Is an Efficient Restaurant POS System In Your Future?
Restaurant Point of Sale (POS) Systems has many factors you must consider in order to run a successful business. Let our Point Of Sale experts teach you how to take control of your business and increase your profits.
Taking Control of Your Business
A right POS system can lift you up to a new level of control over your operations, increasing profits, efficiency as well as fine-tuning your business model. A wrong system can waste both your time and money, and even bring you a lot of frustrations.
In other terms, your POS system is a glorified cash register! The most basic POS system consisting of a computer, a cash drawer, receipt printer, a monitor, and an input device such as a keyboard or scanner. However, in addition to being more efficient than cash registers, POS systems are able to create detailed reports which gives you all the information you will need to study your growth and make future plans for your business’ success.
POS systems is a great way to increase your profits, provide productivity gains and lessen the amount of time you use from the primary focus of your business.
Saving more money, gain more control over your business, and be more productive; sounds like a great combination, right? Well here are some of the best ways a modern POS system can help your business.
Eliminate shrinkage
A computerized point of sale system can drastically cut down on shrinkage, the inventory that’s 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 diminish.
Improve accuracy
With a POS system, you can assure of selling the correct price on any item in your store or on your menu. Your staff will no longer have to guess the price of an item, and prices can easily be change with a single tweak in the computer.
Getting margins
With a detailed sales report, you can focus more on the higher-margin items. By moving items within a retail location, or promoting under-performing items in a restaurant, you can help boost sales of high-profit items.
Know where you stand
Any you wish to, your POS system can instantly tell you how many of a particular product have you sold today (or last week, or last month), how much money you have in your cash drawer, and how much of that money is profit.
Manage inventory better
Knowing what stocks you need to keep on hand can easily be tracked using a detailed sales report. You can easily track your inventory, see what’s on stock, spot sales trends, and use historical data to better forecast your needs. Your POS software can be set to alert you when you’re running low on stocks so you can reorder for them. Because many store owners thinks that they know exactly what trends affects their business, they are mostly caught by a big surprise when they find out these data.
Building 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
POS systems can dramatically reduce the time you have to spend doing inventory, sales figures, and other repetitive but important paperwork. The savings here: time and peace of mind.
Efficiency in transactions
In retail settings, checkouts can be made quicker 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. With either of the two, your customers can get a much faster and more accurate service.
You have to keep in mind that these benefits requires a commitment to utilizing the POS system capabilities to their fullest. Without proper training and analysis, even the most sophisticated POS system will be nothing more than a regular cash register.
Retail and Hospitality needs
The POS market is divided into two segments with very different needs: retail operations and hospitality businesses like restaurants, bars, and hotels.
Retail
Of the two above, retails are the ones who uses simpler POS. Their transactions are completed all at once, and there is often less variation in the types of products they sell. Because there are some POS features retailers that specifically want to include the ability to support kits (3 for deals), returns and exchanges, and support for digital scales. A POS system that supports matrixes would best suit businesses that sells items of variety styles, such as shoes and clothes. 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
Restaurants and other hospitality businesses differ in requirements.
Efficiency is the main focus for casual restaurants. For retail-style restaurants like sandwich shops, a POS system can greatly increase accuracy and cut down on time-per-transaction compared to hastily-scrawled order tabs being passed to the kitchen. For quick-service restaurants, POS systems are practically a requirement for living up to their name: a customers’ order is entered on the terminal at the front which sends the order and displays them on a monitor at the kitchen where the order is assembled and delivered to the appropriate customer.
For fine dining restaurants, point of sale requires a bit 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 point of sale system can be difficult. There are several factors that needs to be considered and pitfalls to avoid. However, the return of investment (ROI) can really make it worth your time and effort.
Need more information or an online resource?
Go to POS-For-Restaurants.com
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.