As a restaurant owner, you understand that excellent cuisine and customer service are critical components of customer satisfaction and retention. Active management is the key to any successful restaurant operation. Hence, it is crucial to remain organized in fast-paced businesses like restaurants, especially during the busiest of times. Restaurant point of sale (POS) software is one of the smartest investments you can make in 2022 if you own a restaurant. Over the last decade, point-of-sale (POS) software has evolved to improve the consumer experience and empower business owners to run operations more efficiently.
Today, owners spend a lot of their total budget building the perfect restaurant, which means a competitive environment and difficulty in handling those restaurant operations. In addition, rapid development in the restaurant industry, coupled with evolving client demands could be overwhelming, but business owners must speed up processes to meet customers’ expectations while flawlessly managing all operations. Therefore, it is critical to invest in POS software that can give the technical support you and your staff need to keep day-to-day operations operating smoothly.
Speed up every transaction
Unlike a traditional POS system, which is stationary, a modern POS is fully mobile and designed to help you serve more customers in less time. A modern restaurant POS can remove certain steps of the front-of-house workflow and help increase the speed of each transaction including contact less payments, card-not-present transactions as well. And the more customers you serve, the more money you make.
For quick-service restaurants, a modern restaurant POS can simplify the transaction process for your staff, which can help them move through lines much more quickly. Plus, with a mobile POS used in restaurants, you can have one cashier work through a long line to take advance orders that the kitchen can get started on, while the other cashier processes payment.
For full-service restaurants, a mobile POS enables your servers to take table side orders. Table side ordering is a big deal because all your servers need to do is punch in the order once at the table instead of writing it down and running to a POS – which eliminates errors and speeds up service. A server’s product knowledge is more consistent because they can carry it around with them – no more running back to the kitchen with questions about ingredients or allergy alerts. It’s all right there. Some restaurants have seen sales increases of 20% or more after implementing table side ordering. After table side ordering and dining there should be a facility of mobile checkout as well to enhance the customer experience.
Better Inventory Management
A headache for any restaurant owner is how to efficiently track inventory, especially when you have multiple deliveries and packages coming in. A POS system helps you better manage what is in stock, by providing an accurate and up-to-date snapshot of available items. It tracks details about each product such as the number of sales, date of sales, and price. It automatically tracks and controls inventory through a scanning process, rather than manually to free up your time and resources for other business priorities. A huge benefit a POS system has is its ability to analyze previous sales data. This will help you make smarter buying decisions in the future. This inventory analysis is a necessary component to manage your budget, as well as make changes that positively impact your finances.
Optimize and Redesign Menu
A restaurant POS can break down food cost percentages and contribution margins by day and by menu item. When you know how much a menu item is costing you to make, you can spot opportunities to optimize your menu prices. Your restaurant POS can also tell you which menu items are top sellers and which items are the most profitable. Both may not be the same.
Once you’ve identified high-margin items using your POS reports, you can place these items strategically on your menu in an area called the Golden Triangle. The Golden Triangle is the area of your menu that customers read first, making them more likely to order items located here. You’ll want to display high-margin items in your Golden Triangle, which will help increase the sale of dishes that give your bottom line the biggest boost.
Anti-Theft Control
Theft is one of the biggest reasons a restaurant or bar can suffer tremendously. Yet, despite the fact, many merchants miss out on the best methods to prevent loss from internal theft and perforated transactions. A good point-of-sale system is designed to help you keep an audit trail of everything that happens in your business. Such systems also come with a button under the counter or a panic button on the POS to let the store owner contact authorities swiftly in case of an emergency. It also allows you to keep track of how much money is coming in and flowing out of your business. In addition, if there is a risk of theft in the restaurant, it sends an alarm to the manager.
Create targeted marketing campaigns
Use the customer database collected through your POS loyalty program to target marketing campaigns for individual customer preferences. Customized marketing campaigns are incredibly popular right now, and many customers now expect a unique offer tailored to their needs. A restaurant POS can use your loyalty program to collect customer data and trends, which you can use to create targeted campaigns that better incentivize customers to return and spread the word about your venue.
Restaurant Floor Management
If you own a dine-in restaurant, managing your offline and online reservations can be a difficult task during peak times. Fortunately, restaurant POS systems allow you to build a physical map of your restaurant and accept reservations via an online portal. This makes the process of managing your restaurant floor much more practical for your team of hosts.
Integrate Online Orders
If you’re currently using an online order platform for your takeaway food service, it’s critical that it can integrate into your current POS system. Many restaurant POS systems will allow you to integrate external ordering platforms, which can automate the process of accepting payments and beginning the preparation phase for online orders.
Continuity With Your Kitchen
Rather than your servers running back and forth from the kitchen to the bar to the table, the POS system automatically sends tickets directly to the kitchen when they are entered. This eliminates any confusion with messy handwriting or additional notes, as the POS is very specific and clear enough for anyone to understand. You can program the system to send menu items to different kitchen stations. Also, ensure that all orders are properly and promptly placed. Customers and staff alike will be pleased with this increase in food delivery time and correctly placed orders.
Employee management
High turnover is a fact when running a restaurant, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. The last thing you want to do is overstaff or understaff the dining room floor on any given day. A POS system can automate scheduling to make sure there aren’t any imbalances. It can also track days off and can act as a time clock, automating many of the business’s labor-management processes.
Stronger Business Reports
A huge benefit of a POS system is the detailed reports it generates. Due to all the information, it records through the system, it creates reports on sales, credit card transactions, individual employee sales, stock, inventory, profit, and loss. This can be done on any terminal, at any time for real-time information on your business. You can use these to determine the most popular business hours or what menu items are costing you more dollars than they are bringing in. The POS system reports are highly valuable as you make business decisions and adjustments for a more efficiently run restaurant.
Adapt to Cloud-Based Operations
Previously, each restaurant had to have servers “on-premise” to run restaurant management software. This meant having a rack of computers wired up someplace in the restaurant to record data, process transactions, and have performance reports. However, with technological advancements, you can now check in with your restaurants from anywhere in the world with the help of internet-enabled POS systems. Restaurants will find it much easier to monitor sales, manage costs, and make data-driven choices when they move to cloud-based restaurant management software.
Outcome
Increased productivity, better tracking, better administration, and more delighted consumers are all advantages of a restaurant POS software. So, invest in a robust restaurant POS software and reap the many benefits.
With the aid of a modern POS system, you can streamline multiple restaurant processes – from order entry to staffing to ingredient inventory – and view real-time sales reports that quickly give you insight into where your business stands each day, giving you more control over your company while allowing your business to grow and thrive.
