To survive in the super competitive and demanding food & beverage industry, restaurants need a robust point of sale system. It automates most processes and operations and helps owners and operators focus on growth and profitability.
Here, we discuss 8 qualities that a restaurant POS system must offer.
Lightweight
Be it order taking, KOT, or billing, a handheld device must be sufficient to complete most restaurant operations. Do away with heavy, expensive, and high-maintenance hardware. Choose a restaurant point of sale that is portable and flexible, and at the same time streamlines all your restaurant operations. A cloud-based POS offers all of these features.
User-Friendly
How much training do your staff need? Can you change menu items in minutes? How quick is the checkout process? These questions will lead you to how easy or hard it is to use the interface?
Real-Time
Can all your key staff members access all the activities going on in the restaurant? Can managers and owners view their business details and reports without being physically present? If yes, this is the restaurant POS you might want to see a demo of. After all, all owners would like to have real-time updates on their restaurant business.
Speed
On a busy weekend, one thing you can’t afford to have is a slow system. A very important quality of a restaurant or bar point of sale is speed and, ability to work offline. While many Internet-based systems are dependent on bandwidth, there are very few that work offline as well as online. Rest of the systems are local hardwired ones or a hybrid of local and internet-based systems.
Customizable
A good restaurant point of sale system allows you to customize quite a few features and the interface – in a way that would suit your business category and plans. Be it reporting or inventory features or menu items and floor plans – a POS that is customizable is the way to go.
Integration
An ideal point of sale must be able to integrate all sales data with marketing campaigns and promotions. What is the use of all the customer data that is gathered if it cannot be made usable for the growth of your business? For example, loyalty programs can be made more effective if they are based on data on repeat orders and customers.
Support
This aspect of a POS cannot be overstated of course. From initial training and setup, payments and cards support, software upgrades, and ongoing training – these are just a few of the things that your POS provider should provide. And more importantly, find out if online support is available.
Simple Price
The pricing of the restaurant point of sale should be simple too. Be sure to check there are no hidden costs. Most new age lightweight POS offer pay as you go pricing, which is apt for those starting up in the highly competitive food and beverage business.
