Retailer Greggs Plc is installing integrated thin-client touchscreen tills at 300 stores to cut costs, reduce ongoing maintenance and maximise space for customer service.

The installation of the J2 550 Retail Systems later this year will complete the rollout of Epos hardware and that will eventually extend to the whole estate.

It will replace two existing systems at the 1,300 Greggs and Bakers Oven stores and is specifically designed for the bakery environment.

It can be pole mounted to maximise the available space for customer service and has been built around a VIA chip set, which eliminates the need for a cooling fan.

‘Because of the presence of ovens in the bakeries, one issue when housing a processor was that they would overheat in hot weather,’ said Group IT manager Roy McDougal.

‘The processors needed adequate ventilation and maintenance but many of these maintenance overheads are no longer needed.’

Most Greggs stores also have small glass counters, so there was a need to split the touchscreen till and processors to maxmise customer service space. The embedded system is completely solid state.

This is made possible because Greggs runs its own Linux Red Hat operating system and utilises flash card technology, negating the need for a hard drive.

‘With approximately five million quick-sale customers every week, we need our Epos system to withstand a great deal of use while providing reliable networking functionality for our back office systems,’ McDougal added.