At its best, an electronic point of sale (EPOS) system can transform
the way you conduct your restaurant's business. By managing
your food and drink ordering process on a specialised
computer setup, a restaurant point of sale system can do
away with the inefficiencies of paper slips and conventional
cash registers.
The standard way of ordering in a restaurant
If you don't have an EPOS system, you generally take down a
customer's food and drink order on a slip of paper. You then
pass a copy of this to the kitchen and the bar. When the
customer has finished his or her meal, you tot up the bill
on the slip or on a cash register.
The disadvantages of this system are
- badly-written orders that cause the preparation of
the wrong food or drink
- failures to note down re-ordered drinks or
additional food
- the potential for abuse if a member of staff gives
friends and family food and drink without writing an
order slip
- mistakes calculating the bill
The EPOS way
A good EPOS system accounts for all these problems.
- Badly-written orders. Depending on the style of your
restaurant, you can place orders on a touch screen
monitor at the bar or on a hand-held monitor at the
tables. The monitors automatically transmit this
information to a screen in the kitchen and the bar.
- Failures to note down food and drink orders. If your
staff use monitors to place the food and drink orders,
your EPOS system maintains an accurate record of
everything consumed. You can also match the EPOS system
to your stocktaking and thereby reduce the amount of
food waste by adjusting wholesale orders to actual
demand.
- Potential for abuse. It's difficult for a member of
staff to take advantage of a EPOS system. In fact, the
EPOS restaurant software deters fraud and abuse,
particularly as it tracks the orders taken by each of
your staff.
- Mistakes with the bill. When a customer is ready to
pay, the EPOS system prints the bill for the appropriate
table. You don't run the risk of the mistakes that
sometimes occur when someone adds up the bill without a
calculator or forgets to include additional items.
Reports
Your EPOS system maintains a record of how much is being
spent at what table and when. You can also link these
details to the individual customer. The result is a much
clearer picture of your most popular types of food and drink
at various times of the day or week, and among certain
customers.
You can use the EPOS restaurant software to give you
these details in the form of sales reports. The reports help
you to determine turnover and to arrange staff cover
accordingly. You can also establish your menu's most
profitable items, and therefore the food and drink you want
your staff to promote.
Loyalty cards
EPOS restaurant systems are the ideal complement to loyalty
dining programmes because they keep track of customers'
expenditure. You can use the programme to offer customers
special offers once they've spent a certain amount or have
attended your restaurant on a given number of occasions.
This can help increase your turnover, particularly if you
make the offers available on quieter days of the week.
Further tips about EPOS restaurant systems
- Cost. Paper slips and conventional cash registers
are cheaper than restaurant point of sale systems. So if
your restaurant is a relatively small business, you may
feel the benefits of a EPOS system don't outweigh the
cost.
- Printers. If you have a printer in your kitchen, opt
for a dot matrix model. It will withstand the heat
better than a thermal paper printer.
.jpg){kind=spacer}
