News | December 20, 2007

uWink & Volanté Systems To Provide Innovative Hospitality Solutions

Los Angeles, CA - uWink, Inc., an entertainment and hospitality software company with an interactive restaurant concept, and Volanté Systems, a leading hospitality technology provider, recently announced that they will co-develop and co-market innovative technology solutions for the hospitality industry.

The companies will offer the "uV Hospitality Solution," an end-to-end self-order, self-pay and at-the-table digital entertainment delivery solution pioneered and proven in uWink's prototype interactive restaurant in Woodland Hills, California. The "uV Hospitality Solution" is a seamless integration of uWink's innovative touch screen user interface software and micro-transaction game credit and redemption system with Volanté's point-of-sale (POS) and back office enterprise system.

Over the last year, uWink and Volanté have been tightly integrating their two software systems into one seamless, end-to-end solution, a process greatly facilitated by extensive real-time customer feedback and stress testing in the 200 seat prototype uWink restaurant.

Volanté Systems' software offers unique flexibility, cross-platform compatibility and open-source, peer-to-peer technology, along with its full range of features, including credit/debit processing, loyalty programs and gift card management.

"We are proud to work with an innovative company like Volanté with such deep experience in hospitality technology and such a broad range of hospitality clients," said Nolan Bushnell, CEO of uWink. "The licensing of our technology into other hospitality markets is a logical expansion. We see a huge opportunity to leverage our software solution and offer it to other hospitality and public-space markets as an integral component of our growth strategy."

"The uWink restaurant has proven that the "uV Hospitality Solution" is a smashing success, showing that the public, across all demographics, is ready to embrace self-serve technology, and that the technology can in fact deliver major benefits to the industry, including higher average checks, labor savings, increased customer loyalty, increased transaction speed and accuracy, and reduced lines," said A. Ennamorato, vice president of operations, Volanté Systems. "Many of our hospitality clients, including hotels, universities, stadiums, theme parks, casinos, casual/fast food chains, and golf and ski resorts, are keenly interested in self-service technology solutions. The combination of uWink's proven customer-facing self-order, self-pay and digital entertainment delivery and monetization capabilities seamlessly combined with Volanté's innovative java-based, peer-to-peer point-of-sale enterprise software, represents the end-to-end solution the hospitality industry has been waiting for."

At the uWink restaurant in Woodland Hills customers self-order and self-pay for food, drink and digital media, including short form video games from uWink's library of 70+ casual and social single-player and multiplayer games, from tabletop touch screen terminals running proprietary user interface software. The uWink system is fully integrated with Volanté's POS system allowing for seamless transaction billing, processing and accounting.

The "uV Hospitality Solution" software also allows for the delivery of digital advertising and the monetization of customer game play via a unique "micro-transaction" game credit purchasing and redemption system that is also tied directly into the Volanté POS for billing and processing.

SOURCE: uWink, Inc.