Restaurant Point of Sale – Taking cash and so much more – Part I
For such a long time, most retail business owners thought of their POS system as a fancy cash register. With technology moving forward at such a quick pace, many innovations have become standard features within the POS industry.
1. Wireless Hand Held POS Devices. The newest generation of wireless restaurant hand held POS devices allow your servers greater freedom to take orders as well as collect payment without leaving the customer. Waiters can present your daily specials to your customers on the spot, process credit cards from table to table, send a quick bread requests to the kitchen, and add walk-ins to the waiting list – straight from the handheld device. Your servers are able to spend more time interacting and keeping your customers happy.
2. “Sticky” Paper Printers. One of the newest innovations are the printers that uses “sticky” paper. These printers use paper similar to a Post-It that will allow you to post the receipt to different locations again and again. The paper can be printed to whatever length you need, then stuck to any surface where it will remain until it is removed and, even, placed elsewhere. With these printers, the paper can stay with the order through the entire order process. The new paper is also liner-free eliminating the need to manage non-recyclable waste and can be easily removed and restuck to a different surface – again and again. It can be used for all orders, instant and special orders, as bag tags or any combination.
3. Digital Menu Board or Signage. Did you know that your POS system can be used to deliver media rich content, using video, audio and pictures to more customers? Some of the POS bundles have fully integrated and seamless digital menu board software that can be used to create content using the same database. Menu titles, pages, menu items, and prices can all be twined with high-quality multimedia to give your restaurant menu board that can give both a dramatic and interactive display without having to spend extra money for addtional components.
With most digital menu boards, content is sent to the displays from the store database in real-time, so the menu board continually updates throughout the day with menu changes, scheduled price changes, daily specials and so on.
4. Self-Service or interactive Kiosk. Also known as the interactive kiosk, a self-service device first came to prominence with the photo kiosk machines from Kodak – from wikipedia. This great restaurant POS system can be a piece of self-service hardware device that works in combination with a self-service software where customers can perform their own transactions. In a Restaruant Point of Sale System, a kiosk software may come in package and those that do not, allows adding a kiosk with no separate software required. Kiosk software can be used to cut down on labor costs and speed up the ordering process. It can even enhance customer’s user experience enabling a whole new level of profitability!
5. Cell Phone Paging. Some restaurants are opting to take a more modern approach by paging customers’ personal cell phones. The restaurant host or hostess simply takes the guest’s cell phone number and enters it into the cell phone paging system keypad. And when their table is ready, the paging system sends a call to the cell phone with an automated voice message to notify the guest to report to the front of the restaurant so they can be seated. This can be a convenient way for guests who want to roam around farther than conventional pagers will allow and there is no fear of the customer walking away with your pager.
The tips I gave you above are just crumbles of a cake when is comes to knowing your restaurant POS equipment. Watch out for more…
Michael Tash is VP of Customer Relations of POS-for-Restaurants.com — helping retail business owners use their technology to be more efficient and more profitable with over 20 years of its restaurant experience.