Hops and Abacus Combine on Gift Cards

Clearwater, FL (February 6, 2003) Hops Restaurant, Bar & Brewery and Abacus Business Solutions announced today the successful implementation of ValueLink, a stored value card, to the Aloha Point of Sale software system, the first such integration of both products.
            “Aloha had made a commitment to supporting third-party vendors,” said Gene Thurston, IT Director for Hops, “but ValueLink was not yet approved. Abacus is our support partner and they do such a terrific job, not just on customer support issues, but on any new initiatives. They’re always there to help us in any way possible. So it was natural for us to rely on Abacus to take the lead.”
            Like other companies with similar programs, Hops was reconciling its traditional paper gift certificates through a largely manual system. “We knew we wanted an enterprise-wide, integrated solution, so we focused on that exclusively,” said Thurston. “From a marketing perspective, the gift card is a big win because you can do so many things with other businesses, such as cross consortium. Now that we have this program, we can explore those other avenues. We’re going to use this as a tool to get the Hops brand in front of a lot more people.”
            The task of putting the plan together and executing it fell to Jason Dukes, MIS/POS Administrator for Hops and Earl Hayes, Special Projects Engineer at Abacus. The two worked closely together to ensure that the system worked not only to specification, but within the Hops way of doing business. Once Jason and Earl were confident, they installed and tested the system in the company’s Colorado market. “We tested it on a limited basis for a week in a live environment,” says Dukes. “but it was important to us to geographically isolate the test market. Considering the scope of the project and the aggressive schedule, it was remarkable that it went in as smoothly as it did and that it functioned as well as it did. The feedback from the stores has been excellent. The operators and senior management are extremely happy with the result.”
             “As time goes on, we expect to see an increase in revenue from gift card sales, but that was not the main objective of the program,” said Thurston. “The gift card program will increase traffic and create loyalty for the Hops brand."