One of the UK’s best loved family attractions, Adventure Island in Southend-on-Sea, is well advanced with its point-of-sale hardware upgrade project. The venue’s operator reports it has now rolled out 50+ contemporary touchscreen YUNO terminals from AURES – on which it runs MERAC’s MStore retail management solution – across its numerous cafes, food kiosks and ticket booths.
In a year in whichMERAC, provider of EPoS and management systems to the leisure & attractions industry, marks ten years of partnering with Adventure Island, the fun park has reported on its successful EPoS hardware upgrade project.
50+ new YUNO touchscreen terminals, supplied by MERAC’s long-term hardware partner AURES Technologies, are now running catering and ticketing operations as part of an estate-wide refresh.
Adventure Island is extensive and now includes a new, all-weather indoor fun centre, Adventure Inside. The popular Sea-Life Adventure, the South East’s premier aquatic attraction, is nearby. Numerous served and to-go food outlets serve all three locations. Emphasis is put on choice and quality: ranging from candy floss to ciabattas, pancakes to pizzas, and burgers to top-quality cuisine, there is something for every palette and budget.
“As our old till hardware started to fail and reach end of life, we wanted to upgrade to something newer. The most cost-effective route was to upgrade on a rolling basis and that’s what we are doing.” When it comes to the strengths of the YUNO, Andrew Renton favours its solid state drives. “SSDs make these machines reliable and fast, which we need to stop queues building up. In our Pavillion Restaurant in particular, the YUNO upgrade has lifted till performance and massively increased reliability. The YUNOs are more than capable too of bringing out the strengths of our MERAC MStore software.”
Staff sign on with a card via a magnetic stripe reader. “This is secure and every transaction is traceable to an individual,” says Renton. Both software and hardware contribute to a fast and intuitive user interface.
The YUNO’s look comes in for praise too. “The black YUNOs look sleek, more like a modern screen than a PC. Our environment’s quite tough and the black cases are good at not showing scrapes and dirt. We’ve gone for matching black AURES printers and the whole set-up looks smart.”
A recent innovation has been a trial of secondary screens attached to the rear of the YUNOs. “Not only is this good for pushing promotions but customers can see precisely what they’ve ordered and how much they’ve spent, which is important for families with children. It’s especially useful in our singing restaurant where order details can sometimes get misheard!”
Adventure Island uses its MERAC MStore solution to manage all its ticketing and accounting operations. Quite unusually, the default ticket delivery method is wristbands. These are generated via the application and printed on the AURES ODP 333 thermal printers, as are traditional entry vouchers and receipts.
When it comes to software, Adventure Island feels it has made the right choice in MStore. “MERAC are good at picking up any issues and the software is constantly improving.” The Adventure Island team finds MStore-generated reports very beneficial. “MStore gives us all we need. We get a good all-round view of the business and all our financial processes and reconciliation are streamlined.”
Andrew Renton closes with praise for both suppliers. “MERAC have looked after us well for 10 years and AURES are fair to deal with too, always quick to replace hardware if we have an issue and intent on giving us good customer service.”
