Order Confirmation Systems | The Howard Company

What is an order confirmation system?

An order confirmation system offers restaurants the ability to showcase orders on drive-thru menu boards for customers to review. There are many advantages that come along with utilizing an order confirmation system, including:

True ROI Model:
- Order confirmation systems eliminate the amount of time that is spent verbally reviewing orders with customers.
- Cars can be served faster, resulting in more orders taken and a better drive-thru experience.
- Less items are comped. Correct orders mean fewer mistakes and not having to waste food, beverages, and supplies.
Enhanced Guest Experience:
- Customers can double-check what they ordered. This establishes trust and keeps customers returning for more!
Order Confirmation Systems with open transactional API can Integrate With POS systems:
- PAR Brink
- NCR Aloha
- Spot On
- Qu Beyond
- Can develop other integrations upon request

What types of order confirmation systems do we offer?

There are two types of order confirmation systems available, The Howard Company order confirmation system and the delphi stand alone solution.

1. The Howard Company's WebOCS

Integrated (into menu board display with other content) or stand-alone Order Confirmation Solution (OCS).

The Howard WebOCS solution was developed to work with industry leading enterprise POS systems like PAR Brink, NCR Aloha, and Qu Beyond. The system shows line-by-line, real-time order details as cashiers enter guest’s items and modifiers to their orders. This system is also highly customizable with the sizing of the order confirmation area, fonts, custom messages, and layout.

The default modes of the solution cycle through 3 distinct phases of the ordering process.

Pre-Order phase. Before guests and staff begin interacting with each other the system shows “attract loop” content. This might be a playlist of LTO content of additional menu offerings.
In-Order phase. Once the cashier starts to enter items into the POS, the POS system triggers Howard OCS with a Start-of-Order command, and this is when the software knows to start displaying the Order Confirmation Zone/Region on the screen (replacing the zone that was showing the attract loop of content)
End-Order phase. After the guest is done ordering the Cashier sends the order to the kitchen, the POS system triggers the Howard OCS with an End-of-Order command. This indicates that the software can take over the entire display to show full order including tax & total, thank you, and/or guest instructions (“Thank you, please pull forward” graphically). After a user definable period of time, the software will return to the Pre-Order phase, waiting for the next guest interaction.

Howard Dictionary Feature

The WebOCS software can use a “dictionary” file to define what specific text string values the Brand would like to modify, replace or suppress to customize the messages that are sent out to the guest facing OCS window.

Replace/Modify - some POS databases were originally setup with kitchen staff-facing item descriptions or may use abbreviations because the descriptions were originally only planned for receipts or kitchen printers. The Dictionary allows those string values to be replaced with more verbose or guest-facing descriptions that marketing teams would rather have guests see. Example: “SM Fry” could be replaced with “Small Krinkle-Cut Fries”.
OCS Suppression - In other cases, there may be information used by the Brand for operational purposes for the kitchen staff that they don’t want to show to guests on the OCS. It is common today, especially with Dual Lane Drive-Thru sites, to capture vehicle descriptions by cashiers to assure the correct food is handed to the correct guest. The POS interface may be setup to capture things like “Blue Sedan”, “Red Truck”, etc. The Dictionary feature allows those messages to be suppressed by replacing the text string with a NULL value. Guests will not see the descriptions then on the OCS, but the data is still part of the receipt so staff can still hand the correct food to the correct vehicle.

FULL CMS Support

Howard’s WebOCS offers full Content Management Software features as part of the solution, providing full Graphical User Interfaces to load content, build playlists and dayparts for content and provide validity dates for when specific content items will begin to playback and when the content will expire. Support for CMS features means Howard Customers can be trained to use the system to control their own content messages. Some competitors require content to be submitted to be programmed into their systems, mostly because they are hard coded into the OCS and require developers to implement each change.

Simple JSON API Available

For 3^rd party developers of POS platforms or Voice AI agents, Howard WebOCS is also compatible with a simple JSON messaging capability. This allows systems to send Howard’s OCS additional messages of Items, Modifiers & Submodifiers along with pricing data. Voice AI providers can leverage this functionality to develop visual OCS capabilities for their solution, demonstrating to guests line-by-line real-time understanding by the AI Agent, even if the orders are batched into the POS when the guest is finished with their orders.

Seamless Transition between AI Agent and Human Cashier

When using Voice AI Agents in the Drive-Thru, Howard’s WebOCS can provide seamless guest experience when switching between a VoiceAI Agent that is using the Howard JSON protocol and if a Human Cashier needs to help or the Ai Agent is taken offline. This is possible as WebOCS can listen for both the JSON and PAR Brink protocol (or others) at the same time. No changes to configurations are needed to switch back and forth between the POS/Cashier and the Voice AI. Without this feature, guest would not see guest facing visuals when transitioning between AI Agents and Human Cashiers.

2. Delphi Stand-Alone Solution

The Endura™ 15X is the latest generation of order confirmation displays for Delphi. Its slim and fully sealed design is highly reliable and can be mounted in a variety of configurations including speaker posts, canopies and others. The Endura 15X connects directly to the point-of-sale system to show drive-thru customers their order in real time as it is entered by the crew member. It can also stream video for point-of-sale systems that generate their own customer-facing order confirmation interface.