Interview with Teresa Gillane: Office Manager of Rouge Tomate Chelsea & MICROS POS User

The Chelsea area of New York City is home to many award-winning restaurants. Rouge Tomate Chelsea is known for fusing highly nutritious ingredients and masterful preparation into dishes that are both enjoyable and healthy. Prior to opening its Chelsea location, Rouge Tomate was located in New York City's Upper East Side, where it was awarded one Michelin Star.

We spoke with Teresa Gillane, office manager for Rouge Tomate Chelsea, about their decision to use MICROS Retail Systems POS system for their restaurant. In this interview, Teresa discusses how MICROS supports various integrations, which is a nice plus, but is also a downside, because it requires additional systems in order to have a complete end-to-end system to run the restaurant. She also mentions how dealing with their customer support can be frustrating at times.

MICROS Systems was acquired by Oracle in 2014, and today, it remains one of the most popular restaurant POS systems on the market.

Good Morning Teresa, thanks so much for your time. Tell us about Rouge Tomate here in Chelsea.

We opened Rouge Tomate in this Chelsea location in 2016. We had formerly been located uptown and when we chose the site it took over two years to bring to life because the location was an old church that required a lot of negotiation with the city as a landmark building. The previous location uptown was more upscale and we wanted to make this location more relaxed and approachable. The site really has really became a passion project for the owner.

The idea behind Rouge Tomate has always been that healthy food can taste good too. We have a nutritionist that works closely with our chef to make sure that the food we offer not only tastes good but is also good for you. We use the best ingredients and source locally whenever we can. The restaurant is certified as “green” and we serve Modern American cuisine with assorted seasonal dishes as well and our menu is very vegetable-forward. We are located at 126 West 18th Street in New York City.

When you were searching for a POS system, what were the most important features that you were looking for?

We have an extensive wine list, and we wanted a system that could handle all our wine descriptions. We also wanted a system that would lend itself to ease of use for menu changes and seasonal additions. Administratively, we wanted a system that could handle our time and attendance.

What POS do you use? Why did you ultimately choose it?

We use the MICROS Retail Systems POS system. When we were looking for a POS system, we really didn’t feel like there were a lot of options in the market to choose from. We did take reporting ability into account, and also wanted to make sure that the system we chose was user-friendly. We wanted to make sure that a person with basic skills could design and make reports through the system. For the most part, we've found that they can. When comparing MICROS to other systems, we felt that it had better functionality overall. And of course, the MICROS is one of the best-known systems on the market.

What other systems were you considering at the time? And what other systems have you used in the past, if any?

In addition to MICROS Retail Systems, we looked at Aloha and Breadcrumb. And again, in the end, the Micros Retail System seemed to have the best functionality compared to the others.

How does your current system compare to other systems you’ve used in the past? In what ways is it better? In what ways is it worse?

I really had not used a restaurant POS system prior to MICROS. I had used software such as Microsoft Dynamics GP (formerly known as Great Plains) for back office administrative work but we wanted our system to have as much of that built into the system as possible.

What can be improved, or is there any missing functionality you wish it had?

On the time and attendance module, we feel that there are things that could be improved. It is still very difficult to navigate the employee time reporting without using a second reporting software and lots of customization. It is cumbersome at times with those functions. The HR functions and time and attendance feel too “canned” and not always applicable to what we’re trying to do. With the MICROS Retail Systems name we had hoped to get better overall functionality but we consider the need to buy and overlay other software programs to get the functionality we need in key areas to be a negative.

Would you recommend MICROS to others?

At this point our recommendation would be neutral. We wouldn’t recommend or not recommend. I think every establishment must weigh their choice on individual needs, the size of the enterprise and have realistic expectations about what it can and can’t do.

How would you rate their customer service (1 to 5 with 5 being best) and why?

I would rate the customer service at 2.5. When you call the support line, responses can be very slow. The simplest tasks -- tasks that one would think could be addressed by front line customer service reps, are passed up for escalation. They don’t seem to be very strong on tech on the initial call, and therefore push everything upward through the escalation stage.

How well or poorly does it integrate with other applications (payments processing, accounting, reporting, or other order marketplaces like OpenTable, Seamless, etc.)

We don’t use the system for event planning but it doesn’t have any integration problems with OpenTable, or Seamless or any of the marketplaces. The credit card integration works great. Other integrations are ok, but we are using them only because they allow us to do things that we can't do with MICROS alone. For example, I mentioned that we had to use another software as an overlay with the system for certain financial reporting; we use Avero to give us the financial reporting from Micros Retail System that we want and then we use BinWise to help manage our wine collection and that is tied into Avero. The integration works but it would be great to have a higher degree of customization from the MICROS Retail System itself.

How did pricing work (if not already advertised)?

Pricing was a negotiated price based on what features we wanted. We do have a service contract as there was a lot of fine tuning that we went through in year one. Going forward we will probably drop the service contract and go to per incidence service now that the system has settled down after year one.

About Micros Retail Systems Point of Sale System

MICROS Retail Systems offers a scalable variety of POS systems for restaurant and hospitality. Currently a subsidiary of Oracle, MICROS has been supplying POS systems to the restaurant and hospitality industry for over twenty-eight years. You can learn more about Micros Retail Systems POS by visiting their website.