A method and the apparatus for management information and control for restaurants is disclosed. The apparatus includes a plurality of remote units carried by waiters. The remote units are provided with a keyboard, a display and a memory. The remote units may simply be radio frequency transmitters capable of being interrogated, but are preferably radio transmitters and receivers. A central interrogator transceiver periodically interrogates each of the remote units after which the remote units transmit information back to the central interrogator transceiver. The central interrogator transceiver couples the information transmitted thereto to a central processor having a high speed memory therein. The central processor operates on the information received to provide order information to a kitchen display, an order assembly display, a service bar display, a table status display and to a check printer-cash register unit. The order information is also coupled to an inventory control unit for decrementing the various items in inventory by the quantity of items ordered by each customer. A number of computations are made such as the number of particular items ordered, the rate of turnover of customers, quantity of items in inventory, etc. which information is retrievable to give the restaurant management information with regard to the operational characteristics, for example, food flow of the restaurant.
This is a continuation of application Ser. No. 242,244, filed Mar. 10, 1981 "RESTAURANT MANAGEMENT INFORMATION AND CONTROL METHOD AND APPARATUS", now abandoned, which is a continuation of Ser. No. 070,522, filed Aug. 28, 1979, now abandoned, which is a continuation of Ser. No. 705,932, filed July 16, 1976.
An electronic cash register of the invention can provide a correlation between sales of items or commodities. The electronic cash register has a PLU code data memory. The PLU code data memory stores PLU code data of items purchased by each customer. In order to calculate the number of customers who buy at least one of two items, a CPU retrieves the contents of the PLU code data memory for each customer. When it is determined upon this retrieval operation that a given customer buys at least one of the two items, the corresponding customer number count is incremented by 1. When the retrieval operation is completely for all the contents stored in the PLU code data memory, the desired information is calculated. Similarly, by counting the number of customers who buy one or both of the two items, and the like, correlations between sales of items can be determined.
Apparatus for order entry in a restaurant includes a host and remote portable terminals. Orders are entered on the remote terminals and sent by radio frequency communication to the host systems. The portable terminals include a bar code template of menu items and a light pen for scanning menu item selections. Orders are entered by scanning selections in a manner similar to the use of a conventional restaurant order pad. Terminals and printers are connected to the host system and are used to display orders entered at portable terminals for the cooks in the kitchen and to print order receipts.
An inventory control system in which local units having inventories continually and serially transmit data only in a local area to users having portable receivers which store and display when requested the inventory status of a particular item. The local units also transmit to a central computer their current inventory status so that additional local units may request inventory status in another local area from the central computer.
A technique for providing automated direction and guidance to nurses to assist in the task of dispensing medication to patients. Information on all patients is stored in a stationary base computer. Information pertinent to the medication dispensing task is transferred from the base computer to a portable, hand-held computer adapted to be carried by the nurse during rounds. One portable computer contains information for only those patients assigned to one nurse. As the nurse approaches a patient, the portable computer is activated to display the name of each medication to be dispensed to that patient along with dose, route, and comments. The nurse enters into the portable computer whether the medication was dispensed or not. It can, thus, be determined whether any medication remains to be dispensed, and why it has not yet been administered. At the completion of rounds, data is transferred from the portable computer to the base computer to update the information stored in the base computer.
A portable information terminal including a self-positioning measuring device is provided to make reservations and obtain status information of available services from a plurality of reservation centers and a plurality of status information providers, via a communication network. Such a portable information terminal may comprise a reserving unit for accessing to a reservation center, and reservation storage for storing a reservation content of a reservation; a status information collecting and judging unit for collecting status information relating to execution of the reservation content from the status information providers via the communications network and deciding, based on collected information and position information obtained by the self-positioning device, whether to move to a location for execution of the reservation content, deciding whether the reservation content is to be changed; an alternative reservation generating unit for collecting, in the case where the status information collecting and judging unit judges that the reservation content is to be changed, information relating to an alternative reservation to show the alternative reservation; and a reservation change execution unit for canceling the current reservation and storing the alternative reservation into the reservation storage.
