Searching for the best Restaurant POS Systems?

With this free guide you'll discover how to implement a point-of-sale system in your restaurant.

We've put together a guide to help you through choosing the perfect point-of-sale system for your restaurant. Download this free guide to learn what you should be looking for and the questions you should be asking.

A few of the items in our FREE guide include:

• Defining your needs: what features are needed and what you can live without
• Ensuring you have what's needed to keep the cash flow coming in strong
• How to reward loyal customers
• Tips for getting the most out of your system

To find out more in detail, enter your information into the form and download the full version. We promise you won’t be disappointed!

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Impacts of a good POS system

How would implementing a point-of-sale system in your restaurant change the life of a chef? A server? A manager? The decision to move forward with implementing a system affects more than just the person who purchases it. There is a lot to consider when making the decision.

Front of House

When you walk into your restaurant, this is the first area your customers will notice. It will be the first impression and the area your customers will remember. This first impression experience is important, from having a friendly staff to drinks and food arriving on time. How do great restaurant point-of-sale systems assist with all of this?

Well, probably in more ways than you’ve even thought about. A restaurant POS system can give your servers the power to commit to complex orders without errors, take down special requests on the fly, and ensure everything is correct by using an iPad to view the order before sending it to the kitchen.

All of this accuracy allows your servers more time to interact with your customers. They spend less time fixing orders and repairing the experience for an order entered incorrectly, and eliminates the need for walking across the room to enter the order at a stationary terminal after it’s already been written down with pen and paper.

Questions you should ask yourself when choosing a system, based on your wait staff:

Does the system have a user-friendly interface?
Is the system easy to learn?
How many iPads might you need to run smoothly and efficiently?
How easy is it to change floor plans for the hosts?

Back of House

This is the area that is unseen to your customers but potentially the most important, like behind the scenes of a movie. Customers know a lot happens but all they see is the finished product. This is exactly how you want your restaurant to run.

Instead of waiting for servers to move back and forth to deliver orders to the chef, dealing with incorrect orders due to illegible handwriting or language barriers, with a restaurant point-of-sale system orders are easily delivered electronically to the kitchen in an instant.

Things to consider in your research of restaurant POS systems to help the back of the house:

How quickly can orders move from the table to the kitchen or bar?
Is there a way to transmit orders to a dedicated work area, such as salad prep, hot kitchen, cold kitchen, or bar?
Is there a multi-language function to eliminate language barriers among staff members?

Other Things to Consider

It's clearly important to ditch the pen and paper system and adopt cutting-edge technology within your restaurant. In your research of restaurant POS systems, the process should also include your staff as they are a vital part in the POS system actually working.

If you are looking for more information on the questions you need to ask when shopping restaurant POS systems, please fill out our form and download the full 17-page version of this guide. We promise: you, your restaurant, and your staff will all be glad you did!

Restaurant POS System by RedFynn Technologies

POS Technology: What Is It, and How Does It Work?

Restaurant point-of-sale technology has become a necessity for food and beverage operations all over the U.S. No matter what size a business is, there is a POS system tailor-made to suit its demands.

What Makes A Point-of-Sale?

Why People Love Them

What It Does For You

Keeping an eye on the bottom line is what concerns most business owners and managers. It’s true that you have to spend money to make money, but there’s a fine line where spending too much on any one thing – inventory, labor, outside services – can put you over the edge when it comes to incoming and outgoing cash flow. A restaurant POS system can help you maintain those tight margins and run a successful business.

Today’s integrated POS system can offer a restaurant many things, including all of the following:

Production of reports and helpful analytics
Tracking and managing inventory
Tracking and managing employee time
Allowing for gift and loyalty programs
Reduction of theft, waste, and inaccurate orders
Providing table reservations

Benefits of a Restaurant POS System

There are tons of reasons to employ a point-of-sale system into a restaurant of any size. Even the cost of the system itself isn't a drawback: you're basically paying in advance for future savings. Plus, you're getting unmatched peace of mind knowing that everything needed to run the business effectively is at your fingertips.

Improves Customer Experiences

There are a ton of reasons to want a POS system. However, above all else, the business is probably looking for a way to improve the overall guest experience. It is the customers, after all, who bring cash flow that keeps you in business. A great POS system can help a restaurant and its employees provide the service that guests have come to expect. From customized ordering to lightning fast service, it can improve every aspect of the food service process.

Maximum Control of Menu and Promotions

Picture it: you go to a certain restaurant because they are offering a special on your favorite dish, only to find out that you’re too late. The promotion already ended, although you only heard about it days before. You’ve fallen victim – not to some sort of scheme – but of poor advertising and promotional strategies.

This and many other situations can be avoided when a restaurant has a real-time POS system that allows the staff to add or remove items as soon as they go on promotion. The pricing of these items and any additional pricing considerations such as "buy one, get one free" or "happy hour discounts" can be automatically set, making menu control easier than ever. It’s even more important to have this control when the same owner or manager is managing more than one location and needs to keep the menu and pricing consistent.

What It Does For You

Today’s integrated POS system can offer a restaurant many things, including all of the following:

Production of reports and helpful analytics
Tracking and managing inventory
Tracking and managing employee time
Allowing for gift and loyalty programs
Reduction of theft, waste, and inaccurate orders
Providing table reservations

Higher Quality & More Consistent Food

Once a restaurant POS system is in place, it will integrate orders and track the kitchen’s overall performance. A restaurant will be able to do these tasks on the spot, so everyone in the restaurant from the house staff to the kitchen has up-to-the-minute information.

The right system can help keep food prep areas moving and will ensure that every recipe is prepared the same way every time utilizing graphics projected on convenient overhead monitors.

Save Money & Create Cash Flow

It’s a well-known fact that a restaurant POS system can make things run more smoothly, but many people don’t make the connection that a more organized system can also save a lot of money. The reporting and analyzing features of the software will keep the kitchen from wasting food, as well as preventing too many staff members from being on hand. When the right members of a restaurant’s staff have access to these reports and know how to use the information correctly, the possibilities are endless.

Maximize Revenue with Loyalty Programs

Loyalty and reward programs will increase your business among customers that are semi-regulars. It will also target potential customers who are looking for their next favorite place. More than half of consumers in the United States utilize at least one loyalty program, and there is a strong tendency toward ones that are easy to use and offer something that the clients really want. The best way to make a stellar loyalty program is to analyze what customers are buying anyway, and then work it into the loyalty or reward program.

Point-of-Sale Systems: A History

The Earliest POS Technology

Basic cash registers constituted the true ‘first restaurant POS systems.’ These mechanical units were employee driven and incredibly simple. The invention of the electronic cash register in 1970 changed the game completely.

Wait staff could send orders to the kitchen quickly and consistently. Orders were wrong less often, and customers could clearly read their receipts to ensure that they were charged for the correct items. Owners also now had the ability to look back at receipts when there were inaccuracies at the end of shifts and tell how much money should be left in the drawer.

However credit card transactions still had to be done over the phone or carbon copied and run at a later time. Both of these methods slowed down service. The 1980s saw the rise of the internet, and with it everything changed. Transactions moved faster and were getting ever-closer to real time. Arguably the most popular improvement was that credit card transactions could be done through the POS system. Managers and owners could now see their overall sales with a breakdown of cash versus credit transactions.

In 1986, the industry saw the first touch screen POS technology for restaurants. Improvements continued for the next several years, with features that were hoped would be attractive and useful for clientele.

By 1992, the market for internet-based software capable of automating an entire restaurant seamlessly was in high demand. Restaurant owners were seeing what an effective POS system could do for their restaurants.

POS Features Through The Years

Since those early days, much about the restaurant business has changed. POS systems developed and became more specialized, and yet what seems today like a simple task was groundbreaking when restaurant POS systems first emerged.

For example, the ability to split the check among separate parties at the same table was an amazing feature that made life easier for everyone. Wait staff could make everyone at the table happy, and no one had to worry about making change or IOU’s.

Giving customers the ability to customize their meals was a much simpler process as well. It was no longer necessary for the staff to remember how much each addition cost, and restaurants suffered less loss because customers were being charged the same amount for the same items each time. This also provided consistency and accuracy.

Finally, restaurant owners loved the loyalty card programs that POS systems could offer them. Not only did customers benefit from them, but the restaurant could also keep up with how often the customers visited and what they ordered.

The Future of POS Systems

Up to this point, POS systems have done nothing but improve leaps and bounds from where they started. POS technology isn’t just used at the end of the customers’ shopping or dining experience anymore. Instead, it is integrated into every part of their visit, from the moment they arrive until they check out.

In the future, it’s expected that restaurant POS technology will undergo changes that are just as significant as past ones.

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Moving towards Cloud-Based Technology

Not long ago, all restaurant POS systems were managed and maintained on-site. This required more investment up front by the restaurant owner for items like large, expensive servers. In addition, each individual restaurant had to maintain their own system, updating, upgrading and securing the system perpetually. This upkeep was also costly because practically no one had an on-premises expert, so expensive tech support was also needed on an ongoing basis.

Recently, cloud-based technology is readily taking over the market. A striking distinction of cloud-based POS systems is that they are mobile-enabled, making it possible for restaurant owners and managers to check in on the business no matter where they are. It also gives the wait staff freedom to move around the dining floor without being chained to a stationary terminal for order entry.

In addition to mobility, cloud-based technology is the future of restaurant POS systems for several other reasons.

Instantaneous Updates

Lower Expense

Better Security

Connect With Your Customers

Of all the benefits of modern, cloud-based POS systems, possibly the most attractive is the ability of restaurants to connect with their customers as never before. In the future, even the most casual restaurants will be able to determine who their regulars are, what those people are ordering most often, how much they are spending on each visit, where they live, and the frequency with which they visit.

These facts allow restaurants to tailor their menu and service to these patrons, developing brand loyalty. It also benefits the customers since they don’t have to remember to bring gift cards or even pull out their debit card to pay for their meal. Comprehensive restaurant POS systems are getting smarter and more secure every day.

Features restaurant owners value

It’s not difficult to find just any POS system for a restaurant of any size or type. Now that so many products are on the market, the real job is sorting through them to find the one that will best benefit your specific business. You have the luxury of being picky with every POS company fighting to be the best.

Here are a few of the traits that your fellow restaurant owners consider necessary these days.

Cloud-Based Technology

Data Security

Analytics

Mobility

Loyalty

Payment Option Flexibility

Engagement

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POS Pricing & Average Costs

A POS cost all depends on the features needed and the budget. Once those two things have been decided, then it will be possible for each owner to begin shopping.

There’s more to consider than just the price of the equipment or the monthly fees. What license fees will be needed? Are there additional fees for technical support after setup? Asking these questions can make a big difference in advertised cost versus actual cost.

Here is a basic breakdown for the two kinds of restaurant POS systems.

On-site (or locally-installed) Software

Cloud-Based Systems

With all the products available, it’s entirely possible to find one that doesn’t ask for a long-term contract and doesn’t charge cancellation fees. When you have this kind of flexibility, you can really focus on what’s best for your business rather than the fine print of your contract agreement.

Searching for the best Restaurant POS Systems?

With this free guide you'll discover how to implement a point-of-sale system in your restaurant.

Enter your information & download the full guide FOR FREE!

Impacts of a good POS system

POS Technology: What Is It, and How Does It Work?

Benefits of a Restaurant POS System

Point-of-Sale Systems: A History

Enter your information & download the full guide FOR FREE!

Moving towards Cloud-Based Technology

Features restaurant owners value

Enter your information & download the full guide FOR FREE!

POS Pricing & Average Costs

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