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Restaurant POS systems help restaurant owners enhance the customer experience and streamline business operations relating to sales, cash flow, food inventory, and bookkeeping. Additional features include payment gateway, order management, analytics, and table reservations. Some restaurant POS systems also provide advanced features, such as food costing and a built-in marketing suite to help restaurant owners with budgeting, as well as creating and executing outreach campaigns. Most restaurant POS systems and software can also be used by other food and beverage businesses, such as cafes, food trucks, and bars.
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Crafted specifically for the hospitality industry and perfect for cafes, restaurants, bars, and any other hospitality business imaginable. Lightspeed Kounta POS is the point of sale that is easy to use, simple to manage and powerf...Read more
Square Point of Sale is a mobile POS system available for iOS and Android devices. Key capabilities of the Square POS system include online payment processing, sales reports, inventory tracking, digital receipts, email and SMS mar...Read more
PayPal Here is a mobile application that allows retailers and merchants to process transactions. The application uses a card reader device attached to a smartphone. This solution helps retailers and field sales staff to process tr...Read more
As restaurant manager, bouncing back and forth between incoming inventory shipments, taking orders, tracking each order, and making sure each dish on each table is billed appropriately—among many other restaurant tasks—can be challenging.
Doing everything manually is essentially the equivalent of juggling dozens of playing pins at a time; you are bound to drop one, or even several.
Fortunately, there are tools like restaurant POS systems and other related POS software that can help automate restaurant tasks such as inventory management and online ordering for restaurant managers.
To help you understand how restaurant POS systems and software can help, and what features it provides, we have prepared this guide. Here’s what we'll cover:
Restaurant POS systems help restaurant owners enhance the customer experience and streamline business operations relating to sales, cash flow, food inventory, and bookkeeping. Additional features include payment gateway, order management, analytics, and table reservations.
Some restaurant POS systems also provide advanced features, such as food costing and a built-in marketing suite to help restaurant owners with budgeting, as well as creating and executing outreach campaigns. Most restaurant POS systems and software can also be used by other food and beverage businesses, such as cafes, food trucks, and bars.
When comparing restaurant POS systems, it's important to understand the functionality included in each. Here are the most common features of restaurant POS systems:
Order entry | Ensures that orders, including any special modifiers, are easily, quickly and correctly entered and received by the bar and/or kitchen, while enabling split checks. |
Inventory management | Helps monitor inventory use and costs while tracking portioned items to determine food costs. Produces management reports to help detect theft and over-portioning while setting thresholds for minimum product counts and assigning automatic reordering. |
Recipe costing | Helps determine the monetary value of each batch and/or serving of a menu item to determine the actual costs and profitability for each dish. |
Customer management | Track customer purchase histories and follow up with targeted offers to valuable customers through email and text messages, while allowing for “opt outs” of future offers. Often supports a loyalty rewards program to build lucrative relationships with loyal customers. |
Tablet/iPad-based system | Provide an enhanced customer experience by reducing the amount of ordering and payment time. Servers have the ability to send an order directly to the kitchen while customers can input tips on the iPad and sign their names on the spot. |
A Restaurant POS reporting and analytics dashboard detailing orders, deliveries and sales (Source)
Whether you’re a pop-up or food trailer, single location or multiple location restaurant, there’s a type of restaurant POS system for every restaurant business.
POS systems for restaurants typically cost between $49 - $150 per month per terminal, while hardware costs can be as high as $1,000 for tablets, printers, network infrastructure, and cash drawers.
A big determinant of restaurant POS prices are the deployment options restaurant owners choose. The two primary options are:
Increasing touchless payment methods: Several restaurant POS system providers are giving restaurant owners the ability to create a secure and touchless payment environment as a result of COVID-19. Options include using a fully PCI and EMV compliant pay-at-the-table device and/or the scanning of a QR code to launch a payment process that’s encrypted and touchless.
Growing gift cards as a revenue channel: As dining rooms across the U.S. are forced to close or operate at limited capacity, restaurants have had to turn to gift cards as one of their lifelines to generate revenue. The International Card Manufacturers Association predicts that the pandemic could see an increase in digital and contactless gift cards.