Restaurant Point of Sale software Systems has many factors you have to consider in order to run a successful business. Let our experts show you how you can take control of your business, be more efficient and increse your profits without having to spend a great amount of money on POS systems.
Take Control of Your Business
A right Restaurant POS system can lift you up to a new level of control over your operations, it helps fine-tune your business model, boost your profits, as well as your efficiency. The wrong Restaurant POS system, however, can be a waste of money and a source of ongoing frustration.
In a sense, a restaurant POS system is a glorified cash register. The most basic restaurant POS system that consists of a computer, a cash drawer, receipt printer, and an input device such as a keyboard or scanner. However, in addition to being more efficient than cash registers, POS systems makes detailed reports which gives you all the information you will need to study your growth and make future plans for your business’ success.
Restaurant POS systems can save you a great amount of money, increase your profits, and cut down the amount of time you spend on each business plans you have in mind.
Saving more money, have more control over your business, and being more productive; sounds like an excellent combination for your business, right? Here are some of the ways a modern restaurant point of sale system can help your business.
Getting rid of shrinkage
A computerized restaurant point of sale software system can drastically cut down on shrinkage, the inventory missing from your store or restaurant due to theft, waste and employee misuse. Because employees will know inventory is being carefully tracked, internal shrinkage will dwindle.
Improve Accuracy
With a Restaurant point of sale software system, you are assured of selling the correct price on any item in your store or on your menu. Your staff will never have to guess prices again, and you can change prices with just one tweak in the computer.
Getting margins
You can get better magins by having a detailed sales report, focusing on higher-margin items would be cinch. By moving items within a retail location, or promoting poor-performing meals in a restaurant, you can help boost sales of well performing items.
Know where you stand
With the help of a Restaurant POS system, you can instantly know how much money you have in your cash drawer, how much of that money is profit, as well as how many of a particular product you have sold today, yesterday, last week or even last month.
Better inventory management
Knowing what stocks you need to keep on hand can easily be tracked with the helps of a detailed sales report. Track your remaining inventory, spot sales trends, and use historical data to better forecast your needs. Your Restaurant POS software can be set to alert you when you’re running low on stocks so you can reorder for them. Many store owners who think they know exactly what trends affect them find a couple of surprises once they have this data.
Build a customer list
Collecting names and address of your regular customers may come in handy in the long run. You can use this list for targeted advertising or for announcing incentive programs.
Reducing paperwork
Reducing the time you spend on doing inventory, sales figures, and other repetitive but important paperworks can be lessen if you use a Restaurant POS system to help you out. It doesn’t only reduce the time but save more for you as well as give you a peace of mind.
Efficiency in transactions
In retail settings, checkouts can be made faster if you use a barcode scanner and other POS features to aid you. Restaurants will find their order process greatly streamlined as orders are relayed automatically to the kitchen from the dining room. In both cases, your customers get faster, more accurate service.
Keep in mind that realizing these benefits requires a commitment to utilizing the Restaurant Point Of Sale software system capabilities to their fullest. Without proper training and analysis, any sophisticated Restaurant POS system will be just another cash register with no special functionality.
Retail vs. Hospitality Needs
Since there are two segments in the POS market, they require different needs: retail operations and hospitality businesses like restaurants, bars, and hotels.
Retail
Of the two groups, retailers have simpler POS needs. Retails can complete their transactions all at once and they even use less variation for the products that they sell. Some POS features retailers may specifically want include the ability to support kits (e.g. 3 for deals), returns and exchanges, and support for digital scales. But if your business sells items in a variety of styles like clothes, then you will need a POS system that supports matrixes. For example, matrixes let you create one inventory and price entry for a particular sweater, but still track sales according to size and color.
Hospitality
Depending on the type of establishment, restaurants and other hospitality businesses have different requirements from Restaurant POS systems.
Efficiency is the main focus for casual restaurants. For retail-style restaurants like sub shops, Restaurant Point Of Sale software systems that relay inputted orders cut down on time-per-transaction and reduce the errors that can happen when hastily-scrawled orders are passed back to the kitchen. For quick-service restaurants, Restaurant POS systems are practically a requirement for living up to their name: orders taken on terminals in the front are automatically displayed on monitors in the food preparation area, ready to be quickly assembled and delivered to the customer.
For table-service restaurants and fine dining, POS requirements are somewhat different. They need to know which staff is responsible for which table, and being able to create and store open checks. The efficiency gains from better management can be impressive. If a restaurant with 20 tables and an average check of can increase turnover by one party per table, that is an extra 0 on a busy night.
Return on Investment Worth the Trouble
Switching from a traditional cash register to a computerized Restaurant POS system can be difficult. There are many factors to consider and some pitfalls to avoid. However the return on investment and benefits to your business can really make it worth your time and effort.
The author of this article is the Vice-President of Customer Relations at POS-For-Restaurants with over 20 years of experience serving restaurants of all types throughout the U.S.
