TGI Fridays partners with Microsoft on tablets to streamline orders

TGI Fridays Inc. is equipping servers with 8-inch tablets so they can quickly and accurately process orders and payments while at the table.

The devices use Windows 8.1, running Oracle’s MICROS Restaurant Enterprise Solution (RES) 5.4 on Oracle’s MICROS mTablet E-Series mobile point of sale devices.

Servers can carry these tablets from table to table to take orders and respond promptly to guest requests. It improves table wait and helps regulate the pace of orders sent to the kitchen.

“TGI Fridays is rethinking how technology can lead to restaurant innovation,” said Tracy Issel, general manager of Worldwide Retail, Consumer Goods, Hospitality and Travel for Microsoft. “We are helping it change the way food orders are processed and wait staff and managers do their jobs, reinventing the customer experience, one restaurant at a time.

Many restaurant technology solutions rely on proprietary hardware or custom ruggedized devices, built to withstand the abuse of a kitchen environment. Such solutions can be expensive and take a long time to develop and deploy.

Oracle’s MICROS RES 5.4 allows TGI Fridays to manage the various aspects of running a restaurant, from tableside ordering to traffic and queue management, all from one solution and in a much more cost-effective way.

“Windows 8 gave us a platform that allowed us to develop a new user interface, which gives our servers even better tools to delight our guests and make their experience even more enjoyable,” said TGI Fridays Vice President and CIO Tripp Sessions.