The YUNO terminals make customer transactions fast and effortless. The hard drives, display and processor are all integrated into one unit which is a great improvement aesthetically. We have them in all sites with eight units in total installed. They are three years old now and they have proved tough & reliable and still look as good as they did the day they were installed.”
Matthew Ng, Managing Director, Matthew’s Foods
Matthew’s Foods is a specialist oriental food retailer and catering supplies wholesaler based in Glasgow. Launched in 1994, the company started out as a courier service supplying restaurants and takeaways across Scotland.
By 1997, the business had grown sufficiently to encourage founder and managing director Matthew Ng to consider opening his own retail premises. The original Matthew’s Foods oriental supermarket was opened in Glasgow that year, also serving as a base for the company’s catering supply operations.
Further expansion followed, with a second store opening in Dundee in 2001 and then a third in Aberdeen four years later. Completing the cycle of opening a new supermarket every four years, a fourth was added in Scotland’s capital, Edinburgh, in 2009.
In tune with the experiences of many entrepreneurial retail businesses, Matthews Foods has seen its point of sale requirements develop in line with its growth. Moreover, in the two decades since the company opened its first store, EPOS technology has undergone significant evolution of its own, with key breakthroughs in software and hardware opening up new opportunities for end users.
To help navigate this changing technological landscape, Matthews Food has had the support of leading Scottish supplier ACR EPOS Systems. “We have been involved with Matthews Foods since 1997,” said Roddy McKenzie, Retail Systems Support at ACR. “The relationship came about because Matthew had been let down by a then competitor of ours who installed legacy EPOS hardware but was unable to get it to work. He called the hardware manufacturer (SHARP UK) who directed him to ACR as we were then the largest SHARP dealer in the UK and we sorted out his issues.
“Matthew Foods by then was operating a busy supermarket so needed scanning and stock control software which we supplied. We installed Retail Control by Bleep and linked it to his existing SHARP terminals. We upgraded his hardware to Digi-POS in 2000 as Matthew had opened two more units in Dundee and Aberdeen and needed centralised stock and sales control. By then he needed the higher functionality PC tills offered compared to ROM-based hardware.
“Matthew added one more unit in Edinburgh and continued to use our hardware and support for around six years before being lured away by the promise of an all singing and dancing solution!”
The Challenge
That, however, was not to be the end of the story for Matthews Foods and ACR. By 2014, Matthew had new ambitions for what he wanted to achieve from an integrated EPOS system across all of his stores. The Dundee store had just undergone a refit and Matthew felt it was time for a change in his tech infrastructure, not least because support for his existing EPOS was being discontinued.
ACR, meanwhile, had by this time established a relationship with AURES and was had been supplying its hardware to many of its clients for a number of years.
“In 2014 I was asked to the opening of the rebuilt supermarket in Dundee,” remembered Roddy. “Matthew asked me if I would be interested in supplying an EPOS solution to him again as he was dissatisfied with his existing system, coupled with the fact the company he was dealing with for EPOS was discontinuing support for his solution.”
Matthew already had a clear vision in mind for what the replacement system had to be capable of. “The new solution needed to surpass the abilities of his previous solution and needed to link dynamically to SAGE200,” continued Roddy. “Sage controlled the product database and pricing and populated the EPOS database. Updates were sent to all POS units via a secure VPN connection, transactions done at each site were sent back to the EPOS back office, then processed before being imported to SAGE as individual sales orders. All of this was done in real time.”
The key challenges facing Roddy, then, were providing a hardware system with enough processing power to allow SAGE200 to run efficiently and reliably in real time, while still prioritising an optimum customer experience. As well as instantaneous transaction logging across all sites, Matthew also wanted multilingual displays at each terminal plus peripherals like weighing scales.
The Solution
Roddy and his ACR team put together a solution comprising AURES YUNO all-in-one touchscreen terminals running a customised version of the Bleep EPOS platform.
“The EPOS software development to integrate with Sage200 was unique to Matthews Foods and took 10 months to perfect,” said Roddy. “The software and hardware were installed into a live environment in November 2014 and included integrated EFT, weighing scales at each POS and 10.1” customer displays showing both English and Chinese – as most of Matthew’s client base are Chinese, this was most important.
“The YUNOs and all peripherals were installed on Space Poles to have a smaller footprint and to maximise counter space, helping to make the customer experience the best possible.”
For Matthew’s part, he is happy to acknowledge the improvement the upgraded system made across all of his stores. “The AURES YUNOs are a great improvement on the modular Toshiba PoS terminals we had previously. The hard drives, display and processor are all integrated into one unit which is much better aesthetically. We have them in all sites with eight units in total installed. They are three years old now and they have proved tough & reliable and still look as good as they did the day they were installed.
“The YUNO terminals make customer transactions fast and effortless, the secondary displays allow the customers to see and understand what is being scanned as they display the transactions in both English and Chinese. The staff are mostly of Chinese origin so the cashier screen also displays functions in Chinese which allows for easier training. The mounting on Space Poles along with all peripherals makes for a tidy appearance. Printing receipts is done via Aures ODP333 printers. Overall the whole process at checkout is fast and efficient.”
AURES YUNO Unit Highlights
The AURES YUNO combines robust performance with stylish, compact design, making it a flexible choice for use in a wide range of retail and hospitality settings.
Available with a choice of three different processors, the YUNO features a shock- and scratch-proof PCAP touchscreen monitor, either a standard 4:3 15.1’’ screen or a 16:9 15.6’’ widescreen version. The durable casing also stands up to dirt, dust, grease and spillages. VESA fixings mean it can be mounted on walls or poles as well as used on the table top.
Overall, the YUNO’s combination of advanced technology, ergonomics, flexibility and design make it an ideal value-for-money investment for any customer-facing business.