Dive Brief:
- IHOP has almost completed a two-year migration of 1,500 restaurants to a new, cloud-based point-of-sale system with Tray, the company announced on Tuesday. IHOP’s previous POS system was 15 years old.
- Throughout the transition, IHOP restaurants have trimmed table turn times and grown tip and check totals, Justin Skelton, CIO and SVP of information technology at IHOP parent company Dine Brands, said in a press release.
- Tray’s POS system has helped IHOP operators improve integration of “back-of-house technologies to online ordering and payment platforms,” including server tablets. More than 10,000 server tablets are using Tray across IHOP restaurants to speed up ordering and checkout at tables.
Dive Insight:
IHOP has been taking a multi-pronged approach to growing its sales. In addition to growing check via Tray’s integration with its restaurants, the pancake chain has recently added two more virtual brands to its stable and expanded existing brand Pardon My Cheesesteak.
The restaurant has also invested in innovating its traditional store menu to grow sales. Last year, IHOP debuted the biggest menu update in its brand history, contributing to incremental sales gains. More recently, IHOP launched a pancake of the month club to encourage diners to try new menu offerings in exchange for 10 loyalty points if diners try the offering more than twice monthly.
Some of these consumer-facing brand enhancements are now well established, perhaps priming IHOP’s operations to optimize benefits yielded from a newly integrated POS system.
“Our preliminary data shows that franchisees that have fully enabled their server tablets are experiencing a higher beverage attachment rate, improvement in ticket time, higher average check, and higher tips for servers,” Dine Brands CEO John Peyton said during a February earnings call.
IHOP President Jay Johns added that Tray’s link to server tablets make it so “franchisees’ team members can stay closer to our guests and ultimately provide a more efficient and joyful dining experience.”
