Improving Restaurant Management & How a POS System Fuels the Business
Managing a restaurant has so many moving parts that trying to do it effectively without a POS system is an inefficient use of a manager’s time and resources. The competition in the food services industry is fierce, as a manager, you need to use every tool available to increase your chances of success.
There are operational areas in your restaurant business that will make or break your success. Gaining control over these areas is your primary responsibility and using a POS system enables you to not only see what’s happening in these areas but also effectively and efficiently manage them.
Operational Costs – Knowing what is costs to produce a saleable product is the first step to maximizing profitability. Food, alcohol and the many other operational costs must be defined and controlled. A POS system will allow you to review sales reports that will show you what and when an item was purchased. This enables you to manage purchasing and get an understanding of top sellers and your peak times. With an optional labor scheduling module, take it one step further by having the tools in place that will easily generate optimum employee schedules based on sales and employee availability.
Engaging Your Audience – Without customers filling the tables you have no business. Understanding your clientele and having your restaurant putting down roots in the community are two ways to help fill those tables. Most restaurants can’t survive by just serving new clients every week, repeat customers that refer your business are vital. A proven way to generate repeat business is to offer some type of reward. Using your POS system to administer a customer loyalty program is as simple as installing an optional module. The loyalty module is also able to interface seamlessly with software enabling you to reach customers through text, email or social media. Set awards based on the number of visits, dollar value purchased or the number of items purchased – for example, buy 10 get one free, spend $100 and receive a free entrée or visit five times and receive $5 off your next purchase. It’s proven that loyalty programs increase traffic and generate higher average tickets.
Real-Time Information – Your business is your life, but you don’t want it overtaking your life. You can’t spend every waking hour at the restaurant monitoring activity, and sometimes there is information you need to know sooner than later. With a POS system in place that has a remote manager module installed, you can monitor all the vitals of your business from any mobile device. The remote management module allows you to boost revenue, control costs, and prevent loss from anywhere. Receiving real-time alerts for such important items such as a large number of ticket voids or deletions and employees approaching overtime for the day or week will allow you to be pro-active in controlling costs. Regarding fraud prevention, you can also see a summary of discounted or reprinted tickets and excessive voids and deletions. There are hundreds of BackOffice reports available for instant delivery to your mobile device in standard, easy to read PDF format.
Table Management – Efficient table management is a vital aspect of profitability and customer service. A POS system already includes a basic table management system. With the basic management system, you will be able to see, in a visually attractive and straightforward format, the status of each table. The color coded system will show when a table is set and ready, customers seated and ready to order, food and drinks served, check presented, check settled and table ready for clearing.This system enables you to better serve your customer, fill more tables, and speed table turns. With the reservations module installed to augment the basic table management system, you can take better control of the entire reservation process. You will always have a clear picture of the reservations versus availability, thereby reducing errors (customer complaints).Another option is to install the online reservations module. This will allow customers to book reservations directly from your website, this module is fully integrated with the POS system, and the reservations will show in the system once confirmed by the customer.
Having a complete POS system is the best way to manage your restaurant into profitability and keep it there, and it will allow you to do it without spending an excessive amount of time and effort. Please contact Pro Touch Systems, your local expert in restaurant and retail POS systems for more information how we can help your business reach the next level.