Best-of-Breed or All-in-One? New Insights from Paul Rubin, PAR’s Chief Strategy Officer

Paul Rubin founded Brink Software to provide a state of the art, cloud-based POS solution to the restaurant and hospitality industries. Since PAR’s acquisition of Brink in 2014, Paul has been serving as PAR’s Chief Strategy Officer, using his two-plus decades of development expertise and nearly two decades in the hospitality POS market to help operators—from independent franchisees to the world’s leading restaurant brands—foster innovation.

Today, we’re going to provide a few takeaways from Paul’s LinkedIn blog post on two approaches to innovation, Best-of-Breed or All-in-One?

Here is how the two approaches compare:

Best-of-Breed Approach

• Optimal for restaurant operators looking to build the best system for a specialized function
• Operators source different solutions from a wide range of preferred vendors
• They typically select vendors based on their track record of specialization for a particular solution
• Operators need to invest more time, energy and capital into choosing best-in-class solutions

All-In-One Approach

• Optimal for restaurant operators looking to balance best-in-class functionality with limited resources like time, energy and capital
• Operators seek to maximize functionality while minimizing the number of vendors
• They have fewer integrations to manage

Choice is a Superpower

“Our recent acquisition of Restaurant Magic Software helped us to greatly expand our offerings. Just as Brink is a best-in-class restaurant platform, Restaurant Magic is a best-in-class back-office solution. While it is highly integrated with our Brink offering, it has integrations and compatibility with many additional point-of-sale solutions. Those integrations will be maintained and expanded over time to ensure our Restaurant Magic customers have choice with respect to their point-of-sale. This is in addition to integrations to food suppliers, payroll companies, accounting packages, etc.”

                     -Paul Rubin, Chief Strategy Officer, ParTech, Inc.

One of the best features of Brink is that it “plays well with others.” But what does this really mean?

It means that you will never be boxed into a one-size-fits-all solution. As Paul discusses in the post, you can choose from different back office technology providers even though PAR now has its own in-house solution, Restaurant Magic.

Without a solution like Brink Software, companies that opt for a best-of-breed approach would have to source products from different vendors to meet their requirements. This, however, costs time, energy and capital that many restaurant operators do not have.

When deciding whether a Best-of-Breed or All-In-One Approach is best for your restaurant, ask yourself the following questions:

• How much time am I willing to spend integrating solutions into my POS?
• Will updating my technology stack improve ROI?
• What ongoing expenses will my strategy incur?

Other considerations before deciding your approach:

• Technological Capabilities
  • Do I have the in-house resources needed to support a best-of-breed technology stack unique to my restaurant?
  • Do I plan to rely on support from vendors, or troubleshoot problems on my own?
• Staff Capabilities
  • How will my team handle new integrations and upgrades?
  • Will there be a steep learning curve?
  • How do I plan for new training?

Read Paul’s full blog post here or by clicking below to get started answering these questions for your unique situation as a restaurant operator. As Paul says, there is no wrong answer—just a right decision for your particular set of circumstances.