The Motorsport Arena Oschersleben is one of the few remaining motorsports racetracks in Germany. Its success is closely linked to the arena character of the circuit. Visitors can reach the elevated inner area and from there view wide, very different areas of the racetrack. But the best view - as Stefani Fichtelmann, Project Manager Catering and Arena Diner, tells us - is from the sky lounge of the Motorsport Hotel located directly at the racetrack.
The racetrack serves both as a training camp for motor sports and as a practice track for road safety training. In order to provide the drivers and mechanics with good culinary service, the Arena Diner was built directly into the boundary fence next to the entrance gate to the paddock. This way, in addition to the Arena's internal, mainly ToGo area, it can also receive external guests in the bright dining area.
In order to cope with the morning rush of up to 500 drivers and technicians in the paddock, digital vouchers have been introduced at the Vectron touch POS systems. Besides the environmental aspect of avoiding the not entirely unproblematic thermal paper, Stefani Fichtelmann also has a very vivid example of the savings effect: "We used to have the usual receipt spit next to the POS systems. It was full after one to one and a half hours. The receipts were then completely peeled off and thrown into the rubbish again and again in between."
In this, as in all changes and adjustments to the cash register system, Stefani Fichtelmann involves the diner staff directly: "It was especially nice to see that two days after the introduction of the digital receipt, a colleague approached me that a first customer had tried to scan the QR code of the receipt and "he scanned that, and it worked great".
In cooperation with her employees, Stefani Fichtelmann completely changed the operation of the Vectron POS systems. The basic colours were reduced. Red was assigned to the "dangerous" functions like void, merchandise return or abort. She likes to compare the POS interface with a price board for her customers: "Both must be directly recognisable and interpretable from a certain distance. It is not helpful if you need academic studies to understand the operations at the point of sale."
While Ms Fichtelmann carried out the first adjustments at the POS system in close cooperation with her local dealer, the Rühlig company, she has self-taught all the important possibilities of POS programming via the Vectron Commander. The Cloud functions like the reporting app, too, have become an important help: "At first I was a bit worried that the employees would see this as a monitoring function against them. In the meantime, however, everybody sees the benefits. Even if I'm not on site, I know what's going on. My employees appreciate it when I then give them a quick call to see if they need reinforcements or if I can help in any other way."
The reporting app helps with planning, too: "I can also see exactly what they have sold and - depending on the weather and upcoming events - can think about shopping plans. At present we have expanded the breakfast assortment and via the app I can see immediately how the new offer is accepted."
In addition to the arena diner, the mobile sale of ice cream or sausages is also part of the food offer at the Oschersleben Motorsport Arena. For this purpose, they use three older Vectron POS systems, which, says Stefani Fichtelmann, "could easily be retrofitted with a TSE and will thus still be used.”
It was Ms Fichtelmann's predecessor who opted for Vectron POS systems. But she is also convinced: " I think they are great; they are very efficient and provide everything you need." And last but not least, she is convinced of the good cooperation with her local retailer.