POS Systems - Earning More Than What You Expected! - Part I
For the longest time, most restaurant owners thought of their POS system as a fancy cash register. Since technology has become more advance and slowly becoming a necessity in the retail systems, many innovations have become standard features within the POS industry.
1. Wireless Hand Held Devices. Wireless hand held devices has become one of the brilliant restaurant handheld POS equipment that can serve your customers faster and with improved accuracy. Servers can present your daily specials to your customers on the spot, process credit cards while walking to the next table, send a bread request for table 37 to the kitchen, and add walk-ins to the waiting list - right from the handheld device. Your servers can spend more time interacting with more customers keeping them happy and keeping them coming back.
2. The “Sticky” Paper Printer. Another one of the newest and most brilliant innovations is the “sticky” paper printers. These printers use paper similar to a Post-It that will allow you to reposition the receipt over and over again. The paper can be printed to whatever length is needed, then stuck to almost any surface where it will remain until you remove and/or plan to stick it elsewhere. With these printers, the paper can stay with the order through the entire order process. The new paper is also liner-free so no need to manage non-recyclable waste and can be easily removed and restuck to a different surface - again and again, whenever you want. It can be used for all orders, exceptions, specials, as bag tags or any combination.
3. Digital Menu Board/Signage. Your POS system can be used to deliver media rich content, using video, audio and pictures. Some of the POS packages have fully integrated and seamless digital menu board software that allow you to create content using the same database. Menu titles, pages, menu items, and prices can all be interlaced with high-quality multimedia to give your restaurant menu board a dramatic, interactive display without having to purchase an additional system.
With digital menu boards, content is sent to the displays from the store database in real-time, so the menu board continually updates throughout the day with menu changes, scheduled price changes, daily specials and so on.
4. Self-Service Kiosk. Have you thought about a customer self service kiosk for your restaurant? Many of our clients have. There are POS packages out there that allow adding a kiosk with no separate software required. With this method, adding a Kiosk to your restaurant has never been so easy. Most kiosk software is designed to cut down on labor costs and speed up the ordering process, enabling a whole new level of profitability. The Kiosk will pull menu items directly from your menu database on the POS terminal, providing a seamless integration into your POS system. Most packages can enhance the customer’s user experience even more, using sound and motion graphics, to engage your customer.
5. Cell Phone Paging. Some restaurants are opting to take a more modern approach by paging customers’ personal cell phones. The restaurant host or hostess simply takes the guest’s cell phone number and enters it into the cell phone paging system keypad. When the table is ready, the paging system calls the cell phone with an automated voice message to notify the guest that he or she may now approach the host or hostess to be seated. This can be a convenient way for guests who want to roam farther than conventional pagers will allow and there is no fear of the customer walking away with your pager.
This small list is just the appetizer when it comes to restaurant technology. More to come in the following months…
The author Michael Tash is VP of Customer Relations of POS-for-Restaurants.com. With over 20 years of restaurant experience, POS-for-Restaurants.com helps you use your technology to be more efficient and more profitable.
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