ticket." This escalation process will last weeks, months, and in our case, years with no resolution.

• menu updating
• receiving customer data
• adding photos to our menu
• submitting refunds/adjustments to customers

Incentivized

• Real time sales
• Real time labor costs
• Integration with account software

Incentivized

• Better structure of Pizza menus to ease 86 toppings
• The new interface could use some work. Smaller fonts make the "tickets" difficult to determine correct information. The system defaults to the last ticket time - The standard system was actually more accurate

Incentivized

• Support is awful. Oracle does not directly support end-users and depends on resellers to offer support. So if there is a bug or breaking change, we have to jump through hoops to get something fixed.
• Does not play well with other software or interfaces. There are interfaces but they lack a serious amount of features that are crucial to our business.
• The guest facing hardware does not hold up to constant use very well.
• The backend hardware is lacking in PCI compliance and is not meant for enterprise use.
• The software itself looks as if it is stuck in the early 2000s and there has been no sign of an update in many years.
• Reporting is difficult to set up and use and you have to rely on third-party reporting to get decent usable reports.

Incentivized

I push customers toward ChowNow instead of the references apps because of a) ChowNow has lower commission costs b) ChowNow gives customer data access c) ChowNow allows me to better issue refunds or adjustments. ChowNow however does not provide as much visibility to "new" potential customers. This is just my guess -- there are less average users on the ChowNow app on a nightly basis vs. the UberEats, DoorDash, Grubhubs of the world.

Incentivized

We've stayed with MICROS mainly due to that's how we've always operated and to switch operating POS systems would be a HUGE learning curve for everyone involved.

Incentivized

• Returning guests from the email campaigns
• Offering easy to use online ordering has increased sales

Incentivized

• Micros has allowed us to leverage our margin by using our own credit processor and loyalty program. We've seen success from both of these platforms (not Micros) and have been able to save money on the extra costs of using Micros.

Incentivized