Apollo Ship Chandlers has developed a comprehensive F&B system, which encompasses food and beverage inventory control and provisioning, together with beverage revenue and gratuity tracking, and meal count tracking and reporting.

There are three modules provided for use onboard the vessels:

ICS (Inventory Control System) - This module is used for inventory control, including physical counts, requisitions, ordering and receiving of produce. It also includes a large selection of reports related to inventory, consumption, orders, etc.

FBS (Food & Beverage System) - This module is used for tracking of beverage sales, gratuities due to bar staff, processing of beverage sales data received from POS (Point Of Sale) system, and deduction from on-hand inventory of items sold in the outlets. It includes report selections related to beverage sales gratuities, as well as reports related to meal counts and dish consumption history.

MCS (Meal Count System) - This module is used exclusively for tracking meal orders placed during service time, and is designed for use in a mobile fashion, on a notebook computer in the galley. The display provides an up to the minute count of orders received from the guests in the dining room, which can be used by the chef in order to see if pre-prepared items will be sufficient for service or additional quantities of certain dishes will be required. The data can be exported on a daily basis into the FBS system
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How it works - Basic Concepts - ICS

The inventory control system is based around the products in use on the vessel. Product data is set up for each vessel, using product IDs, which can be assigned by the home-office.

The product setup features product ID, description of product, optional second line of description, second product ID to allow the product to be identified using a different ID if required by vendor, units of measure to be used for stock, ordering, POS (Point of Sale - applicable to beverage items only), reporting, and customs reports.

The ICS system also features cost information, product category, and vendor information to assign the product to a particular vendor. Current stock information for the product also shows on this screen for information purposes.

All products, once set up, can then be ordered, received, issued, and counted using functions of the ICS system.

Products are assigned categories (major categories) and optional sub-categories (minor categories) in order to group them according to type of produce. Categories and sub-categories can be alphanumeric as per user's requirements.

"Groups" of products can be created, to allow the tracking of a particular "group" of products, however diverse they may be, and most reports offer the option of being produced by "group".

The system allows the creation of locations, which permits the internal movement of items onboard. Primary locations are warehouse (storeroom) locations, with secondary locations being points to which the products are transferred (galleys, bars, etc). The location event feature allows the creation of "sub-locations" within the secondary locations, for example within the galley, to allow cost reporting for each meal or cost center within the galley (pantry, pastry, appetizers, etc).

A "ship schedule", created by the user, provides voyage numbering, voyage starting and ending dates, and passenger count options. This data is entered in advance, and provides the ability to produce orders for future voyages, and to print reports for the current voyage and history of past voyages.

Requisition Templates can be created, based on standard transfers between locations. Suggested transfer quantities can be included. This function is particularly useful to avoid inexperienced employees ordering the wrong products from the storeroom.

The system allows for the creation of multiple vendors, and products can be assigned to a specific vendor. When orders are entered, the system will automatically sort the items by vendor if desired, and will print a separate order for each vendor. This is particularly useful in the case that a vessel is ordering directly from multiple vendors, or when the home-office purchasing department wishes to receive orders already separated by vendor.

How it works - Basic Concepts - FBS

The Food & Beverage System is used for tracking beverage sales reported in the POS system in use on each vessel. The system reads the data from the POS, and imports it into the system database. Sales reports can be produced on a daily and per-voyage basis, and include revenue, item sales, PPD revenues, breakdown of sales type by locations, and tracking of specific items if desired.

Each item sold using the POS system has a matching item in the FBS system, and the system matches up the sales by means of the POS ID, which is the identifying number provided by the POS system administrator. The FBS item includes a recipe, which in the case of beverage or wine items, details the exact quantities of specific products which are used to produce the item. The FBS system includes a function to deduct the items sold from the on-hand inventory of the location in which the sale took place, permitting current stock information to be available at any time for spot-check purposes.

Employee (bar staff) tracking information is also included, with each server being identified by his/her POS server number. The POS server number is entered in FBS, along with server name, and other information if desired such as nationality and server type (bartender, bar server, etc). Gratuity reports are produced using this information, as well as sales reports by server, which can be used to evaluate the sales performance of individual employees. A target functions allows easy identification of servers who fail to reach the sales target.

How it works - Basic Concepts - MCS

The mealcount system is designed primarily to provide an up to the minute summary of items ordered by the guests in a particular restaurant. It allows the chef to compare orders against prepared quantities, and provides advance warning of the need to prepare additional quantities of certain dishes. For beef dishes, the system also tracks the quantity of orders for rare, medium rare, medium, well done, etc. Menus are created in advance, and are selected according to the menu being served on the day in question. Where waiters have assigned stations, with a pre-determined number of guests, the system can also be used to track the quantity of dishes ordered by each waiter compared with the number of guests in the station. The waiter can then be challenged when number of appetizers or entrees ordered exceeds the number of guests being served to help prevent pilferage or personal consumption of meals by the waiters.

Reporting

The systems have great reporting capability, and many reports can be printed for specific groups or ranges of products to give greater flexibility. A large number of reports are included with the package, and additional custom designed reports can be added by arrangement.

Special Features

• Includes Seagate Crystal Reports software, which permits reports to be exported as documents (Word, Excel or RTF) for use in spreadsheets, or to be transmitted via email.
• Orders can be exported as ASCII text files, and forwarded to home-office or vendor for electronic processing.
• FBS beverage sales system is currently compatible with data exported from Micros and Infogenesis POS Systems. Interfaces with other POS Systems can be added by arrangement.
• Database is not accessible to the user without a password. In the event that the user needs to open the database manually, a one-time use password can be supplied.
• If it is necessary to delete the bar sales data for a specific date due to a verified error, this can be done by means of an automatic, code protected program, meaning it is not necessary for the user to open the database. The system generates a code; the user sends the code to the System Administrator, who generates an authentication code, which is returned to the user. Entry of the authentication code into the system will delete the required sales.
• System is protected against bad user input, by requiring verification of questionable entries, and does not permit entries that violate the integrity of the database.

Minimum system requirements

1. 300 MHZ CPU
2. 4 GB Hard drive (additional disk spaces will be needed for large databases)
3. 128 MB RAM memory (additional 128MB if MS SQL Server is installed in the same computer).
4. CD-ROM Drive
5. Windows 9x, NT, 2000, XP