We have meal plans for many of our students and it would be really nice to have a Cafeteria system that would let students use their Student ID card to charge against their meal plan in Populi. Pretty much duplicate the Bookstore system with some changes to it and provide a Cafe POS system.
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Votes
17 comments
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Carlos Marin @Ben Coumerilh: Do you currently have a separate POS system you could recommend?
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Ben Coumerilh Hey Carlos - We have been looking for an iPad centric POS system but haven't found one that really works well for us. Currently we are using Square. www.squareup.com and it is working well for us. Ultimately we would like it to be hooked into Populi as we offer meal plans. Sorry I don't have much more information than that!
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Carlos Marin Thanks Ben!
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Carlos Marin Ben... Does this work for non-credit card transactions so that you load up an account with "points or credit" that then diminishes in value as the student uses it? Or is it basically just a credit card scanner only?
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Ben Coumerilh It won't let us keep track of credit with the college. It does do cash transactions as well and we user hat , but when it comes to the meal plan we just do the old fashion punch card thing right now. Square works great for us for everything else.
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Carlos Marin Thanks!
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Jeremiah Miller We are interested in a Cafeteria POS also. Our biggest need is to use credits or points like suggested above. Essentially we need to preload a set amount of meals per student (and some for staff too!) and then debit these meals as id cards are scanned in the cafeteria.
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Carlos Marin Jeremiah and Ben: Did either of you find a good solution for this? I'm still looking :( Thanks!
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Russell Shouldice @Carlos - have you come up with a solution for your cafeteria POS system? We are new Populi customers, and have been using an MS Access database for all our college management up till now.
We have a small cafeteria, and our old database handled the day-to-day transactions. It takes input from a touchscreen and posts what students purchases against their meal plan. Students pay for a meal plan at the beginning of the semester, and the balance decreases as they purchase food from the café. I know there are a myriad of solutions out there and some colleges even have outside companies manage their cafeteria. However, we manage our own and will continue to do so.
I’m thinking about building my own; a simple web interface that can be used to record transactions and manage inventory. The trickiest part will be posting back to Populi to update the balance of the student’s meal plan. I know that Populi has a concept of meal plans. But, I think a custom field could be updated and displayed in the student’s profile.
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Rachel Yoder It would be really helpful to have a POS system for the Cafeteria and our Cafe area! We really need something that can scan ID's for the meals AND that we can charge for meals with a credit card or cash/check when needed.
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Tom Major We are interested too
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Melissa Mills Bump bump bump!!!!!
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Jacquelyn C Hawker Our school would also be interested in a POS system for the cafeteria so that our students would be able to scan their IDs for the meal plans.
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AlexAndrea Reed We would be very interested in this as well! Currently looking into alternatives for our cafeteria and this would be ideal!
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Christina Reeves Looking for a solution for POS (meal plans). This would be a wonderful feature to have built in to Populi!!
Example. Set up 25 meals for student. Scan ID Card (Populi template w/code). Subtracts from meal plan allowance.
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Ben Tackett We need a way to track meal plans in populi by swiping student ids and determining if they have a meal plan or need to be charged for the meal, or ways to track pre-purchased individual meals.
Thanks!
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Information Technology Depending on the amount of functionality you want, and your IT department's willingness to maintain it, the concept is really easy to implement with a very basic database and backend. Especially with what's being talked about here. Could potentially be done for free using a service like Firebase and a simple javascript/python app.
I made a simple meal tracker for us 11-12 years ago. It's hosted completely locally on a Linux server. And it's mostly served us well (except in cases where I screwed it up). Since we moved to Populi I have used the API to auto-fill student meal counts on this system every term through an automated script. Students, faculty, and staff can all check and fill their balances through a custom-built interface on Moodle. I love developing it because it's fun to play and think through the challenges.
But it's that darn "willingness to maintain it" part. When I leave, will my replacement be up to keeping up with the changes and adding new functionality? Having a similar option built into Populi has potential.
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