What Restaurant POS Systems Can Do for You

Servers running back and forth between the kitchen and the patrons with barely legible hand-written tickets, a register that was new in 1960, and inventory days that result in additional grey hair. Does any of that sound like any part of your restaurant? A new restaurant POS (point of sale) system could help alleviate all of those problems and more.

Restaurant Accounting, Payroll and Inventory

While not every POS system can do the accounting and the payroll for you, many can do both or will work with other accounting software to streamline daily sales accounting and payroll. In addition, some systems can even create monthly, quarterly and yearly reports. Knowing where the money is spent and where it comes in is important.

Having those figures can help you figure out where to increase expenditures, where to cut costs, and which direction to have your chef take the menu. For instance, a good POS system can calculate how often each dish on the menu sells, which times of day each dish is popular, and which days of the week they tend to sell on. One dish may do really well only on Friday nights during the dinner service, and another could sell really well during the lunch service each day of the week, but never at any other time.

This kind of information helps streamline the menu, determine specials, and gives you an idea which items customers are coming back frequently. Additionally, you can keep close track of your inventory. Many systems include features to help determine what needs ordering, when it needs ordering and, in some cases, who your suppliers are. Those systems that include the option to input your suppliers will often let you print order lists for each of them at the required frequencies in time to meet ordering deadlines.

Expedite the Expediting

Hand-written tickets are notorious for causing problems between the customer and the kitchen. If a server does not make certain preferences clear such as allergen removal requests, it costs you money. First, the dish has to be remade from scratch to ensure the offending item has not incidentally contaminated the rest of the food. A customer is compensated for these issues in many restaurants with a free or discounted meal, which loses even more money. Finally, when that type of mistake happens frequently, customers start going elsewhere no matter how good the food is when it eventually gets to them.

A POS system can take those problems out of the equation completely. Some print paper tickets from a station in the kitchen after servers input the order on a hand-held wireless device. Others take the information from such a device and deliver it to a screen in the kitchen. There are a few POS systems that require servers to transfer orders from a written ticket to a computer that delivers the orders to the kitchen, but even then, the server is capable of ensuring any special requests are input properly.

Clearly, restaurant POS systems can help improve overall operations immensely. Figure out which features you want to incorporate in your restaurant and find the right system to address each need. Costs vary, depending on features, but they certainly save headaches in the end.