How stylish mini PCs and touchscreen displays met one company’s PoS demands
The Al Fresco’s Group chooses ASUS to power the point-of-sale systems for their growing restaurant brands in Vietnam.
Overview
Finding a reliable and powerful point-of-sale (PoS) system that is also stylish enough to fit into a modern restaurant environment is a challenge that many hospitality businesses face. Often the products simply don’t meet the requirements of such a fast-paced industry. Or they have industrial designs that look out-of-place in modern restaurants, making it hard to find a vendor that can offer a total solution, from consultation to implementation.
This was the precise problem faced by The Al Fresco's Group, a company with a range of restaurant brands across Vietnam, offering unpretentious, high-quality food, value-for-money and friendly service in comfortable and casual environments. Trading since 1996, The Al Fresco’s Group has carefully expanded their restaurant operations from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City and most recently to Hoi An. But the company found it almost impossible to source a PoS solution to meet their growing needs.
The opportunity
The Al Fresco’s Group had a number of key requirements for a PoS system, which the IT department had so far been unable to find available on the market. The system needed to be stylish and space-saving so that it would fit well with the attractive restaurant environments. But crucially, it also had to be upgradable and easy to maintain. This was so that the IT department could upgrade key components over time to ensure that performance could be optimised, and so that repairs and upgrades could be performed quickly on-site with no down time.
Unfortunately, the vendors that The Al Fresco’s Group contacted initially were unable to offer a cost-effective solution that met these key requirements. In many cases the vendors simply lacked the technical knowledge required to properly understand the problem and couldn’t offer a solution that ticked all the boxes. In other cases, vendors were unable to offer a professional end-to-end service, from consultation to implementation, meaning that different aspects of the project would need to be outsourced to multiple vendors, adding unwanted costs and complications. However, the most common theme throughout the tender process was a lack of suitable products – the vendors could simply not offer a stylish, reliable, high-performance PoS system that was also upgradable.
The solution
ASUS was uniquely able to meet the needs of The Al Fresco’s Group by offering the professional, full-service experience that the company was looking for, combined with the perfect products. After an expert assessment of the challenge, ASUS identified the pain points and offered the VivoMini VC66 mini PC combined with the VT168H touch monitor as the foundation of The Al Fresco’s Group’s new PoS system.
“ASUS offered the dedicated products we needed to overcome the business challenges we encountered in Vietnam,” said Mr. Peter Jones, Director of The Al Fresco’s Group. “The VivoMini VC66 was a total surprise when it came to the performance it offered from such a compact computer.”
The VC66 was ideal because it features a desktop-grade Intel Core i7 processor in an upgrade-friendly design. This allowed the IT department to source the best desktop CPU to align with its business strategy. Memory and storage in the VC66 are also simple to upgrade, while the mini PC’s modular design allows for further expansion opportunities, such as an optional optical storage drive or additional main storage, should the business require them in the future. And thanks to the compact and stylish 2L chassis, the VC66 offers the modern aesthetic that The Al Fresco’s Group wanted.
Similarly, the ASUS VT168H touch monitor also offered the stylish aesthetic that was required to fulfill the brief, while its compact, 15.6-inch 10-point touch-screen panel was perfect for PoS applications. Combined with the VivoMini VC66, this new solution from ASUS was not only more powerful and reliable than the previous all-in-one (AIO) PoS system, but it meant that The Al Fresco’s Group no longer had to compromise by using bulky, less stylish AIO systems in their restaurants.
“The VT168H touch monitor is a great product for our PoS solution since it saves us space,” added Mr. Jones.
The Al Fresco’s Group was extremely satisfied with the expert knowledge, professional service and aftercare that ASUS provided and plans future collaborations.
