4 ways a POS system can help your cafe grow

Can you imagine running a business in the modern world without using technology? No, nor us. Of course, not all the responsibility should be borne by programs. Their main task is to make business owners’ lives so much easier by automating processes that used to take up too much precious time.

There are plenty of management software systems that are designed specifically for different industries and the restaurant business is no exception.

After all, a good POS system covers a lot of processes: selling a service or product, managing staff, keeping track of inventory, and even helping to build customer loyalty. Management software implementation not only improves the efficiency and profitability of a business, but also helps save time to spend on taking your restaurant, cafe or bar to the next level.

It’s best to find a system that will meet your specific needs. But there are also must-have features, for example, restaurant management software should be intuitive and easy to use. When choosing a POS system, make sure that the one you choose can be configured and integrated with third-party technical sources of business management. This will help you develop and improve your system according to your requirements.

As you are reading this article we assume that you appreciate the business you own and the customers you serve. Opening or buying a restaurant business is a big step, and hopefully you understand that success and prosperity mostly depend on you. Keeping your customers constantly satisfied takes a lot of effort, so here are five POS system advantages that will help your restaurant business grow.

Stock management

The inventory check is one of the most effective yet most time-consuming processes for both employees and managers. We can talk and talk about why it’s important to do inventory in the restaurant and what benefits it brings. The entire restaurant and its equipment should be strictly controlled. No one person can perform this function better than a restaurant management system. It helps not only to monitor the inventory and stock balance, but also to monitor the movements of the products and ingredients in each storage unit in real time. Installing a POS system will help calculate shrinkage and eliminate attempts at theft.

Often, the cappuccino recipe indicates a larger measure of milk than actually goes into the guest’s cup (the reason is that the barista has to pour a larger measure of milk into the pitcher to prepare the perfect froth, but with the sizes of cups varying, the pitcher often retains some of that measure). Thus, when making an inventory for a coffee shop, there are often discrepancies in the indicators for milk and it is not always possible to discover what caused them.

Built-in reports

When we talk about making the restaurant management process much easier for business owners, built-in reports mean a lot. Choose the POS system that will automatically generate reports based on the data received. It’s perfect when the program analyzes all the order information and shows you ready-made, detailed graphs and reports. So, you can see which products are selling better, which waiters work more productively and which day of the week brings you a higher profit. When you have access to real-time data, you can quickly respond to a problem, analyze it, and thus improve performance.

Menu management

Nobody wants to waste time on rewriting the menu multiple times or searching for a specific dish, especially if you have a long menu. It’s better to rely on the POS system. Everything you need to know about ingredients (% of processing losses, unit, weight, etc.) and dishes (price, total weight, markup, etc.) is stored in the cloud management system so you can view them right when you need to.

Also, waiters should be able to navigate the menu as fast as possible, and it’s much easier to do this when all drinks, dishes, and products are divided into categories with pictures and highlighted with different colors. It’s in your interest: the easier it is to find the menu item, the less time the waiter will spend on each service.

Going back to the previous point, where we talked about the importance of built-in reports, restaurateurs need to know the strengths and weaknesses of their menu. You need to understand that not all your positions are equally profitable. ABC analysis helps deal with this. It gives numerical figures for the number of sales, revenue, and profit of each dish. If you have this report in your management software, it will significantly simplify your life.

Different payment methods

When large companies come to your restaurant to enjoy an agreeable time together, most likely they will ask you to split the bill so that there is no confusion over who owes whom. Some POS systems don’t have this feature and to avoid ruining a pleasant customer experience, the waiter would have to delete the order and add the same menu items all over again. This can cause discomfort for both restaurant staff and customers.

There are also cases when guests want to pay the bill, but, for example, a bar cannot accept a credit card or any other type of payment card. It’s rather a rare case, but still worth being prepared for. Your POS system has to give the customer the opportunity to pay for his order in absolutely any way: cash, gift card (if you have a loyalty system), credit and debit card (Mastercard, Visa, or any other type of payment card).

This is just a short list of the main things that can help you improve your business and take control over all the processes in the restaurant. And one more thing, it’s better to install a POS system right from the very beginning so you won’t miss anything that might affect your future success.