Search the Community

Donde Ventura Chimi started its journey 23 years ago. A merchant dedicated to different activities, he took the risk of managing a fast-food restaurant and dedicated himself with discipline to his business. With it, he raised his three children, and now they are in the business as well. Today, we spoke with one of them, Jose, the restaurant manager. What is the type of business you run, and how long ago did you start? The business has a history of more than 20 years. It is fast food, hamburgers, fries etc. It is a family business that started with my parents, and then all the children took a place in the business. We all help and are involved in it. My dad was involved in other businesses, but the old owner offered him to manage the restaurant, and he took the risk, so with the help of some acquaintances, they encouraged him to take over the business. Thus, Donde Ventura Chimi was born on December 8, 2001, 23 years ago How has the trajectory of the business been? Do you remember any difficulties that you have gone through? As a family business, my parents are the ones who prepare the products; when I grew up, I took on the role of managing sales. It is a small but stable and very productive business. It has been evolving slowly but steadily. We used to be outside in a little cart on a corner. Then we moved to a storefront, and now we have a physical store in our region. Concerning any difficulty we faced in this trajectory, it would only be the pandemic because my dad, “come rain or shine,” always fulfills the business schedules and always goes out to make sales. When did you decide to implement new tools in the business? After the pandemic, we started with digital sales, social networks, and WhatsApp sales. We were hesitant to open sales during the pandemic, as this was the first time we had worked with any delivery tool before, but we insisted on starting with WhatsApp sales, shockingly after two weeks, all the sales flow was by WhatsApp. Then, we began to open gradually, and at that moment, we saw the need to formalize the menu for the catalog and add images. Then, I started looking for a POS system to manage inventories and reports. That's how I came to Loyverse. How did you manage the business before, and how did you find Loyverse? As I became more involved in the business, I saw the need to change the way we handled orders. To place orders, we used a paper notebook. There was no order of arrival, and there was disorganization in the kitchen when receiving the orders. The calculation of the item’s stock was also done manually. When I found your system, I hesitated to say it was compatible with restaurants. I was looking for some hardware for the business, and in multiple instances, the devices advertised that they were compatible with Loyverse. Then, out of curiosity, I searched for more information about your system. I found some restaurant software, but only Loyverse had everything in the same place: the receipt printing, the kitchen screen, and we needed a system compatible with our Android device to make the sales. How was the process of choosing Loyverse as your POS? After I found it, I thought or a long time I thought, what was the catch? They offer me kitchen display, multiple POS, Back Office, Employee Management, and Customer Display. I downloaded the app, created my account, and did everything for free, I found out it was true what you indicated on your pricing page, all those tools were free and I would only have to pay if I wanted to add employees. Loyverse communicates with the kitchen screens, it does everything. For me, it was a challenge, to find out where it was going to fail me, and I found nothing, I continued, 3 months, 6 months and I've been with the system for a year now. What changed in your business when you implemented Loyverse? Previously, I had problems with another system because sometimes the internet failed, and I could not work because everything was online. In Loyverse, there is the offline mode. Even if I don't have internet, I can make sales, and when the internet is connected, it will be synchronized with the Back Office, eliminating my headaches. When I saw that in the POS, I could register the sale, charge, add a customer to the ticket even without internet, and that automatically, when I put the internet, everything is synchronized, it was excellent. A week ago, I started with the shift management, and it is great to have that daily summary of all the sales; it gives me a clean report. Since we started using Loyverse, we have started to print the receipts, and I don't need to do anything else to make accounts; everything is in the reports; if I receive a payment by card or transfer, I have the report to review all the details later. I can assure you that with Loyverse, we have advanced what could have taken us two years, and we have achieved it in a couple of months. One of the positive points of Loyverse is that in the free version, we can personalize our receipts, and there is no advertising from you. Our receipts have a personal touch and are not contaminated with advertisements. Is there a tool that has impacted your business the most? In these ten months, we have implemented well-managed card charging and created four payment methods. With the sales reports by type of payment, I can quickly identify the total sales in cash, or card. I have also created the Delivery as a payment method to identify the total we have received for orders already, this information is vital for my business and has saved me many times. We also manage different devices to better organize our business; we have the customer screen, we manage a POS device for Pedidosya, for WhatsApp, for physical sales, and another tablet for the kitchen. It has helped me in my relationship with the customer, it has helped me because the customer can check his order on the screen, see the variants and modifiers, and see the total. Then, he can decide to add more products because he can see that he still has the budget to continue buying. Is there any tool in Loyverse that you would recommend for other users? Yes, I would like to share a trick we use with the predefined ticket tool. We don't have tables as such, but we have used them to identify our customers, for example: Cart 1, Cart 2, Family, Friends, Couple. And if necessary we customize them, for example: Green Cart, Blue Cart, etc. This is to identify who placed the order. Even if they are not regular customers, in some cases, I don't need to ask for their name, so what I do is add to the ticket some physical description of the customer to the ticket, the color of their clothing, if they have glasses, etc. This makes it easier for the employees to immediately locate where they have to deliver the order. How do you see the future of the company in the coming years? I think the business will continue to grow at the same slow but steady pace. What I can guarantee is that I will continue with you, because the program has given me reliability. It is having the confidence that every time I open the program it will be working, and when I synchronize the sales everything will show up in the reports. I am not in the business all the time, but I don't have to wait a minute to review all the information from anywhere. I also know that with the integrations in the future, when the company grows, I will be able to continue with Loyverse and integrate it with the program I need. Finally, what advice would you give someone just starting their business? I want to share my experience of what worked for my father, which is discipline. You reluctantly had to do things, and his rule was always to respect schedules. If you have a work schedule, that is your schedule without complaints. Open your business; if you are a traveling salesman, go out and sell, respect those schedules, that has worked out very well for you, and additionally, and talk to the clients. We can serve a customer in one minute, but we talk to them for 15 minutes; you need to manage that relationship with your customers.

In this opportunity, we meet Mr. Ariel, who shares with us how, with his experience, curiosity, and planning, he has used the best resources at his disposal and has become a successful entrepreneur in his region. How long have you been using Loyverse? How did you manage the data of your business before Loyverse? Previously, we did all the business management manually, but due to the flow of the business, we needed to implement a different system. I was interested in a point of sale, as in my profession as a computer engineer, I knew the importance of adapting a system to the business. Therefore, I felt the need to opt for a type of online POS service. Asking some friends and searching on the internet, I found this program. I tried it for a few days, and I liked it. I even had contact with people from your company, with an online meeting and chat, they gave me a lot of information, assistance on every question I had. After a trial of the system, I settled on it. I also have some clients in my country who started using it after I recommended it. Could you tell us about that experience, any particular feature that made you realize that Loyverse was what you needed for your business? The software, with its tools, sales processes, and inventory, was important, however, what caught my attention was the workflow, the ease with which people become familiar with the interface. I say this because I am in one of the regions of my country that does not have many computer resources, but even if people do not have advanced knowledge of technology or have not handled a point-of-sale system before, Loyverse is a straightforward and simple option to handle in a few days of using it the staff already mastered the tools because the interface is very friendly. What type of business do you handle with Loyverse at the moment? We currently have different types of businesses, and we manage different stores in the same Loyverse account. Some of them are restaurants that operate on the beach, as well as beverage stores. We also have a warehouse from which we distribute the goods to the businesses on the beach. Do you think Loyverse has helped streamline the operations of the different types of businesses you manage? Of course, with Loyverse, I manage the inventory of all of them, and when making sales, we can add different devices to the system, such as scanners and printers, to speed up the sales. Mainly because our business is on the beach and there are times of the day when we have a very high flow of customers. If I have a line of people waiting in line, it is easy to process all the payments, record all the products on the ticket, and keep accurate inventory management. I use the Advanced Inventory version, which has helped me a lot in the day-to-day processes with the detailed inventory management of all the stores. We also work with the wholesale of the products since we have a store that works as a supplier for other businesses, and the inventory management is handled 100% with the Loyverse program. You mentioned previously that you have contacted Loyverse Customer Service several times; how was your experience with support? Yes, I have asked many questions. In the beginning, and since working with IT, I was inquisitive to learn more about how Loyverse works. If I had any questions, I immediately contacted Loyverse, and they answered me quickly and helped me with recommendations on how to use the tools I had not used before. Do you remember any of these recommendations that the team shared with you? Yes, one of them was related to inventory management. I wanted to modify some items, and I wanted to add a whole category from one account to another, the team recommended exporting the list of items, making some modifications in Excel, and then uploading that information with the changes directly to another store and it was very helpful. They gave me advice, and with the video tutorials that you have, I was able to follow the instructions, and it worked correctly. Regarding the analysis of the reports handled by Loyverse. Have you used them to understand the performance of your business? On a day-to-day basis, when a person starts a business, he/she has to rely on investors or the Bank to get started. In my case, since I started with an investment from the Bank, I always had to be clear about my goals and my metrics of what my monthly gross profit would be in order to be able to function correctly and organize both my payroll and the money from the investment. Also based on the reports, I can see what type of product is the leader that I have in my business, and thus understand how I should renew the inventory. With all that data at the end of a period, I can make decisions, and know how to manage the profits we get with our sales. How would you summarize the impact of Loyvers on your business? One of the experiences that my friends and employees have mentioned frequently is the improvement of having all the information easily in the palm of your hand; with any type of electronic device, be it Android or iOS, it is possible to make sales and keep track of your business inventory from anywhere in the country since it is online. Additionally, one of my favorite tools is that you can manage the employees’ working hours, when they clock in and when they clock out, and calculate the hours worked is fascinating. Many people who work here in the region have asked me about the program I use. I have recommended to them to go to the Loyverse website, and since it is a tourist area, they don't want to be left behind, and some of them have implemented Loyverse as well. I believe that Loyverse is a platform that is in constant development and that is always adapting to the needs of the clients, and I see a lot of benefits in the future. Would you like to share any message or experience for the people reading this article? Loyverse business owners can have all the data they need to make a financial projection and detailed and accurate inventory management, which is the most challenging part of the business. When we decide to have some kind of business, we must know that there was an investment capital, and it is necessary to know where that money has been used and, where that money is, and when you will have a return. With Loyverse you can make a deep analysis and a follow-up of your investment, with the Advanced Inventory, we can see the purchases that we have made to the suppliers, and we can also see the management or the modification of all the products. When we can make a detailed follow-up with the data we have from Loyverse, we can easily know where our capital is in a fast and simple way. Loyverse helps you save time, and you don't need to hire an external accounting person to do that job for you.