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.

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Cloud-Kitchen smb solutions

What is Cloud Kitchen and How Does it Work?

The food industry has gone through a lot of changes in the past few years, thanks to the rapid growth in technology, ever-rising startup cost, and a global pandemic. Restaurants, eateries, cafes, hotels, and other hospitality sectors are looking to implement new ways to serve their customers while keeping the business afloat. Most of these steps are aimed at providing convenience and making food easily accessible to everyone. 

Online food ordering has already taken its roots in the society and the indefinite era of the pandemic only served to make it more viable. In such scenarios, the food industry has come up with a new concept, or rather a new development on an old concept which has come to be known as Cloud Kitchen.

A cloud kitchen, also referred to as ghost kitchen or virtual kitchen, is a commercial facility that is specifically used to prepare food for deliveries and takeouts. The entire model of the ghost kitchen is based on a delivery-only service, which provides ghost kitchens with a few advantages over traditional brick-and-mortar restaurants doing deliveries. 

How does a Cloud Kitchen Work?

Now that we have cleared that a cloud kitchen is essentially a delivery-only restaurant that does not have any physical space to offer dine-in service. The restaurant relies entirely on online orders placed through the restaurant’s website/app or a food aggregator.

The cloud kitchen model also allows restaurants to launch more than one brand using the same kitchen premises. For instance, a restaurant that employs a delivery-only kitchen to deliver Asian food can use the same kitchen to deliver mexican food. But instead of incorporating the Mexican food in the same brand, it can launch another brand entirely for Mexican food only. 

Most often than not, cloud kitchens are situated in outskirts, industrial areas and offer driver parking, driver waiting areas, and check-in stations to allow seamless driver pick-up. The most important aspect of cloud kitchen is the technology that goes behind it. These facilities use large amounts of data to determine what types of food are in demand in specific locations and employ popular delivery apps to make deliveries.

Taking orders in a Cloud Kitchen

Most of the orders for a cloud kitchen restaurant come from online, which makes a POS mandatory for these particular models of restaurants. A cloud kitchen restaurant can take orders from multiple platforms including food aggregator’s apps, website/app, and telephone. 

Getting orders from different platforms makes order management a daunting task, which is why a POS is required for a cloud kitchen restaurant. A proper POS in place makes it easier to handle orders and maintain a consistent delivery process.

Moreover, POS is also essential for cloud kitchen restaurants that deliver food under multiple brands so the detailed insights and data about numbers of orders received for each brand remains in place and accessible.

Order Processing in a Cloud Kitchen

In terms of order processing, cloud kitchen restaurants work similarly to any other restaurant. Nevertheless, when multiple brands are operated under one cloud kitchen, it is imperative to watch out that the distinct taste of each brand is maintained. Most cloud kitchens employ various cooks in order to make sure the unique taste for each brand is maintained. 

Once again, a proper POS system in place can help smoothen the order processing procedure. A POS system reflects orders directly to the kitchen screen as soon as an order is accepted on the website or app. Once the order is prepared, the kitchen staff can mark it ‘done’ on the kitchen display and the packaging process is cued in. The packaging staff packs the items and sends it to the delivery station while the POS records each of these steps to help you analyse and optimise the order processing time and procedure.

Managing Staff in a Cloud Kitchen

A cloud kitchen restaurant does not have any physical premise to let people dine-in, which means such facilities do not require much in terms of staff. However, the lack of wait staff has to be reciprocated with excellent kitchen staff as the taste the restaurant offers will be one of its main selling points. 

Most cloud kitchens hire different chefs to handle each brand they are operating under the roof. Besides kitchen staff, delivery executives are needed, if the restaurant relies on an in-house ordering system. 

Managing Inventory and Suppliers in Cloud Kitchen

Finalizing and maintaining suppliers in a cloud kitchen is similar to the regular, commercial restaurant kitchen. Restaurants operating various brands with the same basic ingredient requirement under one cloud kitchen can order basic ingredients from the same supplier and different ingredients from various suppliers.

If the supplier provides a diverse range of ingredients, all the brands’ essentials can be supplied from one source. Before finalizing a supplier, it is advised to create a list of ingredients that the brands require and try to order most of them from one place. It will help you keep track of the suppliers and inventory.

In terms of inventory management, most cloud kitchens use a smart POS to conveniently control various aspects of inventory and stock. A POS allows cloud kitchens to manage daily consumption and different brand requirements from a single screen. 

Marketing a Cloud Kitchen

The marketing needs of cloud kitchens are very different than that of regular restaurants, given that the former does not have any physical outlet. Without a premise where customers can walk in to dine, the need for powerful social marketing and branding arises. As a cloud kitchen owner, you need to be able to do online marketing using social media platforms, SMS and email marketing, brochures and flyers, and integrating third-party delivery apps, and tying up with complimentary restaurants. 

Proper use of technology and is essential for a cloud kitchen to thrive so make sure you are making the best use of the technology at-hand including POS, social media platforms, mobile marketing, and properly targeting your audience. 

By alpana j 0 Comments

Benefits of In-House Online Food Ordering System for Restaurants and Cafe

The convenience of being able to order food online, from the comfort of our homes is undeniable. Even before the pandemic struck and forced us to resort to our homes and tend to our works through the internet, the concept of taking most of our day to day tasks online was commended by everyone. The onset of the pandemic only solidified its existence.

Nowadays, the online ordering system is the backbone for most restaurants, which makes for an argument for the benefits of in-house online ordering systems. An in-house ordering system is when restaurants use their own online ordering software to process orders instead of relying on third-party aggregators. An in-house ordering system gives the restaurant full control over the entire ordering and delivery process.

Online food ordering is here to stay, which means it makes sense for restaurants to invest in an in-house ordering system and integrate it with their POS to streamline the entire process.

Here are a 5 reasons why having an in-house ordering system is better for your restaurant than relying on third-party platforms:

Online Ordering Drives More revenue To Restaurants

With online ordering, users are able to linger on the menu for as long as they want without having to worry about being hurried up by the person behind them. This independence allows them to take their time, explore all the menu options comfortably, and choose the best item according to them.

Being able to explore the menu with ease also increases the probability of customers adding extra items to their orders. Not to mention, online ordering systems are more accessible to a large number of people and the average order value of online orders are higher compared to orders done in stores, making online ordering more profitable.

Customization On The Go

Unlike delivery aggregator’s apps, having an in-house ordering system allows you to make adjustments on the go. Whether you are running low on an item or going through a rush period or not delivering to a particular area, you can update the information on your menu, add images of food you are offering, and create daily specials quickly and easily.

More Accurate Food Orders

Online ordering reduces the chances of mistakes and errors that are often prevalent with phone and in-person orders. First and foremost advantage of online ordering is that it gives the customer greater control over their choices. With more control, customers have more clarity and understanding about what they are going to order. Online ordering systems are also detailed with the menu and its consisting items so customers remain aware of exactly what they are ordering and what does the item contain. This convenience allows for better and more accurate order placing process, saving the customers as well as the restaurant from making any mistake regarding the order.

Improved Data Insight

One of the reasons Domino’s relies on an in-house ordering system is because of the important insight they get into their customers’ data. Third-party software don’t provide restaurants with complete access to customer data, making it difficult for them to do more personalized campaigns and marketing. With the ordering system incorporated in the restaurant’s POS, important customer data such as address, phone number, and order history is stored directly into the system. This allows restaurants to launch loyalty programs and gift vouchers for their loyal customers.

Customer data also allows restaurants to better understand their customers, understand what they like and dislike, get information on frequently purchased items, and watch out for their behavior to be able to provide better service.

Fast and Standardized Food Delivery Experience

Food delivery aggregators handle multiple restaurants at the same time, which often results in them not being able to conduct order taking and delivery processes in time. More often that not, these third-party service providers also fail to maintain hygiene and sophistication the likes of which are expected by your restaurant, which could potentially tarnish the restaurant’s reputation. With an in-house ordering system, restaurants can rest assured that their customers get their delivery on time and according to the restaurant’s standards.

No service fee

Most third-party aggregators charge a large sum of commission for each placed order, which can be revenue draining for restaurants. Whether it is a flat fee or a percentage of every order being placed, aggregators commission eat into the restaurant’s revenue and can be extravagant in the long run.

By opting for an in-house ordering system, restaurants can say adios to such financial worries and boost revenues and profit.

Online ordering is here to stay, especially now that we have gone through a pandemic. This means that restaurants need to amp up their services by letting go of third-party reliability and becoming a complete system on their own. As a restaurant owner, you need to make sure that your restaurant is up to date with the latest technologies and trends and is able to serve the customers in the way they have become accustomed to. It is important to let your customers experience the convenience of modern-day technology. By going with an in-house ordering system, you maintain a consistent experience across all channels, maintain the reputation of your brand, and streamline the entire ordering and delivery process.

 

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Restaurant COVID-19

How Restaurants Fighting to Stay Alive in COVID-19

Managing a restaurant business and maintaining a prolific revenue out of it is quite a demanding task. The entire restaurant industry is made up of 70% of independent owners and operators, with an average restaurant annual revenue falling somewhere around $1 million and 4-5% operating profit. Not to mention, the need to maintain brand reputation, food quality, customer service, and ambience is a must for any restaurant to thrive. Add to that one of the worst pandemic the world has ever seen and the task of managing a restaurant becomes tenfold more challenging.

Unlike some other sectors where businessmen and entrepreneurs receive government aid in the times of an emergency, restaurant business owners have to address such concerns themselves while keeping the business afloat and the customers connected. 

The first priority for any restaurant owner in times like these has to be the safety of their staff and their customers. Nevertheless, putting appropriate safety measures in place is not enough. You also need to be able to get proactive and inventive in order to keep your restaurant up and running, especially in the current scenario of low to none dine-in business.

In this article, we will share a few tips to help you fight the pandemic and keep your restaurant business vigilant. Let’s take a look:

Take Restaurant Business Online

If you have not brought your business online already, the covid situation has probably come as a sign of times to you. Whether your restaurant premises are closed down or partially operational, with online delivery you will be able to reach all of your customers and that too in a more convenient manner. Set up an online food ordering system and delivery on your website or build an app for it and let your customers know that you are taking orders online and making home deliveries. 

Make sure to practice hygienic food preparation processes and let your customers know that your food is 100% safe. If the pandemic has taken a toll on your staff or is keeping your restaurant from working at its full potential, you can also revamp the menu and sell only the best selling items. Avoid taking orders for items that customers do not order regularly and focus on the ones that are customer favorites. 

Most importantly, inform your customers that you are up and running, can take orders online and make home deliveries. Moreover, you will also have to tell your customers about the safety measures you are taking and how every order is helping you keep the restaurant afloat. 

Make Restaurant a Safe Spot for Eating

The first and foremost thing to do in your fight against the Coronavirus is to keep your restaurant as clean as possible. All the governments around the world have issued various safety measures that restaurants need to follow in order to remain open. Make sure you are following those safety guides. 

Moreover, as additional measures, keep cleaning the surfaces that are most likely to come in contact with customers, staff, delivery persons, or other people. Provide your team with anti-bacterial gloves, masks, and pocket sanitizers. However, don’t just keep your restaurant clean, communicate the cleanliness of your restaurant to your customers as well. 

Leave a hint of disinfectant in the air, make it a habit to clean the tables and chairs every time a customer leaves, put up signage informing customers about your practices of safekeeping and sanitizing. 

If you are not able to keep up with the safety measures, however, consider closing down the premises and continue delivering online.

Equip Drivers With Proper Information

The delivery executives are an extension of your restaurant, which means you are responsible for their safety and protection from the virus. Keep your delivery executives well-informed on the pandemic and its spread. Outline delivery instructions every time a customer places an online order so the executives have the information in their mind all the time. 

Contact-less delivery is the new norm in the online delivery system. Get your delivery executives informed on how they should go on about delivering the orders without coming in contact with the customers. If possible, do a workshop on all the measures that delivery executives should take while delivering the order. 

Again, you will have to highlight the safety measures you have your delivery executives taking through your social media platforms or your website. The key is to let the customers know of whatever steps you are taking to keep the virus at bay and deliver safe and hygienic food. 

If you are doing an in-house delivery system, equip your executives with masks, gloves, and hand sanitizers among other essentials. 

Focus on Your Social Audience

Since the pandemic has most people working from home, not only is an online ordering system necessary for restaurants but so is an interactive social media platform. Moreover, with the business being down than usual, you also get some extra time to invest in your restaurant’s social media platforms and expand its reach. 

Use you social media wisely to let your customers know about how you are taking essential steps to ensure safe food delivery as well as to connect and interact with more customers. Make it a goal to reach a certain number of followers on your socials. Use high-quality photos, proper hashtags, interesting captions, and interactive posts to grow the reach of your socials. 

Once you have reached a certain number of followers, you can use your social media to promote items, inform on the measures you are taking to ward off coronavirus, let your customers know that you care about their health, and engage with customers to take their suggestions and feedback. A well-maintained social media handle will help your restaurant to rise among the peers as a more viable and safer option for eating out or ordering in.

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