SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS FOR F & SERVICE (POS)

PRACTICAL 10 BHCT 456 ADVANCE F& B MANAGEMENT II

SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS FOR F & SERVICE (POS)

POS stands for Point Of Sale, a system that is used throughout the restaurant and retail industry. This computerized system allows business owners to track sales, cash flow, food inventory and can help simplify your bookkeeping enormously.

The high volume of cash and credit cards that pass through a restaurant each day make a POS system a necessity. Not only does a POS system track amount of money of your sales, many POS programs also act as credit card processors.

Benefits

One benefit of a POS system is that it simplifies communications between the kitchen and the wait staff. Orders go through the computer, directly to the kitchen printer. Another benefit of a restaurant POS program is that it can track everything from food usage to the most popular menu items. Because the POS system acts as a time clock, it can also help prepare payroll (salaries). This can save you a lot of money in your bookkeeping department. Along with the daily operations of running a restaurant, a POS system can organize profit and loss statement and sales tax.

Point of sale (POS) systems have undergone dramatic change in recent years — more dramatic, perhaps, than any the restaurant industry has seen since the decades-old shift from cash registers to POS terminals.

There are many POS distributors. Some of the important restaurant-specific POS systems are:

F  Aldelo

F  Digital Dining

F  POSitouch

F  Radiant Systems

F  Squirrel Systems

F  TouchBistro POS

F  Square POS

F  Lightspeed Restaurant POS

F  Upserve (formerly Breadcrumb)

F  Toast POS

F  Revel POS

F  Lavu POS

F  Clover POS

F  ShopKeep Restaurant POS

F  Cake POS

Some of the Key Features of any existing excellent P O S systems are:

Menu Customization, Layout Management, Reporting and Analytics, Customer Feedback, Per-Item Sales Tracking, Tableside Ordering,  Integration Library, Kitchen Display, Bill Splittng, Inventory Management

While the best restaurant POS systems might include a handful of unique traits, they should also accomplish an array of the following top features.

·         Inventory Management — tracks orders and ingredients used

·         Inventory Alerts — sends automatic personalized notifications when specific ingredients need to be restocked soon

·         Employee Tracking — records which employee was operating which station, and at what time

·         Table Service — tracks which tables will receive which orders

·         Billing — accepts cash, card, and contactless payment

·         Loyalty Programs — offers deals and gift cards in order to attract repeat customers

·         Customer Engagement — collects and securely manages approved contact lists, such as email addresses or phone numbers, for customer marketing

How to Choose a POS System for Your Restaurant

Some of the major factors to consider while choosing the right POS for your restaurant are mentioned below. 

 These factors should be sought after on any POS websites must be imperative and relevant to your decision.

·         Your customers — The demographic of your audience determines what type of POS system they will embrace.

• Age — Older customers might not understand or care about options like contactless payment or QR-code coupons.
• Social expectations — A quick-service location might have a self-checkouts option, but a higher end restaurants would never give their servers iPads.

·         Customers with disabilities — A self-serve station might seem easier than an in-person order system, but might not be an accessible option for those with poor eyesight or limited mobility.

·         Your budget — this is a major consideration as per the size of your outlet.

·         Your size — A single food truck and a sprawling restaurant have differing needs: The larger your restaurant, the more important your POS communication features become.

·         Future growth — As your total orders, order stations, or restaurant locations grow, the cost for your POS system will grow, even though the features it offers likely won’t. Choose a system that will be ready for your future needs.

What are the biggest benefits one can expect to gain with the right Restaurant POS System?

F  Improve customer satisfaction, loyalty and positive word of mouth

F  Improve staff productivity and streamline business operations

F  Meet new payment processing and compliancy requirements

F  Improve business intelligence and performance reporting

Customer relationship management (CRM)

Utilizing CRM capabilities, restaurants can automatically capture and store guest contact information, including email and phone numbers, along with their food and drink order history. By applying segmentation schemes, and even augmenting the information with third-party data, restaurants can create a robust database of customer profiles. The database can serve as the basis for launching targeted promotional campaigns and building loyalty and rewards programs, the results of which can go a long way toward increasing customer loyalty, generating positive word of mouth — and, ultimately, increasing sales revenue.

Inventory Control

Some POS solution providers have also been innovating in the area of inventory management. The goal is to track inventory depletion in a real-time manner to help reduce food waste, monitor inventory levels and increase profitability. Some systems are able to track raw materials from the time the kitchen receives a shipment through ongoing ingredient usage based on menu item orders. Managers can automatically compare the variances between physical inventory and POS data to determine if there may be theft, for example, or portion measurement issues. Some solutions offer automatic purchase order generation based on par levels and minimum order quantities.

Employee Management

Restaurant POS Systems have made big strides in areas unrelated to “point of sale.” A good example is employee management. Many POS systems now come with a host of integrated employee scheduling tools. Some systems even boast of financial management features designed to optimize labor utilization. These tools make it easy to not only perform basic tasks like tracking employee hours and submitting payroll directly from the system, but, in some cases, to also predict sales and staffing needs.