Want to Turn Tables 73% Faster? Introducing Zeller Bill at Table.

After a 20-year career shaking and stirring behind the bar and in the boardroom of some of Sydney’s most revered venues, Joong Charpentier is today the General Manager of Tanuki. Since its opening in January 2024, the Japanese restaurant and cocktail bar has become a wildly popular haunt in the harbourside suburb of Double Bay. Drawing on his wealth of experience in fine-dining restaurants, pubs, five-star hotels, nightclubs, and bars, Joong is leading Tanuki to success with a combination of the right team and the right tech. “My family immigrated to Sydney from Belgium in the early 90s and opened a French restaurant in Manly, so I’ve just always been around hospitality, ”  explains Joong Charpentier. After cutting his teeth as a kitchen hand, he worked his way up through back-of-house, front-of-house, and management, to where he is now, at the helm of Tanuki. Named after the mischievous raccoon dog, known in Japanese folklore for leading humans astray, the venue is an invitation to stay a little longer than you should. “It combines everything I love: cocktails, fine-dining, and an atmosphere that turns into a bit of a party later on in the evening. It has all those elements rolled into one,” Joong says. With those three elements comes the need for multiple teams and careful coordination in order to provide consistent quality and service throughout the venue. “Staffing is the biggest challenge,” says Joong, “Finding the right team members and maintaining consistency. Whether it's your product offering, trading hours, messaging, or back-of-house policies: consistency is key. And you need to find the right people to achieve that,” he explains. Thankfully, the hospitality industry is producing more professionals today than ever before, and offering them opportunities to learn and grow within the industry: “We invest time and energy into training our team members,” says Joong, “Because people now understand that this is a professional industry. You can apply yourself and have a successful and rewarding career, it’s no longer just a weekend job or something you’re doing to put yourself through uni." Parallel to the professionalisation of the industry, Joong has also experienced the shift in technology available to restaurateurs. Being able to access data today, enables venues like Tanuki to hone in on and optimise different areas of the business – from customer service to inventory management, and pricing. “The more information that we have on the way a guest likes to enjoy their time in the venue, the better the experience we're going to provide,” says Joong. “We use  SevenRooms  to manage our reservations. It syncs up to our point-of-sale system, H&L, and allows us to track everything the guest orders and allows us to make profile notes. So, if you come back in six months time and say ‘I had a really great wine here last time’, we’ll be able to track it down for you,” explains Joong. The flow of data between separate providers has been a key development in recent years, unlocking even more opportunities for hospitality professionals to speed up their processes and conduct richer analysis. One such integration was that of  H&L  point-of-sale system with  Zeller ’s payment platform, giving rise to  Pay at Table : a solution that allows wait staff to view open tables, see outstanding bills from across the entire restaurant, accept payments and close tables — all from one device, while keeping the point-of-sale free for other staff to use.

Our latest payments feature is here and it’s revolutionising the hospitality experience. The payment process is often the Achilles’ heel of many restaurant experiences. How many times have you received the bill, placed your credit card down, and then had to wait another fifteen minutes before being able to finally pay for your meal? Countless. This is because, until now, many restaurants have been hamstrung by a disconnection between their point-of-sale machine and their EFTPOS terminal. The time it takes for a waiter to deliver the bill to the diners, retrieve the payment terminal, return to the table, then round off the table in the POS system , is considerable. Multiply this by the number of tables in the venue and you can easily understand the aforementioned delay. Pay at Table technology is changing that. By centralising the POS and payment process into one device, Pay at Table bridges the gap between tapping or swiping a card, and settling the bill in the system. Read on to understand how this technology works and how it can help turn over tables faster, and ultimately drive revenue for your restaurant. If your restaurant is currently not using a POS system and you value efficiency and improving customer experience, consider exploring the best POS systems for restaurants in Australia . These systems can further streamline your payment process, helping you turn over tables faster and ultimately drive revenue. How does Pay at Table work? Pay at Table is effectively an extension of your POS machine, on your EFTPOS terminal. Waiters pick up Zeller Terminal , view open tables, see total outstanding bills, take payments and close tables — all on one device. Rather than the customer paying at the counter or finalising the bill in the traditional, time-consuming manner, waitstaff can deliver the bill and the mobile payment device, all at the same time. The status of a table is updated in real time and synced across all machines, reducing human error and optimising the whole operation. Benefits of Pay at Table technology 1. Increased efficiency Being able to close a table independently of the POS machine means that the latter isn’t blocked by taking payments, it can instead be used to open and manage tables. Naturally, this reduces foot traffic throughout the venue, eliminates queues, and turns tables over more quickly. Staff are freed up to process orders faster, leading to improved service and ultimately, higher sales. 2. Improved customer satisfaction Leaving customers waiting to pay for their bill can leave a bad taste in the mouth — pun not intended. Zeller Terminal’s Pay at Table functionality makes for a smoother process and offers the added benefit of allowing customers to split the cost by the number of people or by a custom amount . 3. Encourages generous tipping Zeller Terminal comes with a built-in tool which can easily calculate the fair amount for a gratuity and will provide the customer with various tipping options to choose from. Displayed clearly for your customers to review, this feature can increase your server’s tip earnings and erase confusion surrounding tipping protocol. Zeller Terminal makes it as easy as possible to prompt your customers to leave a tip, either as a percentage of the purchase amount or a custom amount. Or, you can switch the functionality off altogether. 4. Helps build a customer relationship When wait staff use Pay at Table, an opportunity is provided to spend more time interacting with the customers, ensuring they’ve had a great dining experience in your establishment. The technology also means you can email digital receipts on the spot. Not only is this handy for your customer’s record-keeping and to reduce costs and waste associated with paper receipts, but it’s a great way to expand your customer database by capturing email addresses. You may be able to use these details to keep in touch with your diners, providing them with up-to-date news and special offers that will keep them coming back to your restaurant. 5. Safer transactions Payment security is front of mind for most consumers these days. By having a mobile payment device available, your customer’s card remains in their possession at all times. This offers them security knowing that no one else has had access to their card details or identity. It can also mean fewer chargebacks for your business to handle. The next generation of payment processing Pay at Table is just one example of the many ways that traditional payments are evolving to keep up with the times. New technology is affording us more flexibility to create industry-specific solutions while emerging trends are changing the way we pay. Get started with Pay at Table today Pay at Table is currently available to use with selected POS systems. Contact our Sales Team to learn more about installing Pay at Table on your Zeller Terminals today. 

There’s no denying the data, Australians are tipping more than ever – even in the face of the ongoing cost of living crisis that’s dominated news headlines for some time now. We analysed EFTPOS tipping data from the 85,000+ Australian businesses using Zeller Terminal last year, and through the findings can see Australia is steadily become a nation of more generous tippers — despite significant cost-of-living pressures. Interesting to note is how electronic payment technology is helping to enable an increased level of gratuity within the local customer service industry. Read on to discover the latest shifts in Australia’s tipping culture, highlighting both geographic and industry-specific trends. Australians are tipping more generously. In 2024, the average tip value increased to $25.20, a dramatic 25% year-over-year (YoY) rise. This growth highlights an increasing willingness among Australians to reward exceptional service, even in a challenging economic environment. Metro areas led the charge while regional tipping declined. Inner-city areas drove tipping culture forward in 2024, while regional areas experienced a decline. Customers in metro areas tipped 26% more on average YoY, while regional areas saw a 10% decrease in average tip values. Tipping frequency on the rise. Australians are not only tipping more generously but also more frequently. The number of transactions including a tip grew by 13% YoY, with dining establishments seeing a notable 12% increase in tipping frequency. Anna-Sophie Pinter, Restaurant Manager at Brisbane's modern Japanese fine-diner NONDA, was impressed with the rise in 2024: "I honestly couldn't have been more surprised given the fact that the rent, food and all other prices just skyrocketed. It’s great to see people appreciating the hospitality we share with every guest who dines with us." Victoria was in a giving state of mind. Victorians emerged as Australia’s most generous tippers in 2024, with an impressive average tip value of $39.50. Queensland followed with an average tip of $32.20, while South Australians tipped an average of $27.80, surpassing New South Wales residents ($16.90) by a significant margin. Notably, South Australians tipped 64% more on average than their New South Wales counterparts. With Sydney being Australia’s most expensive city, it comes as little surprise that New South Welshmen were less willing or able to splash extra cash on tips, but the extent to which was quite dramatic. On average, Sydneysiders tipped 57% less than Melburnians. Adelaide experienced a tipping boom. Adelaide saw a dramatic YoY increase in tipping generosity, with the average tip value surging by an astounding 180%. It’s interesting to speculate on what was behind such a big jump – could the floor staff in SA restaurants really have been 180% more attentive than in 2023 year? Seems like a stretch. In WA, tipping goes west. Despite an average YoY increase of $2.22, Perth’s tipping culture lags markedly behind that of the other major Australian cities, with an average tip of $12.52, sitting about 26% below Sydney’s and roughly 68% behind Melbourne’s. Eat, drink and tip merrily. As in previous years, dining remained the sector where Australians tip most, with a $25.20 average tip and a 12% YoY increase in frequency. This was followed by the beauty sector, which saw an average tip value of $6.90, with the transportation sector not far behind at $5.94. Interestingly, tipping when taking a cab saw a particularly high growth rate last year, increasing in frequency by 25% YoY. As Australia’s tipping culture continues to evolve, these trends suggest a growing appreciation for the hard work that underpins exceptional customer service, even when money is tighter and times are tougher. Alongside Zeller Pay at Table and Zeller Bill at Table, Zeller Terminal 's built-in tipping function, which can be turned on or off with a tap, is one of many easy-to-use features that make it Australia’s best EFTPOS machine.