How to Choose Best POS System for Your Restaurant

Posted by August 24, 2017, 6:08 am


A Point of Sale (POS) system is indispensable for restaurant operations. Taking advantage of cutting edge POS technology for the growth of restaurant business and providing best customer service has become necessary to keep up with the competitors amid growing customer expectations. POS softwares makes it easy to manage and automate restaurant operations like inventory management, online reservations,recipe management, table management, menu engineering, kitchen display, food-costing, order taking system, loyalty programs & memberships, staff management, billing & invoice generation, call center and report customization among host of other day to day tasks. A good POS system can reduce the hassles of manual work and subsequent errors.

Choosing theright POS System is therefore absolutely vital. It can be a game-changer for your restaurant business. Below mentioned tips will help you make the wellinformed decision while selecting the POS System.

1) Assess your restaurant requirements

Choose the POS system for your restaurant based on specific factors such as scale & type of restaurant, inventory sources, number of staff, menu, locality and customer demographics to name a few. For example, a small take away food outlet might prefer a cheaper and portable LitePOS system, with features such as easy billing, split check, happy hour pricing, inventory management, customer & vendor contact management, menu engineering,discount management. On the other hand, a large scale or multi-location restaurant could prefer a cloud based hospitality solution with advanced features for easy coordination among various outlets, vendors, customers and staff with specific user permissions located in different parts of the world.

You should alsoconsult your staff or department heads for any special POS featurerequirements. A good POS System is usually customizable to the specific requirements of your restaurant.

2) Make it customer oriented

A restaurant isnothing without loyal and returning customers. Make sure the POS System youchoose gels well with your customer’s needs. An ideal POS System should make iteasy for customers to place the order, request special or customizable dishes,split the bills, reserve the table and manage discounts & loyalty cards.The right POS system will eliminate customer waiting time and long queues.

3) Choose easyto use and easy to train POS interface

The best POSinterface is the one which is simple, intuitive and user friendly. Nowadaysmost POS system will allow you to provide specific user roles and permissions for your staff. An easy to train and user friendly POS System will eliminate the cost of long and complicated training sessions for your staff. With the easy training and intuitive interface you should be able to quickly deploy thePOS system.

3) ChooseFlexible, Versatile and scalable POS:

A POS system should allow you to-

a. Enter any numberand combinations of items/particulars along with discounts, taxes, users andvendor or customer contacts.

b. Email, create pdf files or print sales receipt, price quotes and invoices with single click.

c. Keep a checkon your expenditures, payments and receivables through analytics and autogenerated reports.

d. Easily re-edit or re-print the receipt and mail them to your customers or manager.

Cloud based POS hospitality solutions are recommended over windows based POS systems foreasy scalability. POS that requires a server is old technology and is appropriate for small take away joints and mom & pop shops. Go with acloud-based system if you want real-time reporting, online ordering, tablereservation & payments, and remote menu management. Among hardwares, Android hardware is usually less expensive and more versatile than iPads.

4) Decide your budget

Migrating from one POS System to another can be difficult and cumbersome. It is therefore suggested to choose the right POS system with a onetime investment. A reliable and high quality POS system should be given preference over a cheap POS system.Decide your budget in accordance with the long term business goals. Traditional window based POS systems are slightly cheaper than cloud based POS systems, but if you are looking to expand your business the high tech cloud based POS System is the future.

5) Ensure service and support

Make sure to choose the POS system with propersupport and service warranties from manufacturer. Top POS companies offer staff training, easyto understand product manuals, software & hardware installation support andtimely call or email support. It is also a good idea to ask for regularsoftware updates and new features to be made available at affordable prices.

Author - Mr. Hunaid