With the increasing competition in restaurants for good food, services, consumer ease, low cost, high-technology, a single integrated solution plays an important role in managing the restaurant.  It improves sales, operations, marketing and everything that leads to growth and customer satisfaction with ease. This is where smart restaurant POS (Point of Sale) software comes into the picture.

Restaurant POS software is much more than just a billing system and rather act like a complete restaurant management system. It provides an end-to-end solution for all your restaurant operations. Be it inventory, kitchen, billing and customer management to the growth of your business, the POS system can automate and optimize all processes.

A Restaurant POS helps you controlling Day-To-Day Operations

Cloud-based Restaurant POS software is your one-stop solution for all your restaurant management operations. Letting you take care of your front and backend operations seamlessly and effortlessly.

Take a quick look at 7 Reasons which Restaurant Software Important

Here is a list of things you can effortlessly simplify at your restaurant by using integrated POS software.

Order Taking

Order taking is one of the most crucial aspects of a restaurant especially when it comes to fine-dine restaurants. Fast and efficient orders taking process enables you to improve on your table turnaround time. It also makes the ordering easier for stewards, and improvise customer service with flawless order taking via app. Order taking process depends on the type of restaurant. For example; In QSR order taking is done at Cash counter while in a fine-dine restaurant, waiters or stewards take orders from the table.

Order Taking App: A mini digital version of the menu card enables stewards to take orders through the app and push KOT print out directly in the kitchen which also reflects in POS. Employees can also view popular items and customer ordering history on this App, and upsell the items based on this information.

Tablet Ordering: This has replaced the traditional hard copy menus with tablets enabling customers to place their orders themselves. Similar features like App, it is equipped with full menu display along with popular selling items for upselling. Customer can have hands-on experience in ordering foods and customize their orders and add remarks.

 Billing

Split Billing: Nowadays with the increase in socializing over weekends and evenings, customers don’t want one person in the group to pay for the entire meal. Hence, a smart restaurant POS generates split bills.

Online Payments: With the increased usage of mobile and virtual wallets like Google Pay, Amazon Pay, Paytm, phone, etc. For restaurants, it can be very quick and easier to receive the exact amount instead of cash transactions. With the smart restaurant POS, bill generation and payment can be seamless via mobile phones and speed up the bill settlement process. A POS system will help you easily accept the online payments and help you speed up the billing process.

Table Reservations

Table reservations are more common in fine-dine restaurants. Nowadays it is a trend in casual dining restaurants as well which helps restaurateurs to prepare themselves for upcoming crowd, inventory and the guest experience.

Using a POS system in your restaurants can help reserve a table seamlessly. It is also equipped to show the available seats and forecast the customer footfall during rush hours. Table reservations are also integrated with your website, facebook, etc for easy access to all. Table reservation system also allows your customers to pre-order their food to provide swift service to the customers once they are seated.

Accepting Online Orders

A smart restaurant POS helps you in accepting the online orders without any hassles and also enables you to optimize your delivery process.

Accepting Orders from Online Food Aggregators: Online food aggregators such as Swiggy, Zomato, Foodpanda, and Ubereats are the key players in Food Tech Revolution leading restaurants with a massive influx of orders through these platforms. Nowadays all restaurants receive orders from multiple platforms, a smart restaurant POS allows you to accept orders from all of such food ordering channels, allowing you to manage them seamlessly.

Accepting Orders from Your Website or Mobile App: Having your own website or mobile app enables your customers to order food online. The website or mobile app can be customized and include the full menu display. It is also integrated with your restaurant CRM, allowing you to collect valuable details such as their contact information, ordering history and behavior.

This also helps you in running smart restaurant marketing campaigns.

Food Delivery

If you are dissatisfied with the delivery services of the online food aggregators, you can also choose to deliver the food by yourself with the help of an integrated Delivery App. You can easily assign orders and track their location and the time taken to deliver the food.

Speeding Order Preparation Process

To avoid delay during rush hours, restaurant POS software equipped with the Kitchen Display System improves kitchen efficiency. It is a digital KOT system. This means as soon as the order is placed into the POS, it is instantly reflected in the Kitchen Display System in the kitchen including customization of the order.

The KDS is equipped to reflect the status of the order and the time taken to prepare the item.

Inventory Management in Restaurant POS

Inventory management is of great significance and it is best to automate the operations with the help of a POS integrated inventory management system.

Managing your inventory through your POS software will even give you insights into your customer behavior, enabling you to streamline other restaurant management process.

 (i) Managing the Stock

Based on daily stock consumption, the integrated inventory management system gives you the Stock-in and Stock-out report. The POS also enables you to Re-order the stock item, sends you real-time alerts when it is about to be over.

(ii) Food Costing

The smart restaurant POS software generates comprehensive food cost reports comparing your spending v/s actual cost of food.

(iii) Menu Forecasting

Based on your sales trend, this feature forecasts the exact stock requirements for a period of time. It also gives you the sales performance of individual menu items whether it is liked, disliked, less ordered by the customers. You can utilize this information to introduce changes in the menu item, or consider removing it completely.

(iv) Yield Management

Tracking the Yield of the stock items is essential as it will help you analyze the exact quantity of the raw ingredient consumed in preparing a particular menu item. This way, you only order for the stock based on the actual requirement and prevent any wastage.

Customer Relationship Management

Your restaurant CRM is your treasure box of useful data information to engage with your customers, building relationship, and also gain insights to improve your service.

(i) Gathering Customer Details

In order to enhance your customer experience, smart Customer Relationship Management begins by gathering their details. From their name, email, and phone number, the ordering history, patterns of their orders, frequency of their orders. This data helps you run Marketing campaigns and get consumer insights. You can use these insights to bring about changes in your menu or service to cater to the customer demands.

(ii) Central CRM

For those who have restaurant chains, a cloud-based restaurant POS enables you to store all information online through a central CRM. Upselling becomes easier as the servers can view the ordering history and behavior of the guests in the restaurant POS CRM and recommend items accordingly.

Restaurant Marketing

Your restaurant needs much more than simply posting on social media and distributing flyers and pamphlets. Of course, these are great for brand presence, however, running smart campaigns will retain existing customers. It is 6-8 times easier to retain an existing customer than to attract a new one.

(i) Custom SMS and Email Campaigns

Based on customer history and behavior you can easily target and customize your SMS and email campaigns.

(ii) Loyalty Programs

Loyalty Programs are extremely crucial for restaurants and they need to be backed with data from restaurant POS and CRM. Depending on your restaurant type, you can run Visit-based or Point-based Loyalty Programs that are easy to redeem for your customers.

The most effective way of running Loyalty Programs is when it is based on consumer behavior. Sending SMS alerts for offers to redeem, complimentary items on their next visit helps you retain your customers.

(iii) Outlet Level Marketing

If you have restaurant chains, then you can customize your campaigns on each outlet. A POS integrated Marketing Module fetches the performance of individual outlets and enables you to run SMS and email campaigns for the customers of that specific outlet.

(iv) Customer Feedback Management

Nowadays, there are many Feedback Apps through which you can create custom questions based on the order placed by the customer. This increases your chances of customer response and additional valuable insights about the service.

Managing Multiple Outlets

With expanding businesses, managing multiple outlets and brands becomes challenging. A robust and fully integrated restaurant POS system enables you to control and manage multiple outlets.

(i) Enterprise Control Over All Outlets and Brands

A cloud-based restaurant POS with comprehensive Enterprise solution enables a hassle-free functioning of large restaurant chains from one point. Such Enterprise Module solution provides you real-time performance updates. You may also share the access to your team with limited access of your choice like ordering stock, daily-sales, billing, etc.

 (ii) Base Kitchen Management in Restaurant POS

Managing the supply of stock across outlets is a critical task which can be automated with the help of your restaurant POS. This way it also reports real-time stock consumption as well as the requirement of each outlet.

Operations Management in Restaurant POS

In any business, reporting and analytics are important. Similarly, in order to boost revenue and scale business, a comprehensive restaurant POS gives you in-depth insights about your business.

Restaurant POS has evolved as a comprehensive restaurant management platform which provides an end-to-end solution. Having such an integrated solution will help your restaurant optimally utilize the data for efficient operations and for the growth of the business.