restaurant business with these innovative ideas

Drive more sales to your restaurant business with these innovative ideas

The food and beverage industry is massive, and it is predicted to grow in the next five years, owing to an expansion in the consumer base and rising disposable income. The UAE restaurant industry, on the other hand, has an abundance problem. Several restaurants are fighting for clients, therefore restaurant owners must concentrate on attracting more customers and increasing restaurant sales.

Restaurant sales are rarely consistent, and they are affected by a variety of factors like competition, seasonal swings, and the changing economy.

Here’s a list of creative ideas that may help you to increase restaurant sales:

Introduce a Restaurant Website or Mobile App

Though if you own a non-digital local restaurant, your storefront is no longer the face of your business. The website is the most essential aspect in assessing a restaurant’s reputation, according to 88 % of individuals who go online to research products or services. If your restaurant’s website isn’t up to standard, customers will most likely leave it at a single glance.

Your restaurant’s website or mobile app must have an elegant design, attractive features and it should be properly functional as well with easy navigation. Additionally, keep in mind that most people use their smartphones to conduct research of this nature, whether they’re at home, in the car, at work, or elsewhere – your website must be mobile-friendly.

Prioritize the Upselling

Up selling is a great technique to boost sales and draw attention to your high-profit food items. Getting consumers to purchase your most profitable meal item, as well as enticing them to get a dessert or a side dish, can increase the value of their average ticket.

Train your restaurant staff and employees to provide support to your visitors without going overboard. Your employees can recommend food to your guests, but they must not be forced to order it. Regular clients can have things suggested to them based on their likes and ordering habits. You can use your POS to help you re-sell popular and high-profit items. Waiters and servers can use the Server’s App to take orders from a handheld restaurant ordering system that shows the whole menu as well as the most popular items. CRM connectivity allows your waiters to monitor client ordering history and up sell things based on the preferences of the customer.

Make the Most of Your Restaurant Menu

Your restaurant menu has the ability to dramatically increase restaurant sales if it is designed correctly. Customers will see and order your high-profit and popular items first if you emphasize them. Add enticing menu descriptions that encourage customers to order more, and the restaurant will automatically upsell goods and improve sales.

You should also review and update your restaurant menu on a regular basis to identify and replace problematic products. Adding new items to the menu is a terrific approach to attract clients while also helping to boost sales.

Implement Online Ordering

It’s great to have a beautiful restaurant where people may dine, but having an online ordering option is much better. More people in the UAE are looking for restaurants that deliver because it is more convenient to eat in the privacy of their own homes or workplace! According to a survey, 60 % of UAE customers purchase food through an app.

You must either partner with an established online ordering website or a food delivery app in the UAE, such as Talabat, or permit online ordering through your own website or app. The majority of smartphone users consider online meal delivery applications and websites to be a more convenient approach to satisfying their hunger.

Online ordering broadens your horizons and allows you to reach out to more audiences who may or may not be able to dine at your restaurant.

Boost Your Restaurant’s Online Presence

The worldwide food and beverage business has been thought to be more internet-savvy than ever before in the last two years. If you don’t have an internet presence yet, you’re not on the right track to success. You can build your own website and app (which is expensive, time-consuming, and frequently buggy), or you can join Blink for Restaurants and improve your restaurant’s digital presence.

You will obtain a regular stream of organic orders if you have a branded website that is SEO optimized.

The branded apps are always amazing and worthy, allowing your clients to place orders from your restaurant with a single click of a button.

Marketing Creatively to Attract Customers

Marketing has evolved into an essential component of restaurant operations, and it plays a crucial role in raising restaurant sales.

With more than 70% of UAE residents utilizing the internet, you can’t overlook the value of online marketing in improving your restaurant’s sales. Most individuals, particularly travellers, look for restaurants online before deciding where to eat. As a result, if you want to increase foot traffic to your restaurant, you must focus on online marketing.

Restaurants offer fantastic online opportunities to reach out to potential customers, such as social media marketing and Google My Business listings.

You can also construct audience-specific campaigns based on demographics and behavior by investing in sponsored advertisements on Facebook and Instagram as it’s a trending and highly effective marketing strategy for restaurants. It allows targeting a certain demographic, allowing you to cater to clients depending on their preferences.

Offer Customers to Sample a Dish.

Entice your customers from time to time by offering them a sample dish to taste, this methodology helps you to gain good feedback and more new customers. This is the most successful and cost-effective way to market a restaurant and establish brand recognition. Every public event that attracts your target audience is an opportunity to provide product samples. Choose the best 2-3 dishes from your menu that can be easily transportable, and send out some solid restaurant representatives to meet and greet at the events and also try to offer those dishes to your customers at no cost need.

Prioritize Customer Retention

When compared to a new customer, loyal consumers spend 67% more on average! What, on the other hand, encourages client loyalty? The first step toward customer retention is consistency in food and service quality. Then there’s excellent customer service and demonstrating that you care. In the competitive market of the UAE, however, these have become a requirement rather than a uniqueness.

Customers will return to your restaurant if you have loyalty programs and rewards memberships in place. You can give customers reward points based on how much they spend at your restaurant, which they can use to reduce their total due bill, or you can give them a complimentary item on their next visit.

It’s difficult for people to deny an attractive offer, so this is a terrific approach to keep your clients coming back to your restaurant. Use a POS system to quickly integrate and manage your loyalty program across all of your ventures.

Organize Events

Restaurant owners in the UAE often offer special events around major holidays such as Eid to boost sales, but festivals aren’t the only time you can host events.

You may organize special events such as a “Curry Festival”, “Desserts Fest” etc, where you make several varieties of curries or delightful desserts from across the world and invite people to taste them.

These types of events are a terrific way to get more customers into your business and boost revenue. You can plan unique events based on the audience you want to reach.

Above anything, don’t forget to let people know about the events. Send out emails, SMS messages, and make social media posts about it. This will broaden the audience and raise awareness of the event. This is one of the most effective restaurant marketing techniques.

Introduce Attractive Rewards

Offering discounts is the best method of increasing restaurant sales. Special offers and discounts, maybe rendered meaningless unless they are properly strategized. Instead of providing a blanket discount to all of your customers, you can create personalized incentives to entice customers to order from your restaurant again. Consider the case of a customer who hasn’t visited your restaurant in a month. You can offer your regular customers, a 10% to 20% discount on their most often ordered item. Through a clever integrated Marketing Module, you can effortlessly extract this data from your POS and perform unique offers and discount promotions.

Summing up

We anticipate that the restaurant industry will make even more progress by the end of this year. Restaurants must increase their internet sales while also fine-tuning their restaurant management capabilities since a positive bottom line is crucial for all entrepreneurs. We hope that after reading this blog post, you will have a better understanding of How to Increase Restaurant Sales Online and Beyond.

If are in a way to integrate your restaurant with a well-developed POS software system, then you should proceed with our multifunctional retro POS system. Get in touch with us any time for its quick implementation and further discussion to know about our ERP inbuilt restaurant growth software system.

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grocery stores

The impact of technology on the transformation of rural grocery stores

Significant developments in the world have led us all to adjust on the fly in recent years. With today’s technology breakthroughs, the process of turning our problems into solutions has become much faster and more efficient. Even for businesses to succeed, incorporating technology and innovation has been a key component. Whether it’s attracting new consumers, enhancing interaction with existing customers, lowering operational costs, or inspiring internal employees, technology can bring a variety of benefits that have a beneficial impact. These advantages can also help you increase your revenue and margins.

In India’s retail sector, e-commerce has made huge inroads: by 2025, 220 million people are projected to purchase online, and the business is forecast to rise to INR 13,97,800 crore. Despite this, small-format vendors and neighborhood Kirana (grocery) stores still account for over 90% of India’s grocery retail commerce. These grocery stores must quickly embrace digital technologies in order to keep up with the shifting retail landscape and increasing consumer demands. This post examines administration, large e-commerce enterprises, and other private sector digitization activities, as well as current concerns about technology adoption among grocery store owners. Grocery stores should be digitized using the physical plus digital paradigm, which we call ‘phygital,’ or by aiming for convergence with large merchants and e-commerce enterprises, according to the report.

B2B platforms like QWIPO have created a tech-driven business strategy to give a one-stop solution where shop owners can receive all the SKUs under a single umbrella to keep the shop owner’s business-focused and enhance top-line revenue. This helps to build an ecosystem for Kirana store owners that is similar to the organized retailer market and elevates them to compete on an equal footing. Local grocery store owners can place orders at any time of day with a single click, without even leaving the house. These systems ensure that commodities are purchased directly from top vendors, skewing middlemen with the correct market price.

In the Indian retail sector, technological advancements are required to modernize distribution and supply-chain procedures for the benefit of both firms and consumers. This can be accomplished using Kiranatech, a technique that is generally by local grocery shops to turn Kirana stores into highly productive enterprises.

Know how the tech assets transform the way of Indian Grocery stores: the key insights

Online ordering and tracking

Orders can be placed with no minimum order value using mobile applications and websites that are specially designed and developed for grocery stores. Grocery stores can allow individuals to use these web and mobile apps to place orders and track them in real-time. These orders are delivered within two to three days, and customers receive high-quality products at reasonable prices.

Inventory management 

Most store owners have limited insight into their stockpiles, resulting in expired merchandise or missed sales opportunities. It is difficult for a single person to adequately and efficiently manage stocks. As a result, grocery store owners have traditionally had a difficult time procuring and controlling inventory.

POS Implementation

Independent businesses like you can give exceptional customer service in their stores because of our quick and easy checkout. It’s impossible to imagine a faster way to create item labels and shelf tags for pricing. You’ll see why more and more Indian food stores are turning to EZB Solutions for the incomparable functionality of their POS solutions, which includes the ability to easily set up high-speed checkout lines with touch screens and scanning, as well as incorporate scales for effective price monitoring.

List the amazing benefits that grocery stores are gaining with the raise of digitization:

Increasing Operational Efficiency

Gaining customers’ trust and revenue easily

Offering customers a multi-channel shopping experience

Easy inventory check-up

Allow customers to check available varieties while placing orders

Make customers enable to checkout digitally

Collect customers’ feedback on every purchase

Conclusion: The Future of Indian Grocery Stores

Grocers have been able to modernize their technology by offering online ordering, delivery, and accepting digital payments and other services in the aftermath of the pandemic. Furthermore, they have grown closer to their local customers.

The in-store operations of Indian grocers have been streamlined thanks to technology. Their company may now function with a small number of employees and the basic minimum of skills to make appropriate judgments based on reliable data. As a result, they look to be accelerating their growth. 

We have some excellent news for you if you’re seeking a strategy to stay ahead of the curve in retail. We specialize in assisting organizations like yours in better understanding and implementing digital transformation strategies to help them flourish. Before it’s too late, our experts can show you how to capitalize on this trend. Contact us with any inquiries or to schedule a free strategy call–we enjoy hearing from forward-thinking companies like yours!

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POS Inventory management

How Point of Sale System Helps with Inventory Management

For a retail business, the stocks you have in your store servers are one of the most important aspects. As a retailer, a large part of your job includes being in control of merchandise and ensuring you have the right products at the right time. In fact, nothing can bring your business down like carrying the wrong amount of inventory. This is where inventory management comes in. 

Inventory management is the process of ordering, tracking, and managing your stocks. 

Why is Inventory Management Important?

As a retail business owner, it is imperative to stay on top of your inventory to keep your business up and running. When you manage your inventory, you are able to maintain stocks that sell and reduce the ones that don’t. This will help you make sure you have the products in your stock that your customers are frequently buying and, in turn, make more sales and profit.

Being out of stock on products does not only affect your sales but also makes you lose your customers. With proper insight into your stock, you can avoid such situations and retain your customers by offering them their favorite products. 

Moreover, with proper inventory management in place, you can reduce the chances of shrinkage, which is the reduction in inventory due to theft or admin error. 

Why is POS the Best Way to Manage Inventory?

There are several ways of managing inventory. Some retailers stick to the old-school way and use paper receipts, records, and clipboards. Others go a bit advance and make use of a clipboard. Nevertheless, the best way to manage your inventory, especially in the digitized era we are living in, is implementing stock control through a point of sale system.

A point of sale system, also known as POS, is a technology that goes beyond the traditional cash register to offer a more sophisticated way of managing sales, inventory, reports, and administer customer loyalty programs. For a retail business that sells online or through brick-and-mortar stores, investing in a good POS system can be one of the most beneficial decisions.

A POS with a strong inventory management feature can help you streamline your business process by keeping your sales and stock data in sync. Whenever there is a sale in your store, the POS will automatically update your catalog to match the product quantity you have in your store. This automated process essentially eliminates the need to manually update records every time you make a sale. 

Moreover, POS inventory management also reduces human errors since most of the operations related to managing stocks are overtaken by the system. Lastly, a POS system can quickly produce reports and allow you to get a view of important metrics so you can make key decisions to scale your business performance. 

How does POS Help you Manage Inventory?

Now that we have understood what inventory management is, why it is so important, and why a POS system could be the best solution for it, let’s take a look at some of the specific tools you can use to best manage your inventory:

Your inventory management database contains all the information about your products, including:

  • Product name
  • Description
  • Category
  • Supply price
  • Retail price
  • SKU number
  • Barcode number
  • Quantity
  • Supplier

The database can be extremely helpful in finding out information about specific products as well as add and update your catalog. A good POS system also comes with a purchase order generator tool, which you can use to create invoices to send to your vendor. 

An accurate reporting and analytics tool also comes with most POS, using which you can have clear and error-free information on your best-sellers, slow-movers, most profitable products, and the items that are low on stock. Such information can help you make effective decisions regarding the growth and scalability of your business. 

Advantages of Using POS for Inventory Management

As mentioned above, using a proper POS system is one of the best decisions a business can make, regardless of the type of business it is. If you run a business that sells products, inventory management through a POS system can help you save time, money, and resources.

Here are some of the major advantages of using a POS system for inventory management:

Here are some of the major advantages of using a POS system for inventory management:

  • Automation of inventory management

    A POS system automates the task of inventory management, so you don’t have to manually update the data. This can help business keep their inventory in the best shape and their customers happy.

  • Automatic report generation

    POS can generate both sales and inventory reports accurately at any given time, allowing you to get a deeper insight into your business trends.

  • Increases business profitability

    Since POS helps in lowering the ordering and carrying cost of inventory with proper inventory management, your business is bound to increase its profit margin and scale through new heights.

  • Remote management

    For businesses with more than one location, a POS system can help keep track and maintain stocks across multiple stores. 

Final words

Both the retail and restaurant industry is getting incredibly competitive, which means it is more important than ever to keep your inventory in the best shape. Fortunately, there are a number of systems and tools available in the market for proper inventory management. We recommend looking through them and selecting the ones that best suit your unique needs. Explore the plethora of options to find out which POS system works best for your inventory management so you can retain your customers and grow your business with ease.

By alpana j 0 Comments

Why Need a POS System in Restaurants and Which Type Should You Opt For?

The restaurant industry has gone through a number of changes in the past few years. Restaurant owners who don’t have the proper technology in place are finding it difficult to keep up with the changing scenarios meeting the customers’ expectations while managing all the operations. When the entire world is moving towards digitalization, it only makes sense for restaurant owners to pick up on the available technology and make the most out of their business. The easiest way to automate and simplify your restaurant operations is to implement a POS in your restaurant. 

Nevertheless, not all POS are the same. When it comes to purchasing a new POS system for your restaurant, one of the biggest mistakes that you can make is purchasing a POS made for retail or other industries instead of the ones made for restaurants. 

So, what type of POS should you implement in your restaurant business?

Restaurants and other food service establishments have distinct needs, and their POS should be specially designed to cater to these needs. Restaurant POS systems are designed to adapt to the scaling needs of the business and offer long-term growth with relevant add-on features.

In a restaurant, a staff member uses a POS system to input a customer’s order, and that information is immediately relayed to the kitchen. Depending on the restaurant, the order may then be closed immediately or stay open until the meal has been delivered. Because of this unique ordering and check-out process, a restaurant POS ties the menu items with inventory along with descriptions and graphics of each dish. Once the order has been placed, the restaurant POS relays this information to the kitchen and simultaneously updates the inventory.

Moreover, restaurant POS systems are designed to make the order process more fluid and keep the order open until the item has been delivered to the customer. This way, restaurant staff can keep adding or modifying the orders without the need to complete individual orders every time. 

In terms of hardware, a restaurant POS also has different needs. Since in the restaurant business, transactions often remain open, the POS has to be portable, which can be carried around the venue to facilitate tableside ordering.

Restaurant POS also often includes additional hardware such as receipt printers, kitchen printers, customer display, kitchen display, and mobile payment terminals.

Now that we have understood the type of POS you need for your restaurant, let’s take a look at its benefits:

Built Restaurant POS for your needs

A restaurant business is built to cater to the specific needs of the hospitality industry. More often than not, such POS systems are developed under the guidance of people who have worked extensively in the hospitality industry. In turn, the restaurant POS features tools to counter specific issues such as bill splitting, table management, and menu changes. This means that you can manage almost all the aspects of your business in one place without having to resort to integrations and third-party extension software.

A restaurant POS not only helps you with the operation, order, and check-out process but also aids your staff to better prepare to offer the services. Moreover, Restaurant POS systems are interactive and intuitive, allowing your staff to easily understand and get used to the system. 

Food Industry-specific features

A restaurant POS comes with all the industry standard-specific, allowing you to keep your restaurant in pace with the competitors and scale your business with ease. Some of the features offered by a restaurant POS include:

Menu Management

With the menu management feature, you can easily build, customize, and manage multiple menus as well as categories. A menu management feature also simplifies updating and customizing menus across multiple outlets, allowing you to add or remove items at a central level. 

Staff Management

An employee management feature can help you be in control of who is working when and where. Using this feature, you can gain deeper insight into employees’ data and ensure they are best used for their time. The employee management feature also helps you control how much access your staff members have to the system at any given time, saving you from fraudulent entries and accidental entries. 

Inventory Management

This feature helps you keep track of inventory and costs with real-time ingredient tracking, low stock alerts, recipe and menu tracking, vendor management, and more. Most quality restaurant POS will have an inventory management feature built into the system to help you stay on top of your stock.

Online Ordering Management

 In today’s fast-changing restaurant industry, you need to have an online ordering system in place. A good restaurant POS system will offer you features to accept online orders, allowing you to broaden your reach and boost your sales. 

Floor Plan Management

Floor plan management allows you to customize your restaurant floor plans, add or remove tables, move parties around, split bills, and more.

Kitchen and Table Management

Most decent POS systems come with kitchen and table management, allowing you to keep the front of your kitchen in sync with the orders you receive and focus on providing the best dining experience to your customers. With kitchen and table management feature, you can automate the order taking process with kitchen displays and stay connected with every guest throughout their dining experience.

Specialized Day to Day Restaurant Reporting

The best restaurant POS systems come with analytical suites that provide restaurant owners with essential information from the dishes that are selling the most to the staff members that are performing the best.

A restaurant POS gives you a detailed insight into specific variables, such as which modifiers are being added to the meals and which ingredients are getting too expensive. You can analyze these data to make changes accordingly and improve and scale the business.

Add ons and Integrations

Most restaurant POS are complete within themselves in terms of ordering a one-stop solution to all the needs of the restaurant owners. Nevertheless, in case a restaurant owner has more specific needs, a POS can be integrated with third-party systems such as reservation, loyalty programs, gift cards, and more.

By alpana j 0 Comments
Retail POS

Understanding POS Integration for Retail Businesses

As a retail business owner, you would want to get the best out of your POS system. While your POS system might help you manage inventory, accounting, sales, employees, customers, and everything in between, sometimes you need more out of such systems. For instance, not all POS come with a complete retail business solution, which makes it difficult to manage and maintain your business in one place. In such cases, you might find yourself looking for alternatives or finding a way to integrate new systems with your POS. This is exactly what POS integration is.

What is POS Integration?

While most retail business owners will promptly be able to answer what a POS is, the term POS integration is not familiar to many. Let’s first understand what POS integration is. POS integration is a streamlined connection between your POS and your retail business accounting and operation platforms. POS integration is becoming increasingly important within the retail enterprise. 

POS Integration for Retail Businesses

POS system allows retail business owners to manage operations and sales, and purchases in one place. Nevertheless, in order to be more effective and efficient, a POS system must be integrated with other existing technologies such as an Enterprise Resource Planning system.

A cloud-based POS system allows you to easily connect the system with other technologies. Since cloud-based POS system makes use of cloud servers in real-time, the data your POS shares and receives is shared with the integrated systems as well. This real-time back and forth of information helps create an efficient network of systems, allowing you to automate a lot of tasks for your business.

Nevertheless, not all POS integrations are equal. In order to make integration work, you must first consider your requirements as a retail business owner. In this post, we will discuss a few POS integrations and give you some insights into what you need to consider before integrating your POS with another system. Let’s take a look:

Marketing POS Integration

Marketing POS streamlines customer data from your point of sale system to your marketing system. If you use text or email-based marketing, then this integration can help you automatically create customer records, including their names, email ids, phone numbers, and other information in your marketing system. With a marketing POS in place, you can save time and effort by not having to manually export all the customer data and import it into your POS. 

Moreover, marketing POS systems have evolved to offer a more nuanced approach in exporting customer information. Advance marketing POS can communicate customer purchase history, purchase frequency, total spent, the total number of orders as well as custom information associated with customers. Using advanced marketing POS, you can create more efficient and targeted campaigns. 

E-Commerce POS Integrations

E-commerce POS integration is one of the more popular forms of integrations. More often than not, an e-commerce website is integrated with a POS to sync and manage inventory. E-commerce integration is also essential when it comes to operating an online retail store as it helps minimize the room for errors and simplifies the order placing system. With the inventory management feature offered through e-commerce integration, retailers can keep up with their stock and the number of orders they have to dispatch, all through a simplified interface. 

An e-commerce integration can also help keep track of product descriptions, price, name, orders, and the customers buying those products. Additionally, with e-commerce integration, retail business owners can also manage loyalty programs, gift cards, and coupons, as well as maintain the sales of multiple locations in one place.

Accounting POS Integrations

An accounting integration helps to simplify and communicate sales data directly to your accounting system. Besides managing sales data, accounting POS integrations can also communicate invoices, customer data, purchase orders, and inventory data. Before going on with the decision of integrating an accounting system with your POS, make sure to consult with your accountant and take in their input on the process.

The reasons for integrating an accounting POS system may range from keeping track of sales and maintaining invoices with customer data, to tracking account receivables and to keeping an eye on inventory values. 

Employee Management POS Integrations

Retail stores have unique staffing needs, which could change according to the time of the day and business of the store. In order to cater to that, retail owners need a way to easily change schedules and notify the employees of the same. With employee management POS integrations, your employees can create their own profiles while allows them to be in sync with the needs of the store. Employee management integrations allow you to track the hours, schedule, and performance of your employees and streamline the onboarding process, as well as make it convenient to add more employees into the system.

Payment POS Integrations

With integrated payment, retail business owners can align the system and platform to streamline the payment side of the business. Retail business owners can connect their POS with their payment processor to keep the data flowing smoothly from one platform to another.

Integrated payment POS helps retailers eliminate the need of keying customer and credit card information at the check-out counter, making the check-out process simple and quick. Since the POS system is integrated with the payment processor, all the necessary information is ready as soon as you initiate your payment terminals. 

Conclusion

It is not easy to run a retail business, especially in the ever-changing and technologically-dependent era that we are living in. Nevertheless, with the right tools at your disposal, you can create efficient solutions to keep your business running smoothly while putting yourself on the path to modern retail success. 

 

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