Just Say No ― To Technology?!

If you want a quick lunch in Boston, there’s always Viga, a competitively priced Italian restaurant with several locations throughout the city. And you will be getting lunch quickly — the servers sling pasta and sandwiches with lightning speed, and the cashiers will call up the next customer just as they’re finished swiping your credit card.

Edward Wilson, co-owner of the Pi Alley location, likes it that way. And to stay quick, Wilson says you have to construct an easy-to-repeat game plan and stick to it. “We keep everything as simple as possible,” he says.

That includes payments. Viga rewards its most loyal customers in the simplest way possible — a paper punchcard gets a new hole added with each purchase; six holes are worth $3, and 12 are worth $5. The system “is big for us” in terms of bringing people back, Wilson says, and perhaps most importantly it’s easy to maintain.

Compare that to his experience with LivingSocial — which he now refers to as “a bomb.” Beyond the fact that Viga’s already-low price point made the $10-for-$5 deal difficult to stomach, Wilson says having to use the iPad that LivingSocial gave him slowed everything down dramatically, throwing a massive wrench into a well-oiled machine.

Wilson won’t even sign on for online ordering for fear that a downed Internet connection would cause too many headaches to be worth it. When he says he wants to keep things simple, he means it.

In addition, several restaurant chains continue to use paper punchcards in lieu of other technological options, including Quiznos and Subway. Like Viga, both of those restaurants are all about speed: you’re bound to find a long line of customers at any Subway location, with a discrete customer processing in place to keep the line moving (e.g., the bread guy, the meat guy, the veggie guy, the sauce guy).

So payments companies, take note: even after you convince the merchant that the up-front investment in new POS technology is worth it, make sure the solution you’re providing won’t gunk up any assembly line-like fulfillment operations.