The Cow Co, Tapnell Farm

The Cow Co at Tapnell Farm

Tapnell farm is a family run business located within the picturesque Isle of Wight countryside. Their 200 strong herd of dairy cows produce 6,000 litres of milk every day, 365 days a year. Sustainability is at the heart of the Tapnell Farm ethos, whether taking water from their borehole or using the sun to make electricity, creating a sustainable and environmentally friendly business is truly ingrained into their approach to farming. This ethos has been expanded to their now thriving tourist ecosystem that includes a gift shop, playbarn, children’s adventure activities, an art gallery, eco-lodges, and farm cottages.
The Cow Co restaurant filled with people eating

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ICR Systems provide full solutions for all your hospitality and retail needs. The great range of products are coupled with our reliable professional support.

The Cow Co dining room

The challenge

Launched by Tom Honeyman-Brown, former manager of the hugely popular Garlic Farm on the Isle of Wight and Tom Turney of Tom’s Eco Lodges also situated at Tapnell Farm. The new restaurant offers everything from breakfast to lunch and dinner, with various types of cow-themed food and drink available 7 days a week. The Cow Co restaurant combines a relaxed dining experience with full table service and incorporates a fully licensed bar alongside the farm’s playbarn, adventure activities, shop and art gallery. The Cow Co is an extremely busy and popular eating destination, which provides a gourmet dining experience where the menu changes with the seasons. The EPoS solution needed to be able to be re-programmed quickly and easily alongside the ever-changing menu. The waiting staff needed to be able to take orders quickly and send them off to be processed by the kitchen and then move on to the next customer with as little fuss or wasted time as possible. In contrast, the bar staff need to be able to take orders and enter them into the system where they prepare the drinks, whether that’s a chilled glass of Chablis or a hot cup of lapsang souchong. The restaurant needed an EPoS system that not only looks the part in the high-class environment but also was intuitive and quick for staff to use it. An EPoS system for the bustling retail shop also needed to be taken into consideration, which needed to operate in a completely different way yet still have the revenue reported alongside the restaurant takings.

The solution

ICR Systems supplied two EPoS systems for The Cow Co restaurant running ICRTouch TouchPoint along with magnetic card readers for fast clerk sign on. One of the EPoS terminals was placed facing the customer dining area so that the waiting staff can quickly enter orders onto the system and then return swiftly to service another table. Whilst the other EPoS terminal was positioned at the bar so that staff could enter orders straight into the system and prepare the drinks or receive any orders through the printer on their counter which had originated from the other till. A PSConnect wireless pay at table service was added for easy card payments taken directly at the table which includes neat features such as splitting the bill at the card terminal. An EPoS terminal running ICRTouch TouchPoint was supplied for the farm gift shop, bringing features to help promote products through use of customer displays and easily manage offers and sales within the store. The EPoS system automatically kept track of stock, for easy supply management. There are even features to reward returning customers with discounts or points. An EFT machine directly connected to the till was supplied, the built-in contactless technology kept the queuing times down and also meant that sales weren’t missed due to customer’s not having the right amount of cash on them. TouchOfficeWeb ties both the restaurant and shop together in a simple to use cloud-based solution where the owners can keep an eye on both revenue streams from a single place. Information about sales can be seen in real-time, with access to live receipt data and drill down to clerk level. The entire stock system can be managed, and program updates made remotely without tying up the till system and even be scheduled to go live on the till at a later time.

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