Pay At The Table Gets A Makeover

What happens when you turn the check register into an electronic payments device capable of accepting any payment method that a consumer might want to use? Restaurant sales go up $1,000 a month. That’s what Steve McKean, President and COO at TableSafe, told PYMNTS about why paying tableside is no longer just about paper-based checks.

PYMNTS: Restaurants have lots of payments problems. What problems does TableSafe solve and how?

SM: We’ve been focused from the beginning on purpose-built devices specifically meant for managing payments at a table service restaurant. We started well before EMV. The big problem that we are trying to solve is the security risk — and consumer discomfort — that happens when the check and the card leave the table in the check register.

Our RAIL solution was developed so that the consumer always maintains control of their credit card. We built our solution from the ground up specifically for table service restaurants, rather than taking a technology that was really built for retail in the beginning and then pushing it into a hospitality environment.

PYMNTS: An interesting aspect of the RAIL device is that it actually looks very similar to the check register or billfold that diners are used to seeing when they ask for their check at the end of a meal. What was the thought process behind that design decision?

SM: Ultimately, restaurants work really, really hard to create a specific environment, culture and delivery system for their consumers so that they know exactly what to expect when they walk in the door. With restaurants, it’s entirely about the experience, so we didn’t want to change that. One consistent component of that experience is that, at the end of meal, a billfold is placed at the table.

The biggest difference now, of course, is that, as the server drops off that billfold, in today’s world, that’s typically the first of eight one-way trips to the table or to the point of sale they take. With our solution, they drop off that billfold, thank the customer for their patronage and they are done. They can make one trip instead of eight, which is a huge benefit to the restaurant. With our solution, the restaurant culture and experience can remain the same, but the server makes one trip to the POS. The rest of their time is spent serving existing dining guests. Restaurants can be more efficient, diners are happier, servers are too.

PYMNTS: Providing customers with the ability to pay for their check how they want and, essentially, when they want may make a difference to diners, but how does your solution help to improve the experience for the restaurants themselves?

SM: The security of the system is a big benefit. As the use of data protections, like P2PE and EMV, come to fruition, restaurants can remain PCI-compliant with much less effort. Then, there are efficiencies. We actually completed a study on a restaurant using our solution, and we were able to validate that the system increased table turn, increased revenue per table and decreased costs in significant areas, such as receipts and labor. For the diner that just has 20 minutes to get one more glass of wine before leaving to free up the babysitter, by the time they get the server’s attention, they may already be down to 10 minutes, so they decide to just get the check and go. That’s a huge driver in creating the scenario where, instead of a customer choosing not to get that dessert or not to get that glass of wine before leaving, that server is serving the dining guest not the check so it can drive up more revenue per table.

Since everything is digitized, there’s no need for paper merchant receipts or presentation receipts that usually come inside the billfold. When given the choice, more than 60 percent of the time, consumers elected to have either no receipt or have it emailed to them. Overall, we reduced receipt costs by 85 percent in the study that we completed, and we also noted a reduction in employee hours per shift by about 10 minutes per shift. A restaurant we observed in the study typically has about 24 servers per day across multiple shifts, so if you do the math, that’s saving them four hours in labor costs every single day. Ultimately, for the restaurants in this study, when you add up the costs of the RAIL device, as well as the reduced costs associated with receipts and labor, and factor in the the increased revenue from more table turn and revenue per table, our solution increased the sales by $1,000 per month.

PYMNTS: What’s next for TableSafe in 2016? And how are you working to help restaurants keep up with the constantly changing payments landscape?

SM: The biggest focus for us today and this year is to release the RAIL 2 to the marketplace. The newest version of the device is focused on the type of innovation that is needed in the marketplace today. It has added capabilities to provide not only P2PE but also EMV, as well as both contact and contactless payment abilities and even integrated payment technologies, such as PayPal, which is incorporated within the device so the user simply pays with their credentials. The RAIL 2 also supports paying with QR codes, such as a LevelUp, essentially allowing the consumer to really drive the payment choice, as opposed to the merchant pushing payment choices upon the consumer.

That’s the focus in 2016, but as we look ahead, one way we have future-proofed the payment platform is by including the Bluetooth Apple-based technology iBeacon into the system. This would mean that, in the future, instead of going through the current process of a customer entering different payment information on the device and selecting which items to pay for, it will all be done seamlessly. In this scenario, the instant the RAIL device is placed down, an iPhone with either the TableSafe app or the restaurant’s app with TableSafe integrated will buzz and alert the customer with the bill total. From there, it will ask for approval to pay with the default settings, and without even opening the RAIL device, the consumer can just select “yes” and they’ve paid with a Visa card through Apple Pay, tipped their automatic 18.5 percent and can get up and walk away. In that moment, you’re done with that payment process with the push of one button.

The innovation is partly about integrating all of these individual payment technologies and tailoring each of them specifically to the environment of a table service restaurant. The other point of innovation goes beyond just the technology to also tailoring those processes within the hospitality environment to actually drive more efficiency, better revenue and cost reduction, while not negatively impacting the culture but actually impacting it.

TableSafe will be among the innovators participating in the Innovator Expo at this year’s Innovation Project, taking place March 16–17 at Harvard University.