Shorefield Holidays reduces inventory management costs and boosts guest experiences with connected tech from Zonal
Introducing Shorefield Holidays
Family-run business
Established 1958
Award-winning holiday park operator
Collection of 9 parks across Dorset & Hampshire
“While we were looking for a new technology solution, we were looking for something that would be more integrated across the board, a cost saving for us as a business, and be able to take us to the next step.”Ryan Swatridge, Group Entertainments Manager, Shorefield Holidays
The business challenge
With a drive to deliver unforgettable experiences for their guests, owners and residents; as well as to join up their technology across their parks to deliver better integration and facilitate cost savings, Shorefield Holidays began the search for a technology partner that could help take them to the next level.
They needed a technology partner that would help them grow and expand, as well as deliver live, day-to-day insight over areas such as stock levels to enable more effective decision-making, something they were lacking at the time. The Shorefield team also wanted to be able to better understand their guests, including spending patterns, so technology that provided easy-to-digest and detailed reporting on how guests were engaging with the business was vital.
The system needed to be hospitality-dedicated, and ultimately make life easier for their guests and staff.
“Technology is a huge part of our business, from the iServes to the app, the loyalty, we massively embraced what Zonal brought to us. We’re just looking at different ways we can bring technology to what we do, we even have robots in our restaurant that will serve you your dinner.”Ryan Swatridge, Group Entertainments Manager, Shorefield Holidays
The solution
With a set of requirements and criteria in mind, the Shorefield team began researching different technology suppliers, as well as what their competitors were doing, and as a result chose to work with Zonal to implement a suite of connected hospitality technology across their parks to meet their business’s objectives.
With Zonal’s industry-leading EPoS at the core of their restaurants, the Shorefield team have since benefitted from real-time, accurate stock monitoring via Zonal’s built-in stock management module, enabling them to reduce costs on external stock counts. Zonal’s handheld EPoS ordering solution for staff, iServe, was also implemented, enabling staff to take orders at the tableside and automatically sending these through for fulfilment helping to improve guest experiences through speedier service and eliminating any room for errors, whilst providing significant time savings for staff by removing the need for orders to be re-keyed.
Alongside Zonal’s EPoS, the Shorefield team also chose to implement our purchase-to-pay inventory management solution, Acquire. With an end-to-end purchasing platform in place, fully integrated with their EPoS, the team have transformed their inventory management, enabling them to manage all of their suppliers and purchasing in one central platform, as well as reducing staff overhead by eliminating the need for their team to spend hours logging delivery notes and invoices.
“The difference is night and day; the money it’s saving us in not running multiple different platforms, and time it’s saving the team, and the fact that it’s just modernised us as a business.”Chris Weymouth, Assistant Complex Manager – Oakdene Forest Park, Shorefield Holidays
To further enhance their guest experience, Shorefield implemented Zonal’s Order & Pay app across their estate of holiday parks. Zonal worked with both the Shorefield operations and marketing teams to develop their app into exactly what they wanted it to be, including delivery to location functionality to enable guests to place orders for delivery to their accommodation – providing guests with convenience and flexibility.
All the functionality is backed up by Zonal’s robust suite of reporting. With Zonal’s integrated tech in place, the Shorefield team are able to drill down into more detail than ever, including a granular view of GP margins for every recipe item, helping them to expose any inefficiencies or fluctuations, and react accordingly.
- Industry-leading EPoS for holiday parks, complete with a robust stock management solution and real-time data capture
- Handheld ordering devices for staff to speed up service times and reduce room for error
- A fully-integrated purchase-to-pay solution, enabling the Shorefield team to centralise purchasing and supplier management, reducing costs and saving staff time
- A branded, feature-rich customer app, fully-integrated with their EPoS, to give guests more control over their dining experience during their stay, complete with deliver to location functionality to enable delivery straight to their cabins
- Robust, detailed reporting across their entire technology ecosystem, providing the necessary insight to help the Shorefield team to make more effective decisions
“You can see on the sales and profitability reports the GP margins for every recipe item, which means you can really expose any small problems you’re having with the fluctuation of figures. It gives you the ability to push that GP as much as you can.”Chris Weymouth, Assistant Complex Manager – Oakdene Forest Park, Shorefield Holidays
Results
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Introducing Haskins
Haskins Garden Centres have been blooming since the family business first took root in Dorset in 1882. Today, the Haskins family still owns the growing group of garden centres with five locations in Ferndown, Southampton, Roundstone, Farnham and Snowhill. In recent years the biggest area of growth has been the restaurant side of the business, making them not just a plant retailer, but a leisure destination too.
Founded in 1882 by Harry Haskins
5 locations in Southern England
15,000+ restaurant transactions per week
20%+ of total revenue comes from F&B
“We had a stand-alone catering stock control system to help with stock management in our restaurants. This system had four separate databases, one for each centre, and so data entry was duplicated four times.”Claire Viney, Systems Manager, Haskins Garden Centres
The business challenge
With a retail POS system controlling their hospitality function, Haskins were facing inaccuracies with stock, a lack of visibility on product performance and inefficiencies within their restaurants.
Restaurant staff had full access to the system and changed recipes to suit their own chefs, which resulted in their databases growing out of sync with one another due to no central control.
Haskins manually integrated this stock control system with their retail EPoS system tills. However, due to the limited functionality, they had to sell products generically. For example, they would sell a scone as a scone but couldn’t capture the flavour or any of the preparation that went into creating the scone. This not only meant that their stock control was inaccurate, but they also had no visibility of their best and worst selling items.
The current setup was no longer fit-for-purpose, and, looking ahead at expanding their estate from four to six sites, Haskins was looking for a dedicated hospitality EPoS partner to manage the thriving F&B division of the business.
“The fact that Zonal is also a family business meant they shared our customer-focused values, and that gave us reassurance that we would be taken care of.”Claire Viney, Systems Manager, Haskins Garden Centres
The solution
After much research and a comprehensive procurement process, Haskins chose to work with Zonal as their technology provider. Impressed with Zonal’s EPoS and its ability to adapt to and grow with their business, they chose to implement Zonal’s EPoS terminals and handheld ordering iServe devices across their restaurants.
- A powerful EPoS solution, designed specifically for use in hospitality environments
- Cost-effective, reliable handheld ordering devices, allowing for team members to take orders and process payments from anywhere within their restaurants
- Teams are empowered to carry out check backs at the tables, providing an opportunity for customers to top up their order with either a fresh cup of coffee or dessert
- Improved efficiency and speed of service with faster, easier-to-use tech
- Greater control over stock levels
- Detailed analytics and reporting providing in-depth insight into product performance
“The reporting we can access is making a huge difference to the way we manage our business and our menus. We can now see what dishes are popular and giving us the best margins and those that either need refining or taking off the menu.”Ben Harrison, Group Catering Manager, Haskins Garden Centres
Results
“If we do have any complaints, it’s usually about people waiting for hot drink orders while their food goes cold. It’s a common issue for our style of service, but handheld ordering will enable us to resolve this problem going forward and make this process far more slick, efficient and customer friendly.”Ben Harrison, Group Catering Manager, Haskins Garden Centres
