September 13, 2024

The Benefits of the Right POS System for Your Restaurant

Ryan Christman, POS Channel Sales Manager

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

POS Essentials

Subscribe

Can you improve profit margins, customer satisfaction, and employee morale with one device? We say yes; a great point of sale (POS) solution can revolutionize the way you do business on just about every level. 

But a restaurant is a special type of business, and not all POS systems are built with the food industry in mind. That’s why it’s important to look at the benefits a specialized solution can offer you. Read on to learn what the right solution is capable of providing for your restaurant.

Informed Food Inventory Investments

Many restaurants lose out on potential profits due to spoilage, theft, waste, unrecorded sales, and a host of other reasons. A POS can help by keeping detailed inventory and sales records.

For example, have you ever run out of a special in the middle of the dinner rush or ingredients to make your most popular dish? Both of those scenarios can eat into your profit margin and frustrate your guests. That’s why a great restaurant POS has inventory management features that align with your menu.

At EPI, our own POS, Exatouch®, has built-in inventory management just for restaurants. This can help you:

• Keep a running inventory of key products that drive costs
• See where your expenses are highest and what delivers the best ROI
• Better control food costs
• Track what you’ve ordered and how long inventory has been sitting in the kitchen. 
• Identify sales trends within menu categories
• Modify inventory quantities before your next order
• Make sure you have enough of the ingredients your chef needs
• Empower servers with accurate info on the spot about what’s available to order

Clear Insight into Your Daily Operations

The fast pace of the food industry requires restaurant owners to juggle a dozen tasks at once. When time gets tight, administrative work often falls by the wayside. A POS built for restaurants works with this in mind and makes it easy and quick to get a comprehensive perspective on where your business stands.

Exatouch has a Business Overview report that pulls data to help improve daily operations, eliminate time spent on administrative work, minimize waste, and boost revenue. The report provides a bird’s-eye view of important data across different aspects of your establishment and helps identify problematic areas that can direct you to pull more targeted, detailed reports.

Agile Pay Rate Adjustment for Shift Workers

Keep server morale high by taking proactive action on pay rates for changing roles. For example, servers may be concerned when assigned to takeout duty since they won’t receive the same amount of tips as they would waiting tables in the dining room. But, in the POS system, you can assign a staff member to a higher hourly wage for a single shift. And when they return to work serving tables the next day, they clock in at their regular rate.

Faster, More Accurate Orders

From the hostess to the head chef, an organized line of communication is essential for every restaurant to keep serving guests the right dishes in an efficient manner. Restaurant POS systems include Kitchen Display Systems, handy tablets, and wireless payment solutions like TableTurn^® to keep servers out on the floor, reducing time spent running to the counter or kitchen. You can also set modifiers that ensure servers must enter all the info needed by the kitchen to prepare an order correctly (whether it’s the temperature of a steak or the type of dressing on a salad) and provide an area to make notes, so servers can easily add an unusual modification if needed. All these tools omit the need for waiters to walk into the kitchen to clarify an order, decreasing waste and keeping waitstaff on the floor selling and attending to guests.

Easy Training for New Employees

It’s no secret that frequent turnover is rampant in the restaurant industry. The need to train new employees regularly can take time away from managers and head servers who could otherwise be on the floor selling and ensuring guests are satisfied. Restaurant POS systems like Exatouch can make training staff simpler and speed up the learning curve. As trainees learn which sides go with certain dishes, these details are already configured in the POS system, making it easier for them to input accurate and complete orders for the kitchen. This creates less friction among the back-of-house staff, keeps customers happier, and decreases food waste, even in the face of turnover.

Automatic Data Collection to Boost Marketing

Most restaurants collect some measure of customer data, but the process is effortless with a good POS. The specific data you collect and retain is up to you, but basic contact information such as name, email, phone number, and even birthdays are valuable when trying to connect and incentivize customers to return. Not only will leveraging customer data support daily sales, but creating and maintaining a customer database is an invaluable asset should you decide to sell your business.

Better Dining Ambiance

Giving patrons a great experience is what dining is all about, and an integrated POS system can do so much to make diners happier. For one, having the power to use mobile and handheld devices with your POS can open up your floor plan and customize the look and feel of your restaurant. Putting this kind of care into your ambiance can make guests feel more comfortable in your space and make it easier for wait staff to provide excellent service. Wireless payment devices also keep diners and their credit cards at the table together, removing another hurdle to guest comfort.

Timed Coursing

We’ve all seen it. An appetizer is presented to a table and just as the diners are about to pick up their forks to take the first bite, the entrées are delivered. The guests now have to choose which dish to eat first while letting the other one get cold, and the plates and glasses crowd the table—diminishing the dining experience. 

The good news is this scenario can easily be solved with a POS! Servers can ensure course order by inputting details into the POS to designate parts of the meal as beverages, appetizers, entrées, and desserts and setting the pace for firing orders as the meal goes on. This ensures that food arrives hot and no one waits too long for their next course, and it makes it easy for guests to get creative with their experience (e.g., having an appetizer alongside their entrée). 

Exatouch coursing features can even empower your servers to delay courses on slow nights to give guests more time to relax and order more drinks. Alternatively, on a busy night, servers can fire courses more quickly to speed table turns.

Better Deliveries

Treat every takeout order as you would a table full of guests, with the same level of attentiveness from start to finish. Restaurant POS solutions can offer address verification, third-party integrations with services like GrubHub, and visibility into each step of the delivery. Exatouch also offers caller ID features that allow staff to greet customers by name over the phone and see their most recent orders for fast duplication.

Get all the Benefits of a Restaurant POS with Exatouch®

Don’t settle for a POS that prioritizes restaurants after retail. While Exatouch works in either setting, its restaurant-specific features have a proven track record of delivering the best benefits a POS can offer in food service. Ease kitchen and server communication, control the flow of a meal, and more with a point of sale designed for dining.

Explore Exatouch for Restaurants

800-966-5520 | www.electronicpayments.com