Restaurant Software

Running a successful restaurant? Let’s go back to the basics: good location, good food, good service. These days, there’s another important consideration added: a reliable software running your POS systems.

Though the harware are more visible, your POS software is the the core of your POS systems. Doing a careful evaluation of restaurant POS software is key to getting a system that will greatly satisfy your customers and employees.

Looking for the right restaurant software
First of all, it’s important to know what exactly you need the software to do. Any reasonable restaurant software is able to handle checks per customer or per table, track orders per server, move diners from the bar to a table, manage waiting and reservation lists, and many more.

Once you’ve found that restaurant software that can meet your needs, give it a test drive to learn how to use it. While there will always be a learning curve for your staff when you adopt a new POS system, having a restaurant software that’s easy to use can reduce the learning curve to manageable levels.

You may learn more about ease of use by having one or two of your servers involved in the evaluation. They’ll be able to try out the kinds of inputs and changes to the system that can cause problems with some software.

• Security – you may need to create accounts for each employee for safety reasons. You should be able to limit access to sensitive data and functions (such as comping meals) to managers, for as long as you desire.
• Flexibility – your servers should be able to control checks to match the whims of your patrons: easily splitting checks and tracking special orders, for example.
• Reporting – this is one of the best features of POS software it can create detailed report which is a great advantage for restaurant owners. Make sure the software you choose lets you get detailed information either per check, per server, or overall, ranging from daily to annually.
• Multiple location support – if applicable, make sure the system is capable of tracking and reporting on multiple locations, including local differences in staffing and pricing.

What to look for in a hardware
Of course you’ll need to invest in restaurant POS hardware as well: computers to run the restaurant software on, touch-screen displays for servers to enter order, and printers to produce order slips for the kitchen. The software will use will dictate any special hardware requirements – the biggest hardware decision you’re going to to make is how many stations you need.

Now, are you willing to start your business right? Find out more at POS-For-Restaurants.com and receive free unbiased quotes from the Restaurant POS professionals serving your area.

The author of this article is the VP of Customer Relations at POS-For-Restaurants with over 20 years of experience meeting the automation needs of many restaurants in the U.S.

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Still relying on that old-fashioned cash registers and hand-written notes handed down to you by your father and his father before him? You do no longer need those manual business systems, because today is a different world! New technologies have been develop for POS Systems to help every retail business grow bigger. So say goodbye to your tiring, time-consuming manual business system and say hello to the new POS systems that will surely boost your profit and make your customers happier than before.

As any restaurant owner would do, ensuring the safety of your profit is a tough task. You can easily loose money from simple customer’s change mistakes and from an abusive employee of yours that keeps helping themselves to a few extra dollars or by giving away free meals!

If these has happened to you before, well don’t let it happen again! Now would be the right time to have a POS for your business. With the features a POS can offer your business, you can prevent these issues from happening and may even be able to completely eliminate them:

• Long lines which prevent you from working with as many customers as possible
• Frequent customer complaints
• Limited sales staff resources
• Overstocking of poor performing items
• Shrinkage (lost or stolen inventory that eats into your profit margins)
• Spending too much time going over the books
• Financial inaccuracies (overbilling, underbilling, thin profit margins)
• Poor data organization

For as long as money is involved, might as well invest on quality POS systems can improve your business’ efficiencies as well as take good care of your customers. So if you buy a poor, cheap POS system you risk flushing money down the drain because of its poor features and easy-to-break components.

A good and reliable POS vendor can tailor the appropriate POS solution for your needs, which will allow you to enhance your business’ performance and be able to serve your customers much better. So requesting for a free POS system quote would be a great idea, since expert POS vendors will provide you exactly what you need, complete with the features that will make your business boost its sales, at an affordable cost.

Questions to consider

When you request for a free POS system quote, below are some of the pointers you might want to consider asking to a POS vendor. The main key to this service is that when you submit your details, it will be matched to the most qualified POS sellers serving your area. And only they will be able to receive your details where they’ll tailor the proper POS solution for your business and they send you their offers. Below are some of the questions you might consider asking:

• Is the software user-friendly? Will I be able to make changes on my own?
• Is POS software compatible with my current business management applications?
• Can I have a try out of the POS system before buying it?
• Do I need more than one terminal? What about POS cash registers?
• Can I use the same POS for other marketing tools such as gift card systems?
• How reliable are the reporting features?
• Will I be able to point out where my profit losses are coming from?
• Can I get set up immediately?
• Does it require extensive staff training?
• What level of customer support can I expect?
• Is loaner equipment available if repairs can’t be made on-site?
• Are there all-in-one solutions available or do I have to buy everything ala carte?

More information and an online resource

Go to POS-For-Restaurants.com

The author of this article is the Vice-President of Customer Relations at POS-For-estaurants.com with over 20 years of experience serving the automation needs of restaurants of all types throughout the U.S.

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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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The basic POS systems you may see on a typical retail establishment consists of a cash register with or without a built in cash drawer, monitor, receipt printers, and an input device. It can also be a touch screen monitors, programmable keyboards, or scanners and handheld devices for inputting data into the POS system.

Touch Screens: Many restaurants find touch screen monitors as more intuitive to use than keyboards, as it can reduce mistypes and can easily cancel orders within a second, and because it provides flexible user interfaces and programming. Aside from that, touch screens are easier to position in any counter and even uses less electricity, although, they can be more prone to breakdowns.

Handheld devices: Restaurant POS equipment like PDAs, which are commonly wireless devices that transmits data back to its base station and into the POS system. You can use the newer version, which is the write-on handhelds that allows you to write information such as the orders and sends them directly to the kitchen! This type of handheld device is perfect when up-selling desserts and drinks to customers either by roaming on tables or by approaching customers in line.

Keyboards: Most grocery stores prefer to use this type of POS systems, since they can program individual keys for specific item codes and prices. A standard keyboard consists of 101-key, which can be seen with any computer. Others are small and flat, which are common in fast food chains. POS keyboards often has a built-in magnetic stripe readers for processing credit cards.

Scanners: This useful piece of electronic device that reads bar codes, convert it and inputs its details to a POS system computer. This device speeds up transactions and provide accurate data on products or services being purchased by a customer. Scanners connects through Y-connectors called wedges that make them function as an extension of the keyboard.

Volume of customers: When it comes to serving different volumes of customers, using this POS scanners can be very useful. If the counter line has several customers, your staff can easily use a CCD scanner or entry-level laser scanner. If the line is loaded with customers, then an  autosensing laser scanners would be better. This type of scanner  turns on when an item is placed in front of it, scans its code, and then turn off again. But if the counter line is overflowing with customers, then you’re staff could really use the help of an omnidirectional scanner, using its 15 or 20 lasers simultaneously, it can scan a bar code from any angle!

Consider Additional Restaurant

Cash drawers: Where you store cash, checks, gift certificates, and other imporatant things. When looking to buy for a POS cash register, look for sturdy construction of at least 18-gauge steel. And since the usable life of a cash drawer is measured, make sure you can replace rollers, bearings, and other parts, because most cash drawers opens when a signal is released from the receipt printer.

POS printers: An addition to your restaurant POS system is a printer, every retail business needs one to complete a sales transaction. POS printers are used for printing customer receipts and create credit card slips. There are two types of POS printers, the dot matrix printer and the thermal printer. The dot matrix printer uses ribbons and regular paper to print. Thermal printers are slightly expensive compared to dot matrix printers because they are faster and quieter when printing, and they have less moving parts which makes them more realiable.

Customer displays: A customer display or pole display lets your customers view the price of the item they’re about to purchase, and can sometimes be used to support advertising. You also have to make sure that your customer display is of the right height and shape to fit in to your counter table, as well as it’s compatibility with your POS software.

Check readers: Advisable for restaurants, fast food chains, hotels, casinos, and convenient stores. The check reader prevents fraud by verifying essential account information. By this, you are assure that every check in your cash drawer is authentic.

Magnetic stripe readers: A simple piece of POS hardware that is used to read credit cards. For added convenience, look for POS keyboards and touch screens that has a built-in magnetic strip reader, so you don’t have to buy a separate one.

Fingerprint ID readers: Mostly this type of hardware is used for employee login. But it is very helpful to limit which staff can access a POS terminal and prevent other staff from logging in for somebody as a favor.

Keep in mind when purchasing a restaurant POS system, hardawre or software, you have to make sure that you review their details first. No matter how expensive or cheap a POS equipment is, consider the environment where you’re going to use it. Regular cleaning keeps your keyboards and touch screens in top shape, vacuuming dust and lubing your receipt printer can extend its life and maintaining an over all clean workstation can help protect your POS terminal from dust and spills. You can always request for a FREE POS system quote online where local suppliers will provide you competitive price lists on any type of POS terminal your business needs.

For more information on restaurant POS systems or to have a local POS professional serving the restaurant industry in your location see more information at POS-For-Restaurants.com.

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For such a long time, most restaurant owners thought of their POS system as a fancy cash register. With technology moving forward at such a quick pace, many innovations have become standard features within the POS industry. Below are more tips that can help your business increase its sales:

1. Staff Scheduling. Many restaurant POS packages includes the feature “staff scheduling”. You can expect to increase efficiency and dramatically reduce overall labor costs by controlling clock-ins and clock-outs, utilizing forecasting tools and control staffing levels. Integrated features allow for easy schedule access, unlimited shifts and multiple job positions for each employee. You are also able to tie in any number of security functions to a job position. In addition, some of the packages allow you to post schedules to a website and even automatically email the schedule out to your staff. Keep your labor costs in check and increase employee performance by efficiently and effectively managing your time & attendance information.

2. Software Upgrade Assurance (SUA). SUA is a software maintenance program that gives you a distinct advantage when you purchase a POS system. You are able to help stretch your investment and prolong the usable life of your restaurant point of sale system. Customers who are on an SUA plan will always have the most current version of their POS software. This basically keeps their POS system new. Every time you receive a software upgrade it is as though they just bought the latest and most current POS system available with the newest, most up to date features for your restaurant. The most current feature set ensures that you have the best possible ROI by allowing you to take full advantage of the power the POS software offers.

One other advantage of having a SUA is that no additional software purchase is required for upgrading or replacing a hardware. When hardware needs to be replaced there is a drastically reduced cost to upgrade.

These programs typically works on a yearly small fee to get their benfits. Most customers agree that they receive huge benefits that help reap the full return on their POS investment.

3. Proper Restaurant Tip Handling. Some of the POS software products has a builtin tip tracking feature in their time in attendance module. Once a staff is set as a tipped employee, your POS system will require a tip declation before clocking out. Servers and waiters who ring sales will have their total sales tracked. Tips collected through credit card sales are tracked and shown on the server closeout report. Prior to clock out, server/waiter will be shown their total sales for the day, collected charge tips and then will be asked to declare their cash tips. This functionality will help you enforce tip regulations and manage the tracking declared tips, charge tips and hours worked for every tipped employee.

4. Frequent Diner & Customer Loyalty Programs. As the business owner you would like your restaurant POS system to provide accurate information on your customer’s number and frequency of visits, buying habits, entice repeat visits and purchases using reward programs. You are able to do all this while managing the programs and preventing “sweet hearting” by employees. Prevent retail loss at all cost! Sweet hearting happens when an employee promises a deal to a customer so that he/she can close a sale.

Some of the restaurant POS packages come standard with a frequent diner or customer loyalty package that eases things within your business. By accuratly tracking down your guests and their buying habits, you can prevent retail loss. Establish a secure database of guest’s information with an account number. This number can be their phone number or any number system you desire. However, the most popular and most secure method is by using magnetic cards with your logo on them. These cards may act as a constant reminder of your restaurant by having your logo in their wallet or purse. The software will secure the reward programs you put in place to prevent your server or waiter from giving away food. Rewards are given only when earned through purchases, frequent visits or for items on your menu that you wish to highlight. Establishing reward programs takes your employees out of the game and puts you in total control of everything.

As you can see, there are so many ways to run your restaurant more efficiently by using restaurant technology. Back to basics next month..

Michael Cummings is Vice President of Customer Relations at 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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Imagine wasting tons of hours of work – or imagine losing your restaurant menu database, employee records, financial records, and all of the data your restaurant has ever produced or compiled.

What if a major disaster hits your restaurant destroying all your files? Or if a virus wiped out your server… do you have an emergency recovery plan in place that you can immediately enforce to save your files? How quickly do you think you could recover, if at all?

A lot of restaurant owners tend to ignore or fail to notice about taking steps to secure their company’s network from these types of catastrophes until disaster strikes. By then it’s too late and the damage is already severe.

After working with very many restaurants in the Mid-Atlantic area, we found that six out of ten businesses will experience some type of major network or technology disaster that will end up costing them between $2,000 to $20,000 in repairs and restoration costs on average. That doesn’t even include lost productivity, sales, and lost customers due to their down POS systems or network.

I find most restaurant owners doesn’t realiaze the importance of regular preventative maintenance and disaster recovery planning because they are already occupied with more immediate day to day fires which demands more of their attention. If the POS system and network works properly today, it goes to the bottom of the pile of things to worry about. In most cases, no one is watching to make sure the back ups are working, the virus protection is up-to-date, or that the network is in good shape.

Below Are The 4 Most Important Things You Should Do To Be Sure Your Company Is Protected From All Types Of Disasters:

While it is impossible to plan for every potential computer disaster or emergency, there are a few easy and cheaper ways you can do instead that will help you prevent the vast majority of computer disasters you could experience.

Step#1: Be Sure You Are Backing Up Your System

It just amazes me how many businesses never back up their computer network. Imagine this: you write the most important piece of formula you could ever write on a chalk board and I come along and erase it. How will you be able to get it back? No way! Unless you have memorized it, or if YOU STORE A COPY OF IT, you can’t recover the data. It’s long gone. That is why it is very important to create a back up for your network. There are numerous things that can cause you to lose data files. If the information on the disk is important to you, make sure you have more than one copy of it.

Step #2: Perform A Complete Data Restore Making Sure Your Backups Works Properly

This is another big mistake I see. A lot of restaurant owners sets up a backup system, but then never care to check to make sure it’s working properly. It’s not uncommon for a system to APPEAR to be backing up when in reality, it isn’t. We have seen companies pay out huge amount of money to regain data they THOUGHT they’ve backed up? Don’t let this happen to you.

Step #3: Keep A Back Up Somwhere Other Than Your Office

What happens if a fire or flood destroys your server AND the backup tapes or drive? What happens if your restaurant had a break in and they take EVERYTHING? Keeping an off-site back up is simply a smart way to make sure you have multiple copies, so you’d never loose your important files ever.

Step #4: Make Sure You Install and Regularly Update Your Antivirus Software

You would have to be living under a rock to not know how extremely damaging a virus can do to your network. With virus attacks coming from spammers, downloaded data, web sites, and even e-mails from friends, you cannot afford to not be protected.

Not only can a virus destroy your office files and bring down your network, but it can hurt your reputation. If you or one of your employees accidentally spreads a virus to a customer, or if the virus has penetrated your e-mail address book, you’re going to make a lot of people very angry and disappointed.

The author Michael Tash is the Vice President of Customer Relations at POS-For-Restaurants. With over 20 years of restaurant experience, POS-For-Restaurants helps you use your technology to be more efficient and more profitable.

POS-For-Restaurants.com is your online source of information about restaurant POS system hardware, software and support.

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Are you in the process of looking at a new computer system? Regardless of whether you are looking at a system for your office or restaurant, there are a couple of things you should keep in mind when installing systems that will help run your operations and store all of your critical data.

1. Network cabling. Most systems are computer-based, designed to run on Microsoft Windows technology. This means that the workstations and peripherals most likely will communicate over standard Ethernet networking. Although wireless communications have been the talk of the town these days, the preferred method is to “hardwire” as many of the stations as possible. Some vendors include this service in their bid; while others specify that cabling must be arranged with a third-party vendor.

Inspite of who does the cabling, it will need to be completed and tested before installation of the equipment. Each piece of equipment will require a cable drop. A drop is considered the cable connecting from your remote printer or PC back to the networking source such as a patch panel in the mechanical room or office.

For POS systems, the restaurant should be wired with CAT 5 or 6 network cabling that connects every conceivable POS workstation, remote printer or KDS, office computer, hostess station, delivery order desks, cashier stations and network server to a “home run” area such as a central patch panel, preferably located in your telephone or electrical room or closet. Cabling routes need to ensure that cables are at least 24 inches from fluorescent fixtures, neon transformers and electrical motors, as these devices can sometimes interfere with communication.

2. Electrical. Install dedicated and isolated circuits that all of your POS, computers, network devices such as hubs and routers, and phone systems can share. No other electrical equipment should be on this circuitry. I would prefer getting your network, phone, and electrical service to be near to each other. An isolated circuit means that the circuit has a ground separate from that of the main electrical service. This helps to prevent spikes and surges that may destroy motherboards and hard drives. Note, however, you may still want to use surge protectors at each workstation.

3. Properly designed workspace. When it comes to designing workstation areas, be sure to leave enough space to comfortably fit all needed equipments there. Tabletop space for server stations should be large enough to place a computer monitor, guest check printer, and possibly a credit card terminal if you plan to use separate credit card equipment. There should be enough space directly underneath the tabletop to hold the computer, surge protector, power strip and a battery backup (UPS).

If you plan to place your workstations on mill-manufactured surfaces such as granite or woodwork, you may want to have your contractor pre-drill holes if needed to run cables or power cords beneath the surface. A 2-inch hole would be enough space for cords and cables on most POS systems.

For the cashier and bartender stations, the tabletop space should also be large enough to perfectly fit a cash drawer and an order confirmation customer display. Most cash drawers have a footprint (space requirement) of 15- to 17-inch depth; 16- to 20-inch width; and 3.5- to 4-inch height. So better make sure you get the drawer specifications from your supplier in advance if you are building a custom countertop for your drawer to be recessed perfectly in.

4. Service Plans. Your supplier will offer some type of service plan as part of your original purchase. The fact is, business grade systems are composed of hardware that will not last forever especially in restaurants. POS printers will eventually break, fans will fail, and hard drives will crash. How often is dependent upon the conditions under which they operate. Dirt, dust, heat and moisture are not friendly allies to office and restaruant POS equipment.

I’ve seen some systems that rarely experience problems while others deal with them constantly. The best thing a restaurant owner can do is to invest in good equipment and then protect that investment by maintaining it. Many restaurant POS solutions provider will offer ongoing service plans that are basically extended warranties. The annual cost for these services usually ranges anywhere from 10 percent to 20 percent of the original purchase price.

Computer systems represent a sizable investment. But if you set a time to make sure that the above steps are included in your checklist, then you are more apt to be rewarded a return on your investment by getting the most from your system in cost reduction, labor savings, and ensuring that you can account for all cash.

The Author Michael Tash is the Vice President of Customer Relations at 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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