Challenges Faced
March 2020, the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic was tough across the board, especially with everyone learning how to live in this “new normal”. The restaurant and hospitality industry are no different and New York restaurants took a tough blow as the state restricted indoor dining. In mid-March, Little Sorrento and Savannah & Co. were faced with a difficult decision – do they close, like most other local independently-owned restaurants or stay open? If they stay open, they would need to figure out how to keep on their staff. They decided the best decision was to keep both restaurants open and running with take-out and delivery services.
Savannah & Company, being primarily a dine-in restaurant, needed to be able to quickly pivot and offer customers the ability to order take-out or delivery online. By establishing an online ordering system, channels of opportunity opened for customers to easily order online from any device, without potentially overloading the restaurant phone system. At the time they did not have an established take-out or delivery business and they were happy with their current POS system; however, it did not include an online ordering system.
On the other hand, Little Sorrento had already upgraded to Cervion’s modern tablet-based point of sale system, which included an integrated online ordering system. Pre-pandemic online ordering accounted for 40% of the business. However, there were some challenges transitioning to 100% take-out and delivery. Since they have a loyal following and can keep their 150-seat establishment busy, their customers easily transitioned to ordering for take-out and delivery. They were so busy, they needed to set up additional phone lines since the phones were ringing non-stop. Since the phone system was overloaded, they were only able to take online orders.
It was time for Savannah & Co. to upgrade their point of sale system to include online ordering in order to stay open and continue to provide great dishes and services to their loyal customer base. As Hunter Allen, the CEO of Cervion Systems says, “Great Challenges create the best opportunities.”
Solutions
Savannah & Co. took advantage of the silver-lining and decided to upgrade their Windows-based point of sale system to a Cervion Systems iPad restaurant POS which includes online ordering. Cervion Systems was able to get them up and running extremely quick. “Before the Cervion team showed up, my son programmed the menu, so the transition was extremely easy.”, Gina Dipaterio, owner of Little Sorrento. “Of course, we had a bit of a head start since it was already implemented at Little Sorrento, it was still quite easy for not only management, but the staff to catch on. It was easy to teach everyone.”
Cervion Systems was able to schedule their point of sale upgrade and be onsite for installation immediately. Installation of the cloud-based POS was extremely smooth, old equipment was swapped out for new equipment and Savannah & Co. was up and running.
While Savannah & Co. was upgrading their systems, Little Sorrento optimized their online ordering system. While Little Sorrento was waiting for additional phone lines to be put in place, they communicated on social media and their website for customers to place orders through their online ordering platform. Being proactive was key to convert customers to using the online ordering system. The kitchen never skipped a beat, as they were already used to the system and automatically receiving tickets when an online order is placed, it was the front of the house that struggled at first. Little Sorrento had 7 expeditors on the line packaging food, which would get pretty intense, but once everyone was used to the process – it was smooth sailing.
