Sixpenny Saves & Streamlines Venue Operations with Doshii
For more than a decade now, Sixpenny has been a mainstay of Sydney’s fine dining scene. Settled in a quaint Stanmore terrace house, the Sixpenny team have never rested on their laurels, continuing to innovate and strive to serve up excellence at each and every sitting.
Their efforts haven’t gone unnoticed. Regularly appearing on several “Best of the City and State” lists, they were recently recognised by the Good Food Guide as one of only two restaurants in New South Wales (alongside Quay, with its picturesque, Harbourside views) to have earned the institutions highest honour – three chef’s hats.
”We’re really excited,” says Sixpenny’s manager, George Papaioannou, “and there’s a bit of relief there as well, to be honest. There was a bit of pressure to maintain the standard to keep the hats we had when they came in to review us. But all the work’s paid off, so we can relax for a couple of months and then get straight back to it!”
The Little Terrace That Could
That work ethic has served Sixpenny well in its (nearly) eleven years of service. This latest menu, piloted by award-winning chefs Daniel Puskas and Anthony Schifilliti, heavily features experimentation with fermentation with every course containing some aspect of the process. It’s a bold, unique premise – and it’s paid dividends.
Once again, the team at Sixpenny have proved they have no need (or desire) to play it safe. As Papaioannou explains, not even the pandemic could slow them down.
“Pretty much in the first week of the lockdown announcement, we had a meeting to discuss the plan for the restaurant and decided that we were going to open as a bakery,” he says.
“We had lines of people outside the restaurant, people waiting for two hours just to try something from the bakery and we were selling out every single weekend… And coming out of the lockdown period, I mean, we’re booked until the end of February now. So, you know. For a little restaurant in Stanmore, it’s quite nice to see.”
Stacking Up for a Seamless Service
For such a popular, crowd-pleasing venue, adding the Doshii and Qlub’s integration with the Lightspeed POS has meant the Sixpenny team can spend less time with tech and more time creating a magical customer experience.
Adopting Qlub via Doshii means customers at Sixpenny are now able to pay for their meal at the table with effortless and immediate reconciliation directly to their POS, streamlining operations significantly.
It also mean that guests now also have the option to tip and split the bill for the entire table with ease, while also generating real-time data for Sixpenny, allowing them to identify how their customers are spending and which menu items are generating the most interest.
Qlub – a hospocentric payment app – seamlessly integrates into their point-of-sale with Doshii, ensuring that the last touchpoint they have with customers is a memorable one. A payment solution designed with customers in mind, Qlub allows diners to simply tap their phone on a beautiful, custom-designed payment card when the bill magically pops up on their phone at the end of their meal. It also allows them to split and pay in seconds, instantly closing the order on Sixpenny’s point-of-sale.
”The key benefit is a more efficient payment system in terms of experience for the guest and also in terms of back of house,” says Papaioannou.
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It does remove a lot of the manual work that was done previously by the staff, so it does make things a lot easier. It’s a lot more accurate as well.
George Papaioannou, Manager — Sixpenny
Papaioannou estimates that the POS integration with Doshii, Qlub and Lightspeed saves Sixpenny approximately 15-20 minutes at the end of every service.
“One of the busier times at a restaurant is when a service ends and there are quite a lot of bills to go to the table, just because people do tend to arrive at very similar times and finish up at similar times,” he says.
“So having a whole restaurant that wants their bill at the same time can be quite a big task to complete. But with the system, multiple bills can get processed at the same time without having to rely on one EFTPOS terminal for the whole restaurant. It definitely does make it more seamless.”
Qlub has also yielded unexpected bonuses – especially when it comes to tipping and user experience. “Qlub has allowed people that we may not usually see leave a gratuity, maybe leave a smaller one because there are pre-set amounts so they don’t have to figure it out, they just have to press a button,” says Papaianou.
He adds that Qlub’s easy, user-friendly interface have earned it many fans amongst staff and customers alike.
“People say that it was really easy. They really enjoyed the way the app is built and how it’s displayed. It kind of makes paying the bill fun, I guess? A strange take! But you know what, it works.”
The Bottom Line
For a small restaurant doing great big things in Australia’s fine dining sphere, all that extra time adds up to one thing: less time spent on admin and more time creating an exceptionally unique and constantly evolving dining experience. Embracing its current passion of fermentation (currently all the dishes on their menu revolve around the practice), Papaianou thinks for a moment when asked to pick a favourite flavour pairing.
“Fermented squid sauce,” he concludes. “We take off trimmings we use in the kitchen and from the other squid dishes and Koji-ferment it, and then add salt and ginger.”
With a menu so packed with inspired dishes, three fresh new Chef’s Hats on their mantle, and a waiting list as long as your arm, Sixpenny is still going strong after more than a decade, proving itself to be Sydney’s little venue that could. And, with Doshii and Qlub’s silky smooth POS integration, it shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. Because, like Papaianou’s personal favourite flavour combo (“McDonald’s fries and soft serve!”) – it just works.