Background
Swiss Chalet is known for rotisserie chicken, ribs, fresh-cut fries and family meals, with almost 200 restaurants. Recipe Unlimited, formerly CARA, operates and franchises a portfolio of more than 1,100 restaurants.
Swiss Chalet’s VECOM implementation developed through its own rollout and subsequent enhancements within Visionmax’s relationship with Recipe, which spans more than a decade. The requirement extended from taking a meal order to preparing it in the restaurant and completing pickup or delivery.
Visionmax initially built, branded and operated the web and mobile ordering applications for a couple of years. Recipe’s in-house development, creative and branding teams later took over those front ends, continuing to use VECOM APIs for the catalog, e-commerce functions and application logic.
The Challenge
A family chicken meal can involve several product choices, side dishes, offers and fulfillment instructions. Those details need to remain consistent whether a guest orders digitally or speaks to a call-centre agent.
The restaurant also needs the order in its own POS workflow: printed automatically in the kitchen, available for pickup payment, or ready for reconciliation when a delivery driver returns.
Over time, changing menus, coupons, loyalty requirements and POS generations required continuing development while the customer-facing experience evolved separately.
The Solution
Visionmax supplied VECOM, its Visionmax Enterprise Customer Order Management system, as the application layer connecting customer channels, call-centre staff and restaurant operations.
Digital ordering APIs: VECOM supplies the product catalog, meal configuration, pricing and e-commerce services used by Recipe’s web and mobile applications. The separation allows the brand experience to change while retaining a common ordering foundation.
Call-centre operations: Agents continue to use Visionmax’s application for live telephone orders and customer troubleshooting, integrated with the IVR and the same enterprise order services used by digital channels.
Menus and offers: Brand-specific product configuration, restaurant pricing, specials and coupons are handled within the ordering process, with POS integration aligning the order with restaurant requirements.
Kitchen and fulfillment: Pickup and delivery orders flow to the restaurant POS for automatic kitchen printing, order lookup and payment. Delivery workflows include reconciliation when the driver returns.
Scene loyalty: The integrated ordering workflow supports balance lookup, redemption toward meals and points earned on paid orders.
Continuing integration: Visionmax has supported the application and developed enhancements as restaurant systems moved from legacy Oracle Micros environments to newer Oracle Simphony technology.
The Results
Swiss Chalet has a connected order journey from the guest or call-centre agent through to restaurant preparation and settlement. Digital and telephone orders share the application services behind the brand’s menus, offers and loyalty.
The transfer of front-end development to Recipe’s teams preserved VECOM’s role as the ordering engine. That continuity has allowed the brand’s customer experience and restaurant integrations to evolve over successive phases of the engagement.
The result is an ongoing operational platform for family-meal ordering, supported by continued development rather than a single website launch.