Jolt is a task and workforce management, with time & attendance, remote (selfie) login, scheduling, and simple tasking tools, from the company of the same name in Provo, Utah; useful for small teams that could leverage frequent communication.
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Toast Point of Sale
Score 7.1 out of 10
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Toast Point of Sale is a cloud-based restaurant point of sale solution provided as the foundation for Toast's all in one restaurant management solution which supports payment processing, as well as customer care, gift cards and loyalty, as well as back of house and back office (HR, payroll, schedule and shift management, etc.).
There is no better way for Cleaning & Maintenance Lists. The follow-up is automatic, it is user-friendly for leaders, and easy to update as needs change.
I am excited for the new updates coming out that will help our new hire training!
For restaurants it's great, and that's the only scenario I'm really use to seeing it. However I do have to say that during Christmas time, our city has a craft bizarre where local artists are featured and sell their wares, and this Bizarre was using Toast POS. Therefore, I think it can really span across all avenues. It's great because of how it categorizes menus, and how you can run reports like a p-mix to see your top sellers, and bottom sellers, etc. The more I think of it, now, really any business that sells something and needs to track those sales, could use this POS. A tire store? Sure. A hat shop? Absolutely. The great thing about Toast is that it is just SO customizable! You can even make the buttons different colors, that's how customizable it is. Lastly, the ability to sell online has been a game-changer. I wish there was a little bit better formatting for online ordering, but really, you can add pictures, descriptions, modifiers, use discount codes, and accept gift cards all online. We didn't have to build out an online store, we just had to build out our menu buttons and we were all set.
Time management and tracking of daily employee productivity.
Allows for instructional data to be added to all our checklists, audits, etc to provide hands on training all the time!
Ease of use. It's a breeze to create new lists and use the lists already created
Mobility- my staff is on the go and being able to grab an iPad at the beginning of their shift and take it with them through the day completing tasks and allowing for more autonomy in our work force
Versatile. Can be use for simple list down to more complex guides and checklists with calculations and scoring.
We would love to see a "favorites" icon that can be enabled for any label. We have dozens of labels specific to products/processes that are grouped within a multitude of categories. If one is not familiar with which category a label is stored, it requires the use of the search function in Jolt (which is definitely a nice feature and great time saver). However, we were able to create a category called "favorites" and duplicated our frequently used labels into this location for ease of access.
Though sales details are available in real time, the analytics take 2-3 days to post. So if you are looking for specific modifications you'll have to wait.
Though you can edit the menus directly from the devices and move them around like you do on a smartphone, it doesn't give you a sorting option. If you're OCD like me, you have to alphabetize my hand.
Jolt is very user friendly and offers a lot of solutions to my companies needs. If it offered a Payroll piece and a Point of Sale piece it would make it a complete system that would solve 99% of my companies needs.
There are many features I wish Toast had that it currently does not, but we are likely to renew this year because given Toast's recent increase in funding and expanding of their staff, we are hopeful some of these issues will finally be resolved in 2019. Plus, though I've never done it, I'd imagine that switching to another POS system would take a ton of time, money, and resources---things most businesses don't have a lot of. So we'll sit tight with Toast for now and see what they come up with this year in terms of fixing our biggest pain-points.
The system itself is very user friendly and every one of our team members is able to use it easily. The only difficulty that we have occasionally run into is a lack of connectivity between the Bluetooth printer and the iPAD. There are only two or three of us on staff that are well versed enough with the product to be able to fix it when there is this kind of issue.
Toast POS is a great basic POS tool, having some features I didn't think would be possible at this price point, such as:
processing CC payments in "offline mode" in case there is an internet outage
kitchen display screens
collecting payment from customers using a handheld right at their table
pre-approving card payments to assure the customer has enough money to pay for their order, etc
That being said, I still feel that Toast misses the mark on some things that I truly would consider 'common-sense' features, such as:
providing hardware that connects the Register Screen (Elo) to the Cash drawer so it doesn't fall off the table when flipped over for customer signature
accepting physical and e-gift cards as payment on their own online ordering platform (ToastOO)
a Rewards Program that allows for online enrollment, rather than holding up quick-serve lines to sign up
a Promo code feature that allows you to add basic restrictions such as Limit 1 per customer, or date/time limitations
increasing in-store operations efficiency by creating more straight-forward ways to manage restaurant/ToastOO hours, and Delivery/Takeout quote estimates
Facing these issues after 3+ years has been a frustration. We hope Toast has some solutions in mind that they will be implementing in 2019.
When I have had questions or needed technical support, I have received a very prompt response to my emails. The answers are concise and if there are instructions they are easy to follow and implement. All interactions I have had with the Jolt team have been a very positive experience.
Jolt provides a full house of solutions. I would have to go with at least two of the other companies to capture all the solutions I was looking for. Jolt gave me all of it. I also want to be clear that other companies promised solutions that they hadn't built out yet. Jolt is upfront and honest about things they are working on, but they won't sell them to you as a means to get you in, only to disappoint you. I have a lot of respect for that.
Toast is so much easier to use than Breadcrumb. The display is so much easier to navigate. The card readers are more quality with Toast. Chownow was hard because it had its own printer, different than our kitchen printer, for to go orders, but now with Toast's all in one ordering we get the to go orders sent to the kitchen with the same ease as if they were getting fired from the main floor.
Food safety processes have reduced significant amount of time managing.
Cleanliness- Saved some labor dollars here by implementing a more consistent process. Added some training videos on cleanliness to help give a clear message of the expectation.
Recipe Management- We have saved thousands on having the ability to upload live recipes and be global rather than having the paper copies of recipes laying around and possibly not being up to date.
