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Casio VR-100 Android™ EPoS till

London café adopts cashless EPoS integration

By Retail Technology | Thursday April 17 2014

Butter Beans adopts PayPal on its new till system to speed coffee shop transactions as well increase customer engagement and loyalty

Butter Beans in Richmond is offering its customers a new mobile payment option with the installation of a new electronic point-of-sale (EPoS) till and payment system from Casio Electronics

Formerly the original branch of Taylor St Baristas in West London, the Antipodean coffee house is using PayPal EPoS integration to foster increased loyalty by letting visitors now complete transactions simply through their mobile phone. 

Alese Butter, owner of Butter Beans, explained: “Adopting PayPal on the Casio V-R100 is just one example of great customer service – giving customers maximum choice as to how they really want to pay. Cash, card, or PayPal; customer transactions can now be processed, quickly, efficiently and delivered with a highly personal service using photo recognition.”

Checking in for regular visits

Visitors transmit information from their PayPal app directly through to the Android operating system-based EPoS system. Part of Butter Bean’s loyalty engagement comes with recognising customers as soon as they enter the premises. Customers simply enable their mobile PayPal application to ‘discover’ nearby shops and restaurants in Richmond that accept PayPal; and then ‘check in’ to Butter Beans upon arrival. 

Once checked in, their name and photo appears on the till terminal as an arrival ‘announcement’. Butter explained: “We have a large client base boosted by a significant number of visitors into the town. 

"We also have 11 staff rotating on shifts and, whiled we would ideally like to address regulars by their name, it can sometimes be pretty difficult to accurately recall them all. Now, frequently the customer’s photo often arrives on the till before they do, so we can give them a warm welcome or indeed ask if they are having their ‘usual’ today.”

When it comes to payment, the customer agrees the transaction amount and the barista verifies their identity photo and charges them by clicking on their photo. The customer receives an alert on their mobile device to let them know how much they’ve been charged, as well as PayPal’s usual email receipt.

Boosting cashless payments

“Since offering ‘Check into PayPal’ functionality to our customers, we have tracked a 4000% increase in PayPal transactions. For any fledging catering business, the opportunity for seamless transactions with guaranteed accuracy, less cash to handle and fewer till anomalies, has to be a distinct benefit,” added Butter.

Before the till system upgrade, transactions were processed by a standalone cash register. Orders were communicated, memorised and fulfilled by the serving barista manually writing post-it note dockets; with each being discarded after the order was processed and payment entered manually into the till. 

Now the new spill, heat and moisture-proof EPoS system processes each menu item via pre-populated graphical icons displayed on a large colour 10.4 inch colour touchscreen that processing customers’ orders in strict rotation.

Butter commented: “As we progress with the new company, keeping accurate accounts in the first few years becomes even more critical, and our accountant is thrilled with the lack of anomalies and seamless transaction records. This is especially important with different UK VAT rates now applicable on hot and cold take away purchases.”

Improved accounts accuracy

Prior to adoption, Butter had concerns the transition would involve a major retraining exercise. It transpired that the Casio V-R100 arrived ready to ‘plug and play’ and pre-customised by supplying partner, Premier, even down to customer loyalty schemes being uploaded. 

Now, every menu item sold is recorded by date and time, giving a full sales history audit trail. Training of the staff was also straightforward, occurring on shift. With the real-time connectivity to the entire Android application platform linked to the V-R100, management knows they can expand their knowledge as time and experience permits by downloading a number of hospitality focused applications available online, covering everything from stock control analysis to accounting packages.

Butter summarised: “It feels like we are offering a slice of how we will conduct every day purchases in the future through deployment of the PayPal enabled Casio V-R100 without ever taking cash out.”

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