Will Beckett seems slightly baffled when I turn up to meet him at his pub the Marquess Tavern, in Islington, London. "I don't get a lot of people coming down to talk to me about tills," he says.
It's not that the Marquess Tavern is unused to media attention - more that journalists visiting Time Out's Gastropub of the Year and a finalist in The Publican's Newcomer of Year category are usually there to discuss more appetising subjects than electronic point-of-sale equipment (EPoS).
Nevertheless, the Radiant technology installed across his four London outlets since October 2005 is an integral part of his Underdog group.
The pubco comprises a food-led pub, the Marquess; two bar-restaurants in the shape of Green & Red and Hawksmoor, in Shoreditch; and a DJ bar, the Redchurch, also in Shoreditch.
The Underdog director says that the Radiant system is a perfect solution for companies such as his - small multiple operators with a diverse range of outlets dominated by food.
Radiant's is a system designed specifically for the food side of a pub's business. It can be integrated across a number of sites to provide point-of-sale hardware plus tools for analysis in the back office. Features include:
- Graphic pub table layouts that show critical information such as serving times
- The ability to create and manage tabs quickly
- Reporting tools for site managers and headquarters
- An 'auto promotion' application that manages deals and food promotions.
Will and his staff have been making full use of these facilities, which cost around £50,000 overall and replaced a till that operated in the style of 'push-buttons-hard'.
"It's difficult to argue that it's brought extra punters in, but it helps with the bottom line. It helps you tighten up, identify when and where you are losing money," Will explains.
"For any pubco, having three different concepts is difficult," Will adds. "But even though they are all selling different products, I can look at information across the group."
The tills are also used to clock in and clock out staff, manage promotions, and change details of menus and staff rotas, among many other functions. But it's the system's ability to give him access to a huge amount of data from across the four sites that justifies the expense.
"It's where it really comes into its own," Will says, giving an example. "Instead of being reactive, it can be quite proactive. I can have a text message sent to me notifying me if a member of staff has made more than five voids on a till. I can even see what's going on at a specific till if I'm being that anal."
The power of the system is such that Will believes he has been using only 30 to 40 per cent of its functionality so far. "We will grow into it for a couple of years. It's only our own limitations holding us back," he says.
Underdog has capacity for more than 200 covers, and its annual turnover is around £3.25m.
"If you can save one per cent of that, that's a lot of money, and that's what these tills allow us to do," Will says. With that in mind, perhaps it isn't so baffling that someone would want to come down and talk to him about tills.