Argyle Street Grill Installs Mask Recognition and Temperature Check at Door.
December 17, 2020, Caledonia, ON – A popular restaurant in the quaint town of Caledonia, Ontario, today announced its newest team member – Janus – to help the business wade through the uncomfortable realities of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Janus is a standalone touchless pedestal and monitor that audibly welcomes guests and among other things, simultaneously checks body temperature and if the person is wearing a mask or not.
“We had never planned on having to install a technology like this, but things have changed so much and if we don’t adapt, our business will suffer,” says Kevin Wootton, Owner at The Argyle Street Grill in Caledonia. “Today there seems to be too much opportunity for conflict about masks, information
sharing and so on. I feel that Janus will help alleviate some of that. Ultimately, we want to provide our guests and our staff with some basic reassurances about the health and safety of this restaurant,” he adds.
At this location, Janus has been configured to instantly monitor body temperature and ‘welcome’ patrons into the establishment if temperature readings are below 37.3°C. That is the body temperature threshold outlined by the government of Canada’s public health guidelines, based off of World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations. If Janus detects a customer entering the restaurant, with a high temperature, the device will audibly ask the person to ‘please wait for assistance from a staff member’. At this point the process will be done again, leaving the final decision up to the staff member on whether to permit entrance or not.
Janus also features facial recognition technology that alerts for non-compliance of mask wearing requirements. If a mask is not present, or even if it is not positioned on the face properly, Janus will politely ask the customer to ‘please wear a mask’. If both requirements are met (temperature and mask) the system will display a big green checkmark and say ‘welcome to The Argyle Street Grill’.
In the near future, after getting comfortable with Janus, it is the intention of The Argyle Street Grill to test and deploy more of the system’s functionality. For instance, Janus is being customized currently to take and manage reservations. It can also be used in-house for accurate staff time logs. Janus has
reporting capabilities to help managers/operators understand and analyze data about capacity, reservation trending, and more.
Brantford based Solutions into Motion, better known for its two leading GPS brands Trackem and WhereSafe, is the company behind the Janus technology. “Janus is very customizable, making it perfect for many different restaurant environments and needs. Many different business environments for that
matter,” says Vince Poloniato, President at Solutions Into Motion. “Currently we have Janus configured to to serve the needs of most public venues, right out of the box. However, our next phase with this technology is better leverage the data it can collect and integrate with external systems, such as reservations systems, access controls and more,” he adds.
The Argyle Street Grill was already following public safety measures such as reorganizing its floor plan to adhere to social distancing protocols. Other back and front of the house changes have been put in place to deal with increased sanitation concerns. The restaurant has even developed a QR code system to
easily access the menu without having to touch a physical paper or plastic copy.
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