Part 113 Communication Breakdown

Vimto, a werewolf and that smoked butter again.

Just trying something out here. As you already know, you can listen to me reading this guff by tapping Voiceover, it’s up the top there. However, someone suggested that I read the story on a video, so here’s a little example. What do you think? Should I do a video of me reading these out every week? Answers below please. No cocky stuff though, or I’ll ‘ave yer.

Did you know, if you put a Like at the end of this, your next set of dentures will be half price. That’s the truth.

Good day to you, we sincerely hope you are well.

Right, that’s enough of that, let’s get on. This week it’s about smoke and POS.

Amazing eh!

But first of all, before we start, you’ll need to know what a POS actually is.

Basically it’s a hand held machine which waiting staff use to take your order. However, it also sends the message to the kitchen, immediately.

Imagine the scene, Cheryl is waiting to take your order, and it goes like this….

2 fish finger chimichangas

1 hoisin duck pizza

1 donkey burger, extra Nutella

1 pint of Tizer

2 cans of Lilt

½ pint of Vimto, on the rocks

The button on the screen is tapped and that message is whizzed down to the kitchen. So, even when Cheryl is stood listening to your grrrreat story about the time you had an authentic hoisin duck pizza in Rome, the kitchen is already preparing your order.

However, at Vanilla Black, we didn’t have one of these fancy machines, we simply couldn’t afford one. We relied on a form of communication which some of you may still remember. A pen and some paper.

Well, it was a little more advanced than that, it was an order pad, but a duplicating order pad. Front of house would write down your order on a little paper pad, but underneath the top sheet was a piece of carbon paper, so as pressure was applied, a copy was made onto a second sheet. One copy went to the kitchen, the other stayed at a work station.

This worked quite well for a couple of years, and instead of costing thousands of pounds, they cost pennies.

But, as we were getting busier, we were starting to realise that we needed to get ourselves up to date. The pen and paper method was just not suited to our situation anymore.

Here’s why.

Right, Tina Terminator would take your order. Starters, mains and drinks were scribbled on the pad, and the bottom copy was left at the drinks area so someone could make up the drinks. Then Tina would glide over to the stairs, tip toe gently down the first two or three steps, then launch into warp speed to the kitchen.

“Guys, table of four, three Brie ice cream and the wild flower salads for starters. Two mushrooms mousse and two Ribblesdale puddings for mains.”

But someone would always have a question, for example, Bobster,

“Hey Tina, sounds busy up there, is everyone happy?”

“Yes yes, all happy. I have to go.”

But as she turned to leave, and because Bobster and I quite enjoyed being a bit nuisancey*, we would add something,

“Oh yea Tina, I meant to tell you something.”

“What! What is it, I’m busy?”

“I’ve forgotten now.”

“I’ll slap you. I’m going.”

Then Bobster would remember that he had something very important to tell Tina Terminator,

“Yea Tina, I’ve got something to tell you as well.”

“Come on, what, I’ve got things to do.”

“I washed my hair last night.”

“Stupid. I’m gonna slap you as well.”

Then Tina would sprint back up most of the stairs and get back to her tables.

If you reckon that we deserve £3 for a cup of tea, then that’s the button.

But even without Bobster and myself winding Tina up, those trips to the kitchen used up a lot of time. If Donna was at a table, and Fern was making up drinks, and Big Sophia was taking plates to a table, diners could turn up to reception and nobody would be there to greet them.

This didn’t matter too much in the past, because we didn’t have many diners, but now it did matter.

And there was another problem with the pen and paper method. The pens.

Yes, more butter.

Everyone started the shift with a pen, yet over the shift, those pens would disappear. Fern could be taking an order at a table, she’d reach down into her apron pocket, and the pen had gone. So, rather awkwardly, and trying not to look like a doyle, she would have to pop over to the bar and borrow Sophia’s pen.

Now Sophia doesn’t have a pen, so she would have to borrow someone else’s pen.

And on it went. This would happen on every single shift. Where did the pens go?

Well, Donna once heard a member of the team tell a new starter, “If you ever lose your pen, it’ll be in Donna’s pocket.”

So we bought a fancy POS system. We figured that it would pay for itself, because, as there would be no more trips to the kitchen, everyone would be on the restaurant floor at all time. So because of that, we wouldn’t have to employ another member of staff. Good eh?

From memory, it was just over two thousand quid, that was a lot of cash back then, still is. But it wasn’t the hand held version, they were a pretty penny back then. No, this was a console, it looked a bit like a till, but it was all touch screen.

A bloke turned up and programmed it up. He made a mock up of the restaurant and it showed all the tables and their numbers. So, the front of house team would tap on the table in their section and click on the dishes and drinks which had been ordered. A ticket would pop out for the drinks and another for the food. These tickets were held at the work stations on the restaurant floor so all of the team could see them and understand what was going on.

However, we also needed to get this information to the kitchen.

So another bloke turned up, but this fella had drills and screwdrivers with him. He drilled a hole in the wall behind the console, then thread a cable through the wall cavity of the dumb waiter (little lift). This ended up one floor down, in the kitchen.

Then he installed a printer and connected it to the cable. But this printer was different to the one upstairs, it used a different kind of ink. You see, if we used the same printer as we used upstairs, the heat of the kitchen would erase the information on the ticket, so the kitchen printer used a special ink which didn’t disappear.

See, how easy that was.

But, when we were organising all of this, none of us noticed one particular stumbling block. It was so obvious, yet so, errrr, not obvious.

When the order was taken at the table, that information had to be tapped into the console. Obviously.

But when the order was as follows……..

1 Beetroot with curds and porridge oats

2 Salad with salt ’n’ vinegar gel

1 Tomato and strawberry with Turkish delight

3 Goats cheese Chantilly

1 Celeriac profiterole

1 bottle of sparkling water

1 bottle of Fleurie la Bonne………

That was a lot of information to remember for someone while they were on their way to the console.

So what was the answer?

Write it down on an order pad of course. With a bloody pen!

But apart from the ongoing pen problem, the system worked like a dream.

Instead of hundreds of trips downstairs to pass on messages such as………….

“Guys, a table of two, straight to mains.”

“Table 4 have finished starters.”

“More bread on table 8.”

“Guys. The table of four people on Table 12 have decided that they’re not lactose intolerant anymore because they like the look of the creamy desserts.”

“We need to change to order for Table 7, one of them has suddenly become a vegan.”

All that stopped. Now all that we saw in the kitchen was a ticket. No more Tina or Fern.

In a strange way it actually made us feel detached from front of house, we wouldn’t see them for the whole shift. The communication was still there, but it was incomplete, it was a slip of paper instead of Big Sophia. It was a weird feeling.

And this also took some of the fun away from myself and Bobster, now we only had each other to wind up.

“Bobster, is it true that you are half werewolf?”

“Yes Andrew, it’s not true.”

Actually, as time rolled onwards, and the busier we became, and as we added more streamlining, and as we employed more staff, the less the restaurant felt like our little ‘Smashing The Vegetarian Status Quo’ project.

The scales were tipping towards a business, rather than the realising of a dream.

And all that started with that fancy POS machine.

Then we bought a smoking gun. And some more pens.

Okey dokey, thanks for sticking with us and we’ll finish off the story about this bloody smoked butter next week.

Donna and Andrew

*Yes it is a real word