EPOS Case Study - The Francis Crick Institute

The Francis Crick Institute is one of the largest research facilities in the UK, which opened in 2016 and houses up to 2,000 people. Based next to St Pancras station in Central London, the facility is a world leading centre for research that discovers new ways to treat, diagnose and prevent illnesses. The institute is a partnership between Cancer Research UK, Imperial College London, King’s College London (KCL), the Medical Research Council, University College London (UCL) and the Wellcome Trust.
The catering services are managed by Graysons, who have been working with the facility since 2016 to operate a modern, relevant catering offering including a large scale staff restaurant, an artisan coffee shop, a public café, and extensive hospitality and events.

The Brief

1500 staff members use the catering facilities on a daily basis. The existing EPOS system had been in place for a long time and was causing huge queues due to how long order processing was taking.

The Graysons team were finding it challenging to update menus from the back office, which needs to be done on a daily basis. They needed a solution that made this quick and easy to do.

The client also wanted to implement a solution to go paper-free in the various dining areas. They needed a solution to display the changing daily menus and range of products available.

The Solution

We installed 7 EPOS terminals with 2-line customer displays and integrated Dojo payment terminals across their dining areas.

The system has a centralised back office which means data for the whole site can be viewed in one place, from anywhere with an internet connection. Graysons can easily update menus every day, and changes are reflected on the EPOS terminals seamlessly during service.

To go paper-free, we installed 7 43-inch digital display screens that are updated to display the new menu daily. We also installed one 50-inch digital display totem.

The Results

The new Gardiff EPOS system combined with integrated payments has significantly reduced wait times at peak periods. Orders and payments are now processed 5 times faster, speeding up the order process whilst also removing the risk for any miskeying errors on the card terminals.

The Graysons team are able to be more efficient, whilst giving improved customer service.

The EPOS system reports instantly reconcile sales on the system, and the back office provides hundreds of analytics and information for the team to analyse sales trends.

Grayons can now schedule daily menu changes in advance, so the displays automatically show the relevant menus every day, along with allergen and calorie info.