Re: Pizza Hut’s $40 Million Point-of-Sale System
John F Cruz began his list of innovations by designing his own Information’s Systems degree through a special University program long before MIS was made available at the University. What followed is a string of software products innovations throughout John’s career.
Point of sales systems like most things have a history and significant milestones that influences their industry. The time was 1984. The interested company, Pizza Hut owned by PepsiCo. The goal, become more efficient in all areas of store operations.
Pizza Hut was a subsidiary of PepsiCo. PepsiCo gave a relatively unknown company called Norand (Des Moines) an open ear. Norand was working with multiple national chains to develop custom POS systems, but failing to deliver any functioning completed system.
The Norand POS concept was using fiber optics to replace standard cabling in a distributed network of POS workstations. The idea had merit, but so far, Norand was plagued with management problems in developing the software to run the POS. However, the POS concept caught PepsiCo’s attention. Andy Meyer of Norand, hired John F Cruz, a graduate of the University of Utah, as Project Specialist to head up the Pizza Hut project. John’s primary responsibilities were to work closely with Pizza Hut management and employees and design all aspect of the Point-of-Sale system, including overseeing software programming, testing, and Pizza Hut employee training.
The initial pilot test of the new system was in Colorado Springs were the Norand branch office was located. Only one Pizza Hut was installed with the new system. Shortly thereafter, a second test rollout was conducted in Altoona PA. During the pilot testing, Mr. Cruz was tasked with creating a national rollout plan for over 2000 franchise stores. The entire project took two years from start to when the Wall Street Journal reported the $40 million sales as the largest in POS history only referencing the President of Norand. None of the team that built the Pizza Hut system was mentioned, including John F. Cruz.
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