Enhancing Productivity in an Evolving Environment

PAR Technology Corporation (PTC) was founded in 1968, by Dr. John Sammon, to provide consulting services to the commercial sector in the areas of digital signal and image processing, while he worked as a research scientist at the Air Force’s Rome Labs. In 1970, Sammon left government service to work full time in the pursuit of innovative applications of digital technology involving the detection and recognition of patterns in complex data streams.

Across the next 20 years, PAR expanded its business to international markets, installing POS systems and software across the globe. Today, PAR provides its restaurant and retail customers with technology to improve internal operations enhancing the customer experience and better manage information. The primary areas of focus are point of sale and food safety systems where PAR provides a combination of hardware, software and services. “We provide hardware that is deployed in nearly 100,000 restaurants and 110 countries; from terminals, to kitchen systems, to temperature monitoring IoT devices,” says Chas Wurster, Chief Technology Officer of PAR

On the software side, the company provides cloud-based Brink POS Software, as well as PixelPoint Software and their food safety and checklist management solution, SureCheck. According to Wurster, the industry is being heavily disrupted by technology. One only needs to look at the increase in mobile ordering, delivery, and payment to see how technology is affecting restaurants and retail. As rising labor costs drive the desire for operational efficiency and delivery changes the physical footprint of some storefronts, customers are forced to adapt. This leads to the desire to have more access to data, more ways to integrate systems, and an ever-increasing focus on security. The cloud-based Brink POS Software provides easy integration points for third parties and the ability to manage all store concepts from a single location. PAR’s food safety application, SureCheck, allows customers to easily look for anomalies and compliance risks, whilst providing sensor integration to collect information about the environment automatically. This provides an easier way to collect all the data compared to traditional paper-based systems.

“ Our franchisees couldn’t be happier with our selection to go with PAR’s Cloud-Based Brink Software. ”

PAR is also redefining point of sale by concentrating on making Brink the backbone of the restaurant. Through the robust solution and APIs, the company allows the customers to connect their kitchen, online ordering, loyalty, payroll, instore metrics, omni channel marketing, delivery, and other initiatives together with all their data securely processed and backed up in the cloud. This eliminates the risks typically associated with an on premise back-office computer that usually holds all the localized data for that store.

In an instance, prior to Brink, California Tortilla was using a server-based point of sale system commonly used in the industry that required inefficient, standalone support and could not efficiently integrate with emerging technology. “It’s important for Cal Tort to be up to date with POS technology, now and in the future. Our aging POS system was fast approaching the end of its usefulness and was becoming disruptive to the overall operations of the business,” explains Brian Chase, Director of Franchise Operations, California Tortilla. “Our franchisees couldn’t be happier with our selection to go with PAR’s Cloud-Based Brink Software.”

As the restaurant and retail industry is disrupted by technology, the company is focusing towards their commitment to the customers to help them run their businesses. PAR is in the process of transforming into a software-lead solution provider, where the POS software becomes a focus with the hardware supporting it, instead of the other way around. With Brink, the company is currently focused on the US and North American markets, specifically in quick service and fast casual restaurants. “In the future, we are looking at the opportunities to leverage our existing international footprint to expand, as well as the opportunity to move into more table service concepts,” says Wurster.