View Average Wait Times by Sale Type (Implementation)

Everyone entering a busy restaurant is familiar with the frustration of not knowing how long it will take for the food to be prepared. Employees usually try to guess the wait time for food; however, this is only estimated and does not consider the accurate load on the kitchen with delivery orders in addition to dine-in and pick-up. By analysing real-time data captured at the KMS, staff and customers can have an accurate and accessible view of the average wait time for meals, split by the various sales types. This improves the customer experience by eliminating confusion and frustration and providing customers with accurate information, making their dining experience better.

 

How is the wait time for each order calculated?

The wait time for each order starts when the order is received by the POS (either manually entered at the POS or initiated by online ordering) and ends when it is served from the Paperless Kitchen device designated as the Kitchen Controller.

How is the average order wait time calculated?

The average order wait times are refreshed on a configured time frame and are calculated using the average wait time of the last x number of transactions per Sale Type that have occurred in the last y minutes.

If there are no sales that meet the configured criteria for a Sale Type (for example, no Pickup sales in the last 20 minutes), the Average Order Production Time applicable to the store will be used for that Sale Type.

Clients must be utilising Polygon Paperless Kitchen configured to send web notifications for order status updates.

It is not necessary to implement a Status Screen for order status updates, although the average wait time pane is complementary functionality.

The following versions are required:

rcSPOSMDI.exe   2301.19.1 or later   
rcSN_IPD.exe      2302.1.1 or later   
rcIPD.exe              2302.2.1 or later
rcsecr.exe             2302.3.1 or later

Polygon Central    2.0.373 or later   

 

 

Configuration is required in the Polygon POS Management database to set the parameters for the average wait time calculation.

To do this:

• Access POS Location Settings (or Default Location Settings as appropriate)
• Under POS Terminal Settings, choose Printing | Paperless Kitchen
• The wait time (time to complete the order from the moment it is accepted by POS until it is served off at the Kitchen Controller) will only be reported to Polygon Central and available for Average Wait Time calculations if the Report kitchen performance to Polygon Central setting is enabled.
• Enter the required Look-back count.  This is the number of most recent orders to be included in the average wait time calculations.
• Enter the required Look-back period.  This is how far back in time the system will look to include orders in average wait time calculations.
• Enter the Refresh data every value.  This is the number of minutes at which updated average wait time data will be reported to Polygon Central.
• Enter the Maximum transaction time.  Once the completion time for an order exceeds this value, the order will not be included in Average Wait Time calculations.  This will prevent orders that miss having their status updated from skewing the average wait time data.
• If the client is also utilising queue prioritisation for their paperless kitchen network, they may only want orders that are eligible for prioritisation to be included in the average wait time calculations.  If so, ensure the Restrict calculation to orders eligible for queue prioritisation setting is enabled.

An Average Wait Time pane now needs to be programmed in Polygon Central and assigned to a Status Screen.

Note: A Status Screen may have Order Status panes and|or an Average Wait Time pane.

If the client wants the Average Wait Times displayed alongside the Order Status panes include both types when programming the Status Screen.

If the client only wants the Average Wait Times displayed do not include any Order Status panes.

 

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