The popularity of cafes and restaurants depend mostly on the location, quality of food, and customer service. However, one thing commonly overlooked by many café owners is the business infrastructure of the café.
A major part of that infrastructure is a point of sale system (POS system). A POS system gives you total control over every important operational aspect of your restaurant such as taking orders or ringing up sales. If you are still using a cash machine and have been hesitant to install a POS system or, simply curious to know what it’s all about, then it’s time to consider what these POS systems have to offer.
A restaurant POS system offers a wide range of benefits that will improve customer service and increase daily sales, far beyond what is possible with an old-fashioned cash ticket system. Let’s list 7 of the most important features a restaurant POS system can offer:
As your business grow, you’ll be receiving a large volume of customers and many may choose to go cashless and pay with card. Thus, as the trend goes more and more towards cashless payment, it is important to keep with the crowd and provide ability to pay via credit or debit cards. POS systems would allow your restaurant to accept credit or debit cards for all transactions and with the installation of advanced software it can also accept such modern payment platforms as Apple Pay, Bitcoin, etc. With a variety of modes of payment, you’ll be able to keep your customers happy and attract those who value these services as well. We all know that happy customers would translate to larger and better sales!
POS systems very often include Inventory tracking functions. Inventory track helps determine best-sellers, reorder ingredients and avoid out-of-stocks. It also allows for the tracking of daily usage patterns, reduce waste and shrinkage that might severely cut any potential profits. The best thing is that POS can be accessed remotely from home or any other place, so that you would always be able to control the enterprise from wherever you want. You can’t imagine doing the same with a traditional cash machine, right?
Cash register might seem cheaper, but only at a first glance. When you estimate maintenance and repair costs, it comes out that POS can actually help you save money. As the technology is changing together with industry standards, you might need to make equipment upgrades. Thus, instead of replacing old cash register you can just update your point of sale system at much lower cost. If you don’t know what kind of POS machine you need, you can simply find out here. Furthermore, as cash machines grow increasingly obsolete, it may be difficult to find ways to service or fix your cash machine if it breaks down. With the help of the professionals you will be able to find a perfect-matching POS.
Scanning is more accurate than punching numbers from a sticker into a cash machine, or expecting the cashier to remember what each item costs. Especially when a company wants to split a bill, it becomes a headache for the staff to manually calculate these transactions. It can take time from other customers and there is always a room for mistake that can cost the restaurant money. The POS machine ensures that math errors are eliminated, and that each party can choose a desirable payment method (cash, card or a platform).
Simple mistakes can turn customers away. And a big part of keeping your customers happy is ensuring that they get what they ordered. With handwritten tickets communication between wait staff and kitchen won’t be perfect. And as we know, that results in mistakes on the line and delays in service. A POS system dramatically improves house-kitchen communication: the customer’s orders are immediately sent to the kitchen. As a result, the connection between kitchen and wait staff is improved, order mistakes are minimized and the customers are more satisfied.
Friendly staff is a “heart” of your restaurant, so it’s important to make your workers happy. New generation would prefer modern POS machines to traditional cash registers. It’s hard to deny that they would feel more comfortable and secure while working with a computerized technology. Your staff would appreciate improved technology in your café because it reduces the need to carry out repetitive menial tasks and allows for greater productivity.
One of the main advantages of POS systems is that it lets you manage stock, reorder items and analyse sales patterns. The reports available from POS are detailed and sophisticated. Point of sale system allows you to analyse your business in different ways, such as by different time periods, items sold, promotions locations, etc. You will easily understand the trends and would be able to be come up with competitive ideas and track their effectiveness.
As we can see, the restaurant that sticks to a cash-only concept is cutting themselves off from a potential increase in traffic. The right POS system will allow you to attract more customers, ultimately boosting your daily sales and increasing profits.
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