Two generations of restaurant technology
Restaurant technology got complicated. We spent 30 years making it simpler.
We are a family owned restaurant technology company in Irvine, California. Art Julian started CBS in 1994. Since then we have built a POS platform that bends to how you actually run your restaurant, and a team that is still on the phone with you years after the install.
Our story
A restaurant company that happens to write software.
Nobody at CBS set out to build a technology brand. We set out to fix what was breaking on Friday nights, and then kept showing up for thirty years.
A cash register company decides to become a point of sale company
Art Julian starts Custom Business Solutions in Irvine, California. At the time the state of the art is a banking machine with fifty buttons on it, and we are selling it to some of the best known dining rooms in Los Angeles. Touchscreen is coming. We can see it.
Six months to install three terminals
Our first touchscreen sale took half a year to put in. Three terminals, one restaurant. That is how you learn this business: one dining room at a time. A customer we picked up in those early years is still with us more than thirty years later.
A hardware problem teaches us what support actually means
A touchscreen failed at a customer site. The manufacturer's technicians showed up having never seen the product. One tech, then two, then three, across three days. We decided we were done waiting on anyone else and built our own field service and our own depot, shipping product in and out of California and Texas.
A 250 page RFP moves us into enterprise
The answer took a year. The first store went live in 2000. That brand is still a customer in 2026, and is moving onto NorthStar now. From there came the multi thousand seat brands, and with them a service standard we had to grow into.
A truck stop brand in four time zones puts us on 24x7
They could not wait fifteen minutes for a callback. So we did the math: the west coast closes at 2am, the east coast opens at 6am. The gap you actually have to cover is small. We staffed it, and we have staffed it ever since.
NorthStar gets its name
It started as a reporting tool called Quick Reports and became an integration framework: capture data at the point of sale, and have a P&L back in the operator's hands inside fifteen minutes. Hundreds of brands ran on it. The name stuck to everything that came after. Data is an asset, and the trick is to capture it once and use it often.
The name becomes an umbrella
Portal for above store reporting. Change Management, so one item number meant a cup of coffee across a thousand restaurants. Recipe Viewer, so a menu change published from one console reached one prep kitchen or five hundred. Live. Order Up. Every one of them was written to solve a real problem for a real customer.
The Restaurant Technology Guys goes live
Jeremy Julian starts a podcast for operators, not for us. Over 300 episodes on POS, payments, labor, off premise, and AI. The editorial stays independent. We just pay for the mic.
Everything we learned above store comes down to the terminal
NorthStar Order Entry. Cloud managed configuration, then kiosk, online ordering, dispatch and curbside, gift cards, loyalty, memberships, and payments, all built to run against one database instead of six.
Two generations in, still answering the phone
NorthStar runs on iPad and Windows for operators from a single location to hundreds. The company is still family owned, still based in Irvine, and still measured by whether your restaurant had a good night.
"We looked at the north star as the guiding light of sailors for thousands of years. We looked at it as the guiding light for the restaurateur: that they could go to one place, and capture data from many places." Art Julian, Founder and CEO
The Core Four
Four values we actually hire, review, and argue by.
Humble
Less "look at us" and more "how can we help?"
Success
Your wins are our wins. We are here to grow alongside you.
Grit
Digging in and doing the work to make a difference.
Creative
Relentless learners who turn "what if" into "hell yes."
Our proven process
Align. Build. Launch. Thrive.
Every NorthStar rollout runs the same four stages, and every stage has a named owner on our side. You always know who has the ball.
ALIGN
We listen. We ask the awkward questions early. Sales qualifies the fit, our engineers validate it against how your operation actually runs, and product weighs in when your requirements need it.
BUILD
We build the foundation, fast and right and ready. Your project manager runs discovery, staging, database build, and training, and checks in so nothing sits waiting on someone else.
LAUNCH
We launch. We support. We do not disappear. Your project manager stays through go live and the week after, then hands to Support with a full transfer of what we learned about your business.
THRIVE
We grow with you. Period. Your account manager owns the relationship, Support shows up fast, and the product evolves on what you tell us, not on what we assumed two years ago.
ABLT Around here it is just the ABLT. Avocado, bacon, lettuce, turkey. We are a restaurant company. It was going to happen eventually.
Leadership
The people you will deal with.
Art Julian
Started CBS in 1994 and has run it as a family business ever since. Still sets the standard for how operators get treated here.
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Jeremy Julian
Second generation. Hosts The Restaurant Technology Guys, over 300 episodes since 2013, with independent editorial because operators deserve the whole picture.
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Anthony Presley
Leads NorthStar software development and cloud infrastructure from our Dallas office. A restaurant technology veteran who has spent decades building teams that ship.
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Allie Haskell
Runs marketing for NorthStar: the brand, the customer stories, the partner launches, and the press. Named RSPA Woman of the Year and a 2024 Shelby Publishing Emerging Leader in food and retail.
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Rick Baker
Runs installs, field service, and nationwide rollouts. The machine that gets hardware staged, shipped, and live on schedule.
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Sho McKinney
Leads accounting and finance for CBS, from billing and contracts through the numbers that keep a family owned company independent.
LinkedInWant to reach the team?
One line to the right person, wherever you are in the process.
Working here
A family owned company that is trying to stay one.
Once a month the whole company stops and gets on the same call: where we are against our goals, what shipped, which sites went live, whose birthday it is, and who deserves a shout out. Someone picks one of the Core Four and says why it mattered that month.
It is not a performance. It is how a company that has been around since 1994 keeps everyone pointed at the same thing while it grows, across two offices, Irvine and Dallas, and a field team spread over the country.
#findyournorthstar"It is great that we have partners that are willing to grow with us. And be more of a partner than a vendor." What we are going for
Where we are
Based in the USA, on the road most of the time.
Two offices. Headquarters, including training and repair, is in Irvine, California, and our second office is in Dallas, Texas. Our field service and support people work out of markets across the country.
Corporate headquarters
1 StudebakerIrvine, CA 92618
Phone: (800) 551-7674
Fax: (949) 380-7644
Dallas office
1850 Crown Drive, Suite 1107Dallas, TX 75234
Phone: (800) 551-7674
Fax: (949) 380-7644
Tell us how your restaurant runs.
We will tell you honestly whether NorthStar fits. That conversation is stage one of the process either way.
