Of the many factors that can come together to make or break a restaurant, one that can sometimes be lost in the shuffle is a properly working, up-to-date POS system.
While outstanding service and quality food are crucial to any restaurant’s success, the background chugging of the POS is what greases the rails to make for a smooth ride along the way.
Here are five ways a good POS can help you rise above your competitors in the midst of COVID-19.
- Inventory control
If you can’t keep accurate track of the state of your inventory, you open yourself up to unexpected shortages that can make for unsatisfied customers and a drop in repeat business when favorite dishes are suddenly unavailable.
A good POS system not only tracks inventory levels, it can also help better manage that inventory by giving you an on-demand, accurate, detailed snapshot of available items.
In addition to that, a proper POS can help track details about each inventory item, informing you about details like date of sale, number of sales, and price. This detailed analysis helps you make more informed purchasing decisions, maximizes your purchasing dollar, and reduces waste.
2. Sales tracking
Speaking of tracking things, a modern POS can also rescue you from the days of trying to tally up sales manually with nothing but a calculator, a stack of receipts, and your well-honed wits. A good POS can effortlessly track each sale so you can see which items are most popular on a daily basis, and make better preparations for the next day’s demand.
Less time tapping on that calculator and more time focusing on customer service makes for greater efficiency, happier customers, and a beefier bottom line.
3. Labor optimization
Among those looking for a new POS in the restaurant industry, 76% list labor management as a top factor in their decision, and this is one of the many proven benefits of a good POS.
The right POS platform can be a significant aid in workforce management, automating many aspects of the employee management process. POS terminals can serve the functionality of a time clock to assure accurate tracking of time on the job and help maintain appropriate staffing levels during high and low-traffic periods.
Among other labor-related benefits of a good POS are automated generation of payroll reports, as well as restricting access to sensitive controls such as discounts, voids, and refunds. This can help you maintain increased security within your sales systems by tying transactions to specific employees.
This not only decreases the chances of theft, but also reduces the risk of employees giving unauthorized discounts to friends or family.
4. Accounting
Whether you handle the accounting yourself or relegate it to a partner, manager, or professional accountant, a good POS can reduce headaches for everyone and increase the overall accuracy of your books by automatically importing all of your vital data directly into the accounting system of your choice.
With the detailed and accurate reporting and tracking capabilities provided by a POS, accounting errors can be a thing of the past. You also can have the peace of mind of knowing that the numbers influencing so many vital business decisions are as accurate and up-to-date as possible, without the hassle of sorting through all those loose receipts.
5. Improved guest experience
One of the top benefits of a modern POS system is the extent to which it can streamline and improve the entire guest experience from check-in to ordering to payment.
POS-integrated solutions like OneDine offer easy initial setup, the data-driven insights mentioned above, and also serve to make your operations more efficient and your service more personalized.
Guests can easily check-in, order, and pay right from their mobile device without having to wait for a staff member to get to them. Guests can also receive customized recommendations by inputting their dietary preferences, favorite cuisines, dishes, spice levels, and more.
Your guest can tap a sensor or scan a QR code at the table to check in, which notifies a team member that they need assistance. Orders can be taken by the server using the tablet, or submitted by the customer on their own mobile devices. Customers can then add, modify, and pay for their order independently.
Guests can also experience safe, contactless payment with a variety of options and in a variety of situations. Curbside, drive-up, and delivery options include SMS messages with a link to an online payment portal, a QR code that can be scanned in order to pay, ordering online via a custom mobile browsing/ordering website with payment at checkout (or upon arrival via SMS or QR code), or, depending upon contactless preferences, guests may walk inside to pay.
For payments inside the dining room, diners can tap the table sensor to pay the check.
All this and more
The benefits of a good POS system are many and varied. Click here to check out all the possibilities.
