Food, Technology and Beverage Volume 12

Quality Service to Quality Members – The Hong Kong Country Club

The Hong Kong Country Club is a private members club, established in 1962 in Deep Water Bay. Providing top-notch service requires top-notch tools. When the Club decided to replace its POS system in 2002, Seito was selected after evaluating a number of competitors.

Seito is used to manage 13 outlets within the Club. Retail outlets include the Bowling Alley, Health Club and Pro Shop, while F&B outlets range from the self-service Poolside Kiosk to the western fine-dining Grill Room. More than 100 staff use Seito including those that use Chinese and those that use English.

From the original 17 IBM SurePOS 4840 workstations the number has grown to 22. More than 40 printers are employed throughout the Club. In the high-volume Garden Room coffee shop, Poolside Kiosk and Pro Shop, thermal printers are used for their fast printing. In those locations where printing speed is not as critical (and in all kitchen locations where high temperatures can damage thermal printer output), 2-color ink-jet printers have been deployed. These printers allow the Club's logo to be included on the checks in red while the text is printed in black.

The Club's fine dining Chinese cuisine restaurant, the Island Room, serves dim sum throughout the week and is especially busy on weekends and public holidays. The Club uses 3 Optical Mark Readers with its dim sum snacks menus to speed up and ensure the accuracy of the ordering process.

Two print servers connect to the Club's network via Wi-Fi, allowing kitchen chits and checks to be printed in locations where it was not possible to install dedicated network cabling.

All transactions in the Club are charged to members' accounts. This is accomplished via an interface between the Seito system and the Club's membership management system. Members' photos and signature samples are available for display on Seito terminals to allow staff to confirm identities. The interface is accomplished through the exchange of XML-format transactions between the systems.

In 2004 the Club implemented a full-scale purchasing and inventory control system. Sales data from the Seito system is imported to this system to allow automatic reduction in Inventory levels.

In 2005 the Club added 20 PDAs (Seito Wireless Solution) to augment its existing workstations. Staff in the Garden Room and Island Room are now able to take orders and print bills from tableside.

Plans for 2006 include the implementation of Seito's reservation and table-waiting modules. Members waiting for a table will be issued with a pager so that they may move around the Club. When their table is ready the table waiting module will automatically generate a message to the member.

"Seito has been an excellent choice for the Club" states Mr. Rob Hall, Systems and Procurement Manager. "They have been very willing to work with us to add new features to their applications and the applications are extremely reliable and stable".

Seito Systems Ltd.     www.seito.com.hk