One of the UK’s best loved family attractions, Adventure Island in Southend-on-Sea, is well advanced with its point-of-sale hardware upgrade project. The venue’s operator reports it has now rolled out 50+ contemporary touchscreen Yuno terminals from AURES – on which it runs Merac’s MStore retail management solution – across its numerous cafes, food kiosks and ticket booths.
As Merac, provider of EPoS and management systems to the leisure & attractions industry, marks ten years of partnering with Adventure Island, the fun park has reported on its successful EPoS hardware upgrade project.
50+ new Yuno touchscreen terminals, supplied by Merac’s long-term hardware partner AURES Technologies, are now running catering and ticketing operations as part of an estate-wide refresh.
Adventure Island is extensive and now includes a new, all-weather indoor fun centre, Adventure Inside. The popular Sea-Life Adventure, the South East’s premier aquatic attraction, is nearby. Numerous served and to-go food outlets serve all three locations. Emphasis is put on choice and quality: ranging from candy floss to ciabattas, pancakes to pizzas, and burgers to top-quality cuisine, there is something for every palette and budget.
Explains Adventure Island’s Operations Director, Andrew Renton: “For a number of years we’ve used POS hardware from two vendors, one of which is J2 now part of AURES. Of the 99 terminals in our ticket booths, cafes, restaurants and food kiosks, 58 are now from AURES, of which 52 Yunos across 15 locations. We felt it was time to standardise on a single machine, to make our hardware estate easier to manage.”
“As our old till hardware started to fail and reach end of life, we wanted to upgrade to something newer. The most cost-effective route was to upgrade on a rolling basis and that’s what we are doing.” When it comes to the strengths of the Yuno, Andrew Renton favours its solid state drives. “SSDs make these machines reliable and fast, which we need to stop queues building up. In our Pavillion Restaurant in particular, the Yuno upgrade has lifted till performance and massively increased reliability. The Yunos are more than capable too of bringing out the strengths of our Merac MStore software.”
The Yunos supplied and deployed by Merac come as a bundle with a receipt printer and till drawer. “This is easier for our procurement people and helps us to budget better.” AURES’ trademark 3-year warranty gives the Adventure Island team a sense of security and predictability.
Staff sign on with a card via a magnetic stripe reader. “This is secure and every transaction is traceable to an individual,” says Andrew Renton. Both software and hardware contribute to a fast and intuitive user interface.
The Yuno’s looks come in for praise too. “The black Yunos look sleek, more like a modern screen than a PC. Our environment’s quite tough and the black cases are good at not showing scrapes and dirt. We’ve gone for matching black AURES printers and the whole set-up looks smart.”
A recent innovation has been a trial of secondary screens attached to the rear of the Yunos. “Not only is this good for pushing promotions but customers can see precisely what they’ve ordered and how much they’ve spent, which is important for families with children. It’s especially useful in our singing restaurant where order details can sometimes get misheard!”
Adventure Island uses its Merac MStore solution to manage all its ticketing and accounting operations. Quite unusually, the default ticket delivery method is wristbands. These are generated via the application and printed on the AURES ODP 333 thermal printers, as are traditional entry vouchers and receipts.
When it comes to software, Adventure Island feels it has made the right choice in MStore. “Merac are good at picking up any issues and the software is constantly improving.” The Adventure Island team finds MStore-generated reports very beneficial. “MStore gives us all we need. We get a good all-round view of the business and all our financial processes and reconciliation are streamlined.”
Andrew Renton closes with praise for both suppliers. “Merac have looked after us well for 10 years and AURES are fair to deal with too, always quick to replace hardware if we have an issue and intent on giving us good customer service.”
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About AURES Technologies
Founded in 1989 and listed on Euronext since 1999, the AURES Group manufactures EPOS systems and related peripherals. Its PC-based hardware and open-system equipment provides management and till functions to all points-of-sale and points-of-service, including specialist food and non-food stores, retail outlets, superstores and catering and hospitality.
With corporate sales of €76.8 million for 2015, the AURES Group has global presence, with its head office in France, subsidiaries in the UK, Germany, Australia and the USA – and a network of distributors and resellers in 50+ countries.
Complementary to the EPOS activities of the Group, the OEM “Equipment & Systems Department” works closely with systems integrators and suppliers, providing them with complete product lines of hardware elements and sub-equipment for industrial and digital display applications.
About Merac
Trading under the strapline ‘Making world-class attractions run smoothly’, Merac is a specialist author of electronic point-of-sale and management systems for the leisure and attractions industry. In summer 2016, the company was acquired by K3 Business Technology Group Plc (K3).
Merac MStore, known for its reliability, scalability and resilience, has become the leading-edge EPoS system for visitor attractions and is complemented by a diverse set of integrated functionality. Functions provided within MStore encompass booking, ticketing and admission control, purchasing and stock management, financial control, automated payment, gift aid, marketing, loyalty, promotions and membership, animal adoptions, event management, food & beverage services, and in-store and online shopping. Sophisticated reporting and analysis provide real-time business visibility and support client decision-making.
The company’s client list encompasses many of the UK’s leading historic houses, zoos, theme parks, heritage monuments, museums, gardens and railways. Of these, English Heritage has deployed a Merac solution at its 108 UK sites including Stonehenge. Other notable clients include Longleat and Castle Howard, Adventure Island, Crealy Adventure Park and Alnwick Castle. Eight zoos, six Forces Museums and the four RHS gardens count amongst its users. In the past year alone, 20+ million visitors nationwide have been served by MStore.
About Adventure Island
Adventure Island on both sides of Southend-on-Sea’s world famous longest pleasure pier is the UK’s Number 1 free-admission Fun Park. With over 60 rides and attractions, there’s something for everybody to enjoy and is the perfect day out for all the family.
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