Newsletters
January Newsletter 2012
January 30, 2012 | 
Author 5 Food Cost Tips
Make sure your cooks aren’t guessing at portion sizes, but rather are using specific measurements. Also, after your tables are cleared, take note of any food that your customers aren’t eating – if there is food consistently not being finished from plate-to-plate, your serving size may be too large. Enacting stricter portion controls can have a positive – and noticeable – impact on your food inventory.
The National Restaurant Association says this is an effective way to control food costs, and it makes sense. Waiting to prepare food until after an item is entered into your POS ensures that you don’t have any unrecorded sales occurring.3. Keep track of your spillage and waste
Document any mistakes, spills, contamination or customer returns – otherwise, “invisible” waste could distort your inventory numbers. Tracking waste effectively and accurately will provide you important data that enables more precise food orders.
4. Educate your staff
In order to successfully keep your costs low, your team needs to know how important it is to keep your inventory in check. Confirm that your cooks are following the recipes precisely. Educate your servers on proper drink portions. Make sure your staff knows the importance of recording wasted or spilled food.
5. Utilize an inventory control system
Inventory systems today can offer real-time data access, be customized to fit your current inventory organization and can be scaled to meet your needs, whether as a single restaurant or multi-unit chain.
1. Know your employees. How well do you know the people that are working for you? There is no substitute for working as closely as possible with your team and knowing their various personalities and routines. That cannot totally prevent theft from occurring, however. Check your applicant’s references before hiring them and conduct employee screening if necessary. If you notice your employees behaving inconsistently, or having a change in attitude, you may want to observe them closer. Establishing a rapport with your staff can at least provide a degree of intuition into whether theft may be occurring.
2. Develop a comprehensive loss prevention program for your restaurant. Clearly define the expectations on handling cash, processing transactions, providing food comps and voiding orders. Discuss theft prevention in the hiring, training and review processes. Heighten awareness of preventing employee theft within your team and reduce the opportunities for them to steal, making sure they understand the response to incidents if/when they occur.
3. Get to know the scams. There are many ways that your staff can take from your cash drawer – most involve comps, voids or the transfer of food items. Here are just a few of the scams that can occur within a restaurant.
- Callie Sheffield – Aloha Support Specialist, IMP Department
- Jon Thole – POS Technical Support Specialist, CSD
- Rachel Perkins – Aloha Support Specialist, IMP Department
BIG CONGRATULATIONS…
Kim Slavin, who has been promoted to Implementation Support!
Posted in 
December Newsletter
The State of the Gift Card [INFOGRAPHIC]
Did you know that gift cards are the number one item on Americans’ wish lists? The statistics shown in this infographic reinforce what we all know – selling gift cards just makes sense! After being wowed these statistics, continue through the newsletter as we highlight ways for you to increase your gift card sales heading into the final stretch of the holiday season
Have You Tried These Gift Card Promotion Ideas?
You’ve got the slick gift card display at the check-out counter. You’re also offering gift cards for sale on your website, but you are still struggling to realize a lift in your overall gift card purchases. Try these simple but effective ideas that you may not have considered for improving the promotion of your gift cards.
6 Big Gift Card Sales Mistakes
Consumers were eager to make purchases for themselves and their loved ones, and chances are that you were ready to participate by offering gift cards. But selling gift cards is more than just throwing up a display stand with some plastic cards and envelopes. Are you making any of these gift card mistakes
4 Ways Social Media Helps You Sell Gift Cards
It’s true that gift cards can boost sales during the holidays and help you generate revenue through the year – but all of your competitors are going to be competing with you to a big slice of the gift card pie this season. Sure, you can place the cards by the registers and put marketing materials in your store – but are you doing anything your competitors aren’t? Here are four ways you can use social media to sell and promote your gift cards.
Our Welcomes and Congratulations!
We are excited to announce our newest additions to the BEC POS team! Please welcome:
- Dottie Shannon- Accounting
- Patrick McDermont- Aloha Support Speciality, Implementation Department
- Anthony Moscardino – POS Technical Support Specialist, Customer Service Deparment
A big CONGRATULATIONS goes out to Tia Kelly, who has been promoted to Administrative Assistant!
November 2011 Newsletter
Restaurant Guard Makes the Harvard Business Review
We are honored to announce that the Harvard Business Review used Aloha Restaurant Guard, a loss prevention tool that protects your restaurant’s bottom line profits by identifying fraudulent activity at the point-of-sale, to show the future of hosted technology as an example of where cloud computing is already making an impact today! You can read the article here, on page six.
How does mobile technology give restaurant owners greater flexibility?
Mobility provides operators the ability to receive information that can be acted upon anywhere at any time; therefore, important decisions can be made immediately, rather than after the fact, hours or days later. Watch this video to see how the combination of real-time store data, cloud-based insight and a powerful mobile application positively impact your business.
BEC eLearning
If you have a software and/or hardware maintenance contract, don’t forget to utilize BEC eLearning, an online training and education service for Radiant and Aloha products. You or your staff can access the BEC eLearning through the internet anywhere, at anytime, to maximize the benefits of your solution. Make use of the demos offered through the BEC eLearning as refresher courses for yourself, or even to help train new staff members.
Contact us for more information!
Gift Card Sales Tips – Don’t Miss Out!
It’s true that gift cards can boost sales during the holidays and help you generate revenue through the year – but all of your competitors are going to be competing with you to a big slice of the gift card pie this season. Here are six quick things you can do to increase gift card sales.
1. Send a promotional email promoting gift cards.
2. Make sure employees are trained on suggestively selling gift cards.
3. Package gift cards so that there is no extra wrapping necessary.
4. Run an employee contest for most gift cards sold.
5. Use your social networks to remind your raving fans what you can offer them for the holidays. Here are some tips to get you started!
6. Do a special “social network only” promotion, offering a percentage off of any gift cards purchased that day.
New Credit Card Compliance Required for MasterCard & Discover
Have you heard about the new credit card mandates for MasterCard & Discover? MasterCard and Discover are modifying their rules concerning the processing of debit, prepaid and gift cards.
What are the requirements? MasterCard and Discover are requiring that all merchants support the following:Balance response transactions – For prepaid and gift cards, once the card has been used, the remaining account balance will be transmitted along with the authorization response. The remaining balance must be printed on the customer receipt, displayed on the Web page or point-of-sale terminal, or both.
Partial authorization transactions- When a customer’s transaction amount exceeds the balance available on their debit, prepaid or gift card, instead of declining the transaction, a partial authorization for the amount available to the customer will be returned. This will allow the customer to pay for the remaining amount with another form of payment. This is called a split-tender transaction.
Authorization reversals – An authorization reversal is a real-time transaction initiated when the customer decides that they do not want to proceed with the transaction, or if the merchant cannot complete the transaction for any reason. Authorization reversals free up the customer’s available balance on their debit, prepaid or gift card.
What is required to support these mandates?
Several factors determine what you need to do to support these mandates, such as whether you accept PIN debit. In all cases, an upgrade to Aloha EDC v7.0 is required, and you may also require an upgrade of the Aloha POS version in use.
So what should you do?
At your earliest opportunity, contact your processor representative to determine the enforcement time schedule and any fees that may be associated with non-compliance to the mandates. Then contact our office so that we can conduct a needs assessment of your site to determine what you need to do to be compliant with the mandates.
Top 10 Headlines of October
Did you hear about all of the great things that happened last month? Take a look – it was a great one, filled with Scary Stories and mobility features! Make sure to leave a comment if there’s anything else that should have made the Top Headlines list for October.
Restaurant Horror Stories
Halloween was last month, and we’re all aware of the stories of the Headless Horseman or the Great Pumpkin. But, how well do you know – or can relate to – the tales of horror and fright within your restaurant? Now that Halloween is over, make sure your restaurant is prepared so that you don’t have to face any of these six horror stories.
October 2011 Newsletter
How do you know if an employee is stealing?
Whether you have been a restaurant operator for a week or a decade, you strive to successfully operate your restaurant every day. What you may not realize are the bottom line profits
that you could be losing and, more importantly, how you are losing them. Jimmy Fortuna, VP of Product Development, talks about how Aloha Restaurant Guard can help you identify theft in your restaurant.
Top email marketing mistakes:
Not sure what’s keeping your emails from achieving the click-through rates and open-rates you want? This infographic highlights the top email marketing mistakes that might be keeping you from getting the results you want out of your email marketing campaign.
Don’t miss it – gift card season is now!
Black Friday will be here before we know it, and customers will expect your restaurant to be ready with gift card options for their holiday needs. So….Here are 3 tips for increasing your gift card sales:
1. Make sure all of your employees are trained to sell and process gift cards.
2. Place actual gift cards or pictures of gift cards around your store or at each table in your restaurant.
3. Offer free packaging. 84% of consumers are more likely to buy a gift card if it comes already wrapped or with free packaging.
If you already have your gift card solution installed, keep this information in a safe place for any support you
may need this holiday season and beyond:
- Dial 800-792-5642
- Option 2
- Option 1
You can also email support@alohaenterprise.com with support questions. If your gift card program is not already set up, please feel free to contact us for more information.
Top 10 benefits of mobile technology
It is clear that the use of mobile technology is not a passing fad, but is an important tool that can help business owners run their business more effectively. While mobile point of sale (POS) won’t replace the traditional POS in the near-term, it will provide options that simply weren’t feasible in the past. This post highlights the top 10 benefits of mobile point of sale technology.
4 benefits of cloud technology
1. Central site management and visibility. Operational data that comes from different sites and/or resources can be managed from a jingle source. For example, with a cloud-hosted solution you can “push” a menu change to the cloud and that menu change will then be made on all sites simultaneously.
2. Freedom to manage anytime, from anywhere. The ability to securely access your site management and store configurations remotely enhances your flexibility, so that you aren’t physically tied to your operations in order to manage them.
3. Greater capabilities with less expense. Most cloud-hosted solutions offer “plug and play” capabilities with minimal infrastructure or hardware expense, enabling you to extend your capabilities while minimizing your operational costs.
4. Peace-of-mind. The cloud enables you to automatically back up your important data off-site. In the rare chance that misfortune- such as a natural disaster – befall your restaurant, all of your data won’t be lost forever.
If your business operates in the cloud or if you’re considering putting data in a cloud, you need to see this infographic about the 6 best practices you should be following.
Contact us for information about how our cloud technologies can help you run your business more effectively
Welcome to our newest BEC Team Members!
Anthony Addotta and James Battraw have joined us in the Customer Service Department! Congratulations and welcome to the team, Anthony and James!
September 2011 Newsletter
Radiant Systems is now part of NCR Corporation:
As you may know, Radiant Systems, manufacturer of Aloha, was acquired by NCR Corporation on August 24th. Going forward, you can expect it to be business as usual with the people you have come to trust. You will continue to interact with us for all of your account and support needs. NCR Corporation acquired Radiant for its industry-leading solutions and wants to keep the principles in place that have helped them gain a reputation of excellence and quality. We expect our solutions to become even more robust, with more extensive capabilities, thanks to the acquisition. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.
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6 ways to reduce costs in your restaurant
With commodity prices continuing to go up, many operators are scrounging for new, innovative ways to decrease their food cost. The struggle is how to do that without changing the quality of the food and short-changing the guest. Maybe the best thing to do is to re-evaluate the basics of your kitchen operations. Here are 6 things to consider in your restaurant’s kitchen that will help you reduce costs and increase profits.
Don’t Get Blacklisted
Most business owners have good intentions when they purchase an email list. They’re often quite eager to grow their business and feel these lists will help them grow faster. The truth is that sending email to a purchased list has serious consequences, including causing your email address to be blocked. Here are five tips to consider when building your own customer email database:
- Include information about how to sign up for emails at the bottom of receipts.
- Create a monthly contest for email registrants.
- Create small flyers promoting your email program and place them in your togo bags or in check presenters.
- Ask servers or cashiers to remind dinners about the benefits of signing up.
- Collect email addresses on your website and through a tab on your Facebook page.
Gear up for gift cards
The holiday season is a crucial time for restaurants to capitalize on gift card sales. Even though it seems like it’s still months away, now is the time to implement your gift card programand create a plan for success. Even if you caught it last year, this blog series on the importance of offering gift cards is a worthwhile read. Did you know 76% of consumers plan to purchase gift cards from restaurants or retail stores?
PCI Compliance Done Right
The Florida Restaurant and Lodging Show in Orlando, Florida was full of great information and new ideas this year. In a session titled PCI Compliance Done Right – Stop Risking Your Business, Rich Peterson, President of Abacus Business Solutions, highlighted 12 things you can do to protect yourself from an expensive, reputation-destroying data breach. You can read Rich’s list here.
August was a BIG month!
Did you know that Radiant’s blog does a weekly recap? The week of the acquisition was no exception, and it certainly was a busy one. Check out the top five list from that week, which includes a blog post by Andy Heyman about the next steps for Radiant as well as the press release about the acquisition.
Here we grow again!
Congratulations, Kale Duncan!
Kale has been promoted to Supervisor of CSD. Thank you, Kale, for the great job you do each day!
Renovation Updates
Ron Olson, our Facilities Manager, is heading up a renovation that should be complete by the end of the year. Here is what Ron has to say about the project:
We have been at our current location for six years, and occupy about 11,500 sq.ft. Our upcoming expansion will add about 3,500 sq.ft., and is on-target to be completed between Thanksgiving and Christmas this winter. The space will be used to triple the size of our field service and in-shop repair facilities and will also provide more organized facilities for our marketing personnel. On a company-wide basis, the most popular addition will be an exercise room with equipment and shower facilities!
Thank you, Ron, for the excellent job you are doing with the renovation!
August 2011 Newsletter
Aloha Kitchen
The Aloha Kitchen display system provides data from the point-of-sale terminal to the kitchen area for fast, accurate preparation and distribution to the guests. It will allow your restaurant to maintain food quality while improving speed of service, enhancing your guests’ experience and increasing productivity. Candlelight Dinner Playhouse will be BEC’s first Aloha Kitchen site. Contact us today to learn more about how Aloha Kitchen can help you in your everyday operations.
Top 10 Email Marketing Mistakes – Part 2
Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to connect with customers and drive new business. Use these top 10 tips to improve your customer email campaigns and insure you aren’t leaving money on the table.
Have you ever had to fire someone for stealing?
As a restaurant operator, you have to walk a fine line – you don’t want people to walk all over you because you’re too trusting, but you don’t want to assume every server is out to get you, either. You may be familiar with these 4 common server scams.
The Dos & Don’ts of Social Networking – Facebook
There are a lot of people on social networking sites, and most of them signed up just to “see what it’s all about.” Why are we on these sites, anyway?
DON’T create a fan page for your business just because “you have to have one.”
DO create a plan for how you will use your fan page before you create it.
Congratulations!
These BEC employees have recently been promoted. We would like to take this opportunity to thank each and every employee for everything they do each day to help make BEC great!
- Sherry Harris – Sales Assistant – Sherry is now assisting our sales staff with quoting customer’s merchant services offering through Radiant Payment Services. Since she has begun working with RPS, BEC has signed 10 new RPS accounts.
- Shaye McCarrell – Department Supervisor for Aloha/MenuLink Support
- Jesse Hutchinson – Department Supervisor for Aloha Implementations
- Sarah Behnen - Aloha Trainer in charge of classroom training for new clients
- Patty Simmons – Aloha Implementation, after only 6 months working as an Aloha Support Specialist!
- Lee Williams – After working 2 years in Customer Service Department, Lee filled the position of Aloha Support Specialist!
- Alex Steenberg – Adding MenuLink Support to her Aloha Support role after only 90 days!
New Employees – Welcome to the BEC Team!
Customer Service Department
Mike Otero
Josh Campbell
Chad Smith
Sales
Cary Dilzell (Mesa, Garfield and Delta counties)
Implementation Department
Kimberly Slavin (Aloha Support)
Lia Cooley (Aloha Support)
5 Reasons Why You Should Be on Social Media
The numbers are in, and with about one billion social media accounts worldwide, it is safe to say that social media has truly infiltrated society. Facebook is reported to have almost 700 million users and Twitter has 300 million users. After only two years, the new kid, Foursquare, has 10 million people registered. Now more than ever, the arguments you have been hearing in favor of social media have support, and here are five reasons you should consider entering this new medium.
Smashburger Completes Aloha Configuration Center Roll Out
“This summer, Smashburger completed rolling out Aloha Configuration Center to all stores. This was accomplished due to Andrea Hale’s hard work and organizational skills at BEC. Andrea carefully coordinated installing the application, preparing stores for upcoming changes and cleaning up data before publishing changes to stores. This important conversion to Configuration Center has allowed Smashburger to easily administer changes and updates to now 110+ locations.” -Danny Acosta, Manager of Restaurant Technology at Smashburger
Thank you, Andrea, for your hard work and dedication to this project!
Aloha Loyalty Training Webiinars
This month, Chuck Magee will host Aloha Loyalty weibars on August 18th and August 25th at 3PM MST. Please email us to register
July 2011 Newsletter
Handheld Ordering Devices Equal Greater Security for Customers
Radiant customer, the Patio restaurant in Ignacio, CO, is using the Orderman Max2Plus integrated with their Aloha point-of-sale system to take orders and swipe customers’ credit cards tableside, resulting in improved customer service. Learn more about how their profitability has increased due to reduced labor costs and increased sales from add-ons.
Top 10 Email Marketing Mistakes
Email marketing is a fantastic way to reach your current customer base and bring them back in additional times each month. But are you leaving money on the table by committing one of these email marketing mistakes?
Radiant Systems Data Security E-Newsletter
Radiant Systems, the manufacturer of Aloha, recently distributed an e-newsletter filled with up-to-date info on the latest trends in data security, mandates issued by MasterCard and Discover and much more. Make sure you are armed with this knowledge! Read more…
Are You Protecting Against Threats Attacking Your Network?
Do you have monitoring in place that lets you know anytime malware or unforeseen threats have infiltrated your defenses? Imagine receiving a report every time antivirus isn’t running or is out of date, or when someone has installed crimeware in your network. That’s the beauty of Radiant’s new ongoing monitor and network defense service. It helps you keep the “good” software running and the potentially dangerous or unwanted software from being able to run on your workstation terminals or back of house PCs. The cool thing is…Threat Defender continues to adapt to any new malware threats that Radiant finds. Learn more…
Employee Theft in Restaurants: It’s More Common Than You Think
If there’s one thing we hear a lot from restaurant managers and operators, it’s how close the relationships are between employees in a restaurant environment. Many times I’ve heard operators say: “We’re like family here,” or “We’ve had employees who have been here for years.” I think this is why it’s really difficult for them to find out that some of these “family members” are taking money directly out of their pockets.
Employee theft is a bad situation for any business, and unfortunately it’s a common one in the restaurant industry.
There are several scams that employees use to steal from restaurants. Read more…
June 2011 Newsletter
New Features in Aloha
New report date ranges added to Aloha Insight:
Same Company Week to Day Last Year – The system will return data that contains days of the week starting from the current company week till the current day for the last year.
Fiscal Period to Day Last Year – The system will return data that contains days of the fiscal period starting from the current Fiscal Period till current day but for the last year.
Check Detail View Filter in Aloha Insight:
Lets the user filter checks by different criteria like voids, comps, promos, refunds, cleared, reopened and open checks. The user can then view the detail of a chosen check from the filtered list. The check also consolidates like items in the check detail view so that if a check contains two identical items it displays only one description but with a count of two.
Restaurant Guard Integration with Aloha Loyalty:
The Aloha Restaurant Guard application is now integrated with Aloha Loyalty by providing 4 new reports in the application that identify suspicious trends within a customer’s Aloha Loyalty data. The four reports are Loyalty Assignments by Employee by Card, Loyalty Assignments by Card, Loyalty Assignments by Employee, and Loyalty Rewards by Employee
Automatic Update Feature Added to Aloha Stored Value:
Using this feature, employees at the store level can poll the Radiant server to check whether there are updates available for Aloha Stored Value. If there are updates, it automatically downloads the updates to the back of house server.
Rob Barron Presents at RetailNOW:
BEC operations manager, Rob Barron, will be presenting sessions on project management at RetailNOW, a conference geared towards professionals in the retail technology industry, in July. Rob will show how BEC went from a few hundred customers to 3,000 through organizational changes, specialization of services and collecting the right information the first time. Learn more…
Radiant Security Services Webinars
Chuck Magee from Radiant Systems will be conducting Radiant Security Services webinars each Monday throughout the month of June. We are now taking reservations for June 20 and 27 for a 30-45 minute presentation which will be at 10:30am each Monday. will need to email sherry.harris@becpos.com
Customers interested in attending
7 Ways to Control Your Food Cost:
Restaurant operators are looking for ways to reduce food cost in order to off-set the rising price of freight. Many struggle with how to do that without trading in quality. Lately, it seems that the focus has been on creating lower cost menu items and scaling back on portion sizes. Even though these techniques are great ways to impact profit margins, controlling food cost is still the most effective way to increase your bottom line. Read more..
Customer Loyalty:
Loyalty. It is a word we often associate with friends, family or pets. However, we use it more and more in our professional lives to describe customers, vendors and other “business” relationships. Read more…
May 2011 Newsletter
How E-Mail Marketing Can Help Your Business Grow Revenues
E-mail marketing is a powerful tool that can help businesses of all sizes connect with consumers in a personal way to improve loyalty, increase revenues and drive more business. In recent industry surveys, close to 40 percent of marketing executives called e-mail marketing the most powerful advertising channel of their business and 63 percent said they would like to increase their spend on e-mail marketing in 2011. Radiant Blog…
10 Tips for Building A Digital Strategy
The decade of the door hanger is gone. The yellow pages are extinct and the printing process for promotion is dropping so fast the rain forest may yet get a reprieve after all. How the connected consumer spreads the word through mobile and social media is the real answer for our future. An all-new consumer science is emerging in the restaurant industry and that science will help our businesses grow. Social Coco…
New Aloha Promotions
BEC is proud to announce new bundled offers for merchant processing and Aloha products. Sign up for Radiant Payment Services and receive a discount on Aloha’s gift card program, our employee theft product or our data security services. Contact us today to learn more about the options available to you! *This promotion is only eligible for customers who are not currently using Radiant Payment Services*
Training Classes Offered at BEC
Join us for training classes held for basic and advanced manager training on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Click here to learn more!
How Restaurants Are Coping With Rising Food Prices
Everyone from home cooks to mom-and-pop café operators to chain restaurant companies have to concern themselves with food prices in an economy just beginning to right itself after a prolonged slump. Food prices jumped 3.9% last month, the biggest increase since 1974, and forecasts call for additional increases this year. Smart Blog on Restaurants…
BEC Named RSPA Certified Retail Technology Provider
Arvada, CO/USA – 3/21/2011 – Business Equipment Consultant (BEC) the authorized reseller of the Radiant Systems family of products, including Radiant hardware, Menulink back office software and Aloha point of sale and restaurant technology announced today that it has been named an RSPA Certified Retail Technology Provider. BEC currently serves hospitality clients in Colorado and Wyoming. According to RSPA’s industry standards, BEC received the certified technology provider status by demonstrating a commitment to excellence and an exceptional level of professionalism. As an RSPA Certified Retail Technology Provider, BEC is recognized as ethical and fair and stands behind the products and services they sell and support. Read more…
April 2011 Newsletter
Data Security & Compliance News
Radiant Systems, the manufacturers of Aloha, have published several communications outlining the requirements and dates by which you must comply with mandates issued by the MasterCard and Discover credit card brands. Click here for a reminder of the upcoming deadlines.
Leveraging Your POS to Drive Loyalty Revenue & Profits
Aloha customer, Taco Mac, reveals how its POS-integrated loyalty program helps to engage beer enthusiasts by offering limited-time offer alerts, online account access and more.
New Aloha Features:
Customer ordering made easy, work schedules on demand, new pizza functionality and much more! Call us today to upgrade to Aloha v6.7.
Customer Anniversaries:
Congratulations to the following customers on how long they’ve been in business!
Kokoro – 25 Years
Tokyo Joe’s – 15 Years
Snooze – 5 Years
End to End Encryption: Why a Great Solution May Not Get Off the Ground
We need technologies to combat the dreaded memory parser crimeware that is so prevalent in the breaches of the last few years. Radiant Blog…
Food Costs Continue to Rise in the U.S.
The Department of Agriculture has forecast that U.S. food prices will increase between 3% and 4% this year. Food inflation is starting to appear in supermarkets and restaurants. The Wall Street Journal…
BEC Employee, Rob Barron, Presents at RetailNOW
Congratulations to Rob Barron for being selected to speak about project management best practices at the RetailNOW event in Orland.
RetailNOW is a convention and expo for professionals in the retail technology industry.