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.
