The dream had come true: Customers poured in the doors; Phones kept ringing; Orders flew in. After a slow start, Pablo's Pizza was coming into its own. But Paul and Kaci Knaysi felt out of control.

Struggling to keep up with the business, they realized they needed help: They scrapped their pen and paper methods and installed a SpeedLine POS. “SpeedLine was a godsend,” Paul says. “It saved our business.”

Today, Pablo’s is an established, successful restaurant—which has recently begun to expand through franchising.

In Spokane, Paul worked as a medical social worker and Kaci as a physical therapist. Neither had owned a restaurant before. “We were both tired of the medical field,” says Paul. “We wanted to work for ourselves, invest in a community, and have the potential to earn more than we were. We also wanted to live in a smaller town with more sunshine.”

They didn’t move into the unknown on a whim. They spent three years testing recipes, writing a business plan for a gourmet pizzeria, and working out financing. They also scouted real estate in sunnier climes.

They heard about Grand Junction from a friend who lived there. “We saw the potential,” says Paul. “There were no gourmet pizzerias and no one was doing what we wanted to do. It’s a cute town; the weather is nice and it’s a great place for outdoor activities. We figured the town was bound to catch on. So we took the plunge.”

The old restaurant building they bought in the heart of Grand Junction needed a lot of elbow grease. The carpet was revolting, and the beautiful tin ceiling was caked with dark paint.

“We put a lot of money into the place,” Paul says. “We painted and put in hardwood floors, and we decorated with mismatched, antique furniture and art prints.”

Paul and Kaci named the store after Pablo Picasso, whose creativity and charisma transformed the art world. They wanted their menu to have the same revolutionary impact on their customers’ taste buds.

Downtown Grand Junction, at that time, was suffering from years of neglect. The town was little more than a stopover for traffic between Denver and Salt Lake City. But things were changing. Local wineries began to transform the sleepy town into a popular tourist destination. Other nearby attractions such as the Colorado National Monument also drew tourists.

At the same time, the Downtown Business Association, of which Kaci was a part, pioneered a farmer’s market that became wildly successful: “Every Thursday night, for about four months, the downtown streets are packed with up to 8000 people visiting the market, “ Paul says. “People got in the habit of coming downtown again.”

To take advantage of festivals and markets, the Knaysis purchased a booth and a portable oven. Even their four-year-old daughter, Sophia, gets involved by handing out drinks. “She really tries to help,” Paul says, “even if we don’t really need it. But our customers love it. She gets tips…She saves them in a special piggy bank to buy princess stuff.”

With new vitality in the downtown area, the doldrums at Pablo’s were over and sales were up. But what should have been a boon became a serious problem.

“We just had one cash register and a complicated menu,” Paul recalls, “and taking orders with pen and paper, we really got bogged down. I’m sure we lost customers because of badly written orders and lost delivery tickets.”

“We were growing so fast, we couldn’t keep up,” Paul says. “Things were out of control.” So they decided to purchase a POS system, installing SpeedLine in August 2003.

“We saw improvements right away,” Paul explains. “To begin with, our order taking time decreased by 50% and we had fewer mistakes and forgotten extras. We also stopped losing money to employees undercharging.”

SpeedLine gave a boost to customer service at Pablo’s.“Many customers order the same thing every time they call,” Paul says. “Before SpeedLine, they had to go through the whole rigmarole and tell us what they wanted each time. But now, we can easily recall their order.”

“We like having two POS stations,” Paul says. “We can do takeout and delivery easily on one while we’re taking orders on the other. And when we get really busy, we can take orders on both.”

Other administrative tasks became less burdensome as well: “Our system saved us four hours a month in payroll alone,” Paul says.

With SpeedLine on the frontline, Paul and Kaci found they could breathe easier. “We were able to hire a manager,” Paul says, “so we didn’t need to be in the restaurant all the time. That was a highlight: I have two young children, and I really want to lead a balance life and be with them as much as possible.”

The Knaysis moved from merely surviving to finding new ways to enhance their business. They launched a website that captured the restaurant’s eclectic spirit and gourmet flair.

Their menu, which customers can view online, features nine sauces, 45 toppings, 27 specialty pizzas, eight salads, and a selection of soups, sandwiches, desserts and beverages. It reflects the Knaysis’ commitment to using no cheap ingredients and making each pizza a work of art.

When competition in town heated up, the Knaysis took it in stride and stayed the course: “There are new pizza places in town,” Paul says, “but even the other gourmet places do not do it quite the way we do. We’ve been able to maintain quality, no matter what. The price of cheese may go up, but we want to keep using the best ingredients. We figure that over time, it’s worth paying more.”

Pablo’s customers think so too: The Grand Junction community voted the pizzeria the Best of the West in 2005. “That was quite an honor,” Paul says. “Generally, the big chains win these awards, because they’re well-known. It was nice to see that our community is supporting us. We’re very proud of that.”