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Custom requests can prompt us to take a step back and revisit certain areas of Simphony that we have not looked at in some time. We recently had a customer request that made me take a deeper look at extending the printing operations of Simphony.

The request sounded relatively simple. This coffee shop sells a range of coffee beans and they wanted to be able to provide a QR code that customers could scan to find out more about the coffee they had purchased. Adding QR codes in most contexts is not particularly difficult. We’ve added QR codes for car park vouchers, surveys and all manner of other purposes before. The wrinkle in this case, was that the customer was using dopplebon printing. This meant that some of the standard ways of adding QR codes were not as readily available. Finding this, I found myself doing a deeper dive on the custom printing options, some that I had used before and one that I had never explored fully.

Completely replacing receipt printing

Adding extra lines with headers and trailers in a similar fashion to what was supported on RES has always been possible. This is still a little limiting in where you can add the extra lines. There are ways to make other subtle changes, but there is also an option to completely replace the printer output.

So what could you do with this?

With the prevalence and severity of allergens, it is possible to provide images showing the allergens present for take away or retail purchases clearly on the customer’s receipt.

Oracle has a complete solution for multi-lingual printing, but complex languages require a separate printer board. If you wish to have only certain items print in a different language it is possible just using image based printing.

Custom Order Device Printing

Whilst it is possible to completely replace guest check and receipt output, the same is also possible for order device printing. Alas this method doesn’t work for KDS, but we have something on that for a future posting.

Order Device Printing doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Whilst it is possible to replace the entire output for an existing order device, you could also create a new order device that produces another print job.

When might you change the entire order device print output? In our experience top end chefs often have very, very specific sort and print requirements. Whilst you have a fair amount of options in sorting, with print job replacement, any sort order or course breakdown can be possible.

I find the option of new order devices even more powerful.
Examples:
Print tasting notes for staff for high end wines.
Print QR codes for retail purchases so customers can learn more about the products they buy
Print a custom table summary for chefs for tables

Reach out to sales@onthemarksolutions.net with any custom printing ideas you’ve been wanting us
to tackle.