A CASE STUDY FOR

Selladoor Venues

The Challenge

In 2019, the successful Sellodoor Worldwide Group branched into theatre management and operation launching Selladoor Venues. The group needed a specialist theatre EPoS that could operate across multiple venues and cost-centres while having the flexibility of remote central management.

Coping with a pre-COVID footfall generated from up to eight performances a week during peak season across three venues plus standalone visitors to their cafes meant that Selladoor needed a robust and efficient system to handle all transitions across ticketing, F&B and merchandising.

Anna Marie Idle, Selladoor’s Director of Hospitality explains,

“We needed an EPoS system that linked seamlessly across all of our venues and which could be managed centrally. It needed to unite not just our F&B but also talk to our Spektrix ticketing system – this was a big driving factor for us when choosing our EPoS supplier and pointOne had proven integrations in this space.

“As a relative start-up, we needed an EPoS that could support and grow with our changing needs and it was clear early on that pointOne was a provider that could both support and deliver solutions, particularly across multi-site reporting and stock control, as we developed our portfolio”.

Anna Marie Idle, Director of Hospitality

The Solution

pointOne initially installed our EPoS hardware suite with multi-site reporting and stock control software in The Landmark and Queen’s Theatre before rolling it out to their newest venue, the Peterborough New Theatre. Discussing these services, Anna Marie said:

“I find the multi-department reporting invaluable for giving me an ‘eyes-on’ view of our venues sales – tracking our popular lines and seeing in real-time what is selling and when.

“When we were able to trade last year between lockdowns, it was key for tracking sales and footfall in our cafes and based on this data we altered our opening hours to maximise revenue and reduce our operating costs. We also used it to great effect when monitoring our participation in the Eat Out To Help Out scheme.

“We’ve found the stock control software straight-forward and simple to use much like the whole system which our staff all find user-friendly.

“This is important because we’re a relatively new business and have a new team spread across the UK so being able to see easily from my head office location what is happening at site level day-to-day really helps me manage the relationship with my team and build trust”.

Although Covid has delayed the project integration with Spektrix, Selladoor plan to resume this along with launching a new website so their patrons can buy tickets and pre-order their interval drinks and snacks online using pointOne’s Spektrix and interval ordering integrations.

Not only does this limit the dwell time and required interaction within the venue, but it also provides valuable customer insight which Anna Marie and her team can use to build up their customer database and marketing outreach programme.

The Results

“The multi-site reporting element has undoubtedly saved us money through an aggregation of marginal gains”, says Anna Marie. “For example, I can see when we sell ten hot chocolates but only two upsells of marshmallows, then feed this back to the team to see where we can improve our sales processes. Multiply these granular insights across all our product lines and venues and quite quickly we can make marginal gains on all our revenue streams.

“Equally, using real-time reporting and instant updating has allowed us to adapt our promotion bundles based one-hundred per cent on our patron’s buying behaviour. During our busy panto period, for example, we were able to change our bundle deals across F&B and merchandising if sales started to dip, ensuring we responded to what our customer’s wanted. The speed with which we could push these changes to the tills from head office was incredible and required no system downtime so changes were instant with no service interruption.

“I think the flexibility and efficiency we have experienced with the pointOne EPoS has been a very real benefit. As a start-up group, we have ambitious growth plans when we can safely reopen and so the ability to roll out the same EPoS set up across multiple venues has been crucial”.

Anna Marie Idle, Director of Hospitality

“For example, we saved a huge amount of time when we opened our last venue in Peterborough because our F&B product list was already up and running across our other sites and so no fresh population database was needed. This simplicity of rollout is very reassuring as we pursue our business growth.

“When we reopen, whatever we do has got to enhance customer experience and make people feel safe, while also generating vital revenue. pointOne’s theatre-specific integrations and tech solutions allow us to tick these boxes and indeed make this happen”.