Posts Tagged ‘Point of Service’
Spam e-mails are not only annoying, irritating and time consuming, but they are also becoming more dangerous to you and the security of your computer.Think twice when you’re about to open e-mails from unknown senders, especially if you’re using a computer from the office where all your important business documents are instored. Thousands of computer users and restaurant owners are getting infected by spam e-mails every month, forcing them to pay huge fees for cleaning and restoring their computer POS systems back to normal.
Here are the 3 computer dangers you should keep away from:
1. An increase in hijacked and spoofed e-mail addresses. Spammers are now using a new tool used to make you believe that their spam e-mail is coming from YOUR own computer. This could result in having your Internet connection be temporarily terminated or put on hold by your Internet Service Provider(ISP) – all without your knowledge. That is why good spam blocking software will not only block inbound spam from your inbox, but also unauthorized outbound spam from your serves.
2. Virus infected spam e-mails. Accidentally or intentionally opening an e-mail from an unknown sender can cause you a lot of problems. Most of these unknown senders are the spammers who merrily speard their virus-infected e-mails and waits for the unlucky person to open it and/or download its content. This can cause your computer to slow down, identity theft, loose data, endless popping of unapproved sites or even crashes the system! What’s worst is that the personal information collected from your PC can be uploaded to the internet without your permission and use it to comit crime.
3. Phishing spam – spam e-mails that leads to a phishing web site. A phishing e-mail may appear to be a legitimate e-mail from a bank, vendor, friend, or other trusted source. The purpose is to trick you into giving sentive information such as bank accounts, social security numbers, passwords, and credit card information. You’ve probably already received you’ve verified your information|e-mails from banks you don’t use, or even from Paypal, that notifies you to verify your account in order to continue using their service|e-mails from banks you don’t use, or even from Paypal, that notifies you to verify your account or else they will close it]. It will then direct you to a very convincing web site where you input certain information the spammer is trying to reap. In reality, this is a malicious third party that is going to use your information to open credit card accounts, access your account, steal money, and cause you other major identity and financial problems.
Here’s what you can do to pervent this:
Before everything else, install a sam blocking software as this will serve as your first line of defense, and make sure it’s a good one.
Many retail business owner over look into this, so their restaruant POS system is the one who suffers the most.
Next, you want to make sure you don’t get included on a spammers list in the first place. Once you’re on a spammer’s list, it will stay there forever and possibly get distributed to more spammers; and changing your e-mail address can be a major inconvenience especially if you rely on it to keep in touch with important business and personal contacts.
The following are some advices that can help you protect your e-mail from getting listed on a spammer’s list:
1. Using disposable e-mail accounts.
Using a free e-mail address like with Yahoo or Gmail can reduce the chance of ending up on a spammer’s list. To avoid ending up on a spammer’s broadcast list, always use free e-mail accounts whether it’s Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail so don’t think that it’s just a waste of time registering for them.
2. Pay attention to check boxes that are automatically filled in.
Make sure you don’t check on the box that says “Yes! I want to receive offers from third party companies.” when you shop online. Chances are, your e-mail address can be sold to every online advertiser.
3. Refrain from posting your main e-mail address in public places like your website or blog.
Spammers have special programs that can collect e-mail addresses from web sites without your knowledge. If you really want to post an e-mail address on your home page, I suggest you use “info@” so all replies are forwarded to a folder in your in-box that won’t interfere with your main address.
4. If you have a hunch that it’s a spam e-mail, don’t open it!
Opening, replying to, or even clicking a bogus opt-out link in an obvious spam e-mail signals that your e-mail account is active, and more spam will follow.
The only time it is safe to click or reply to the e-mail is when the message was sent from a company you know or do business with (for example, a company that you purchase from or a newsletter you subscribed to).
For more information or to have a local POS professional serving the restaurant industry and your location see more information at POS-For-Restaurants.com.
If you’re still relying on the old-fashioned cash registers and hand-written books of yours, well now would be the right time to get rid of them! Today is a different world, new technologies have been developed to help boost restaurant Point of Sale system. So say goodbye to your tiring manual business system and say hello to the new POS systems that will help increase your profit and make your customers happier than before.
As any retail establishment owner would do, ensuring the safety of your profit is a tough task. Money can easily float down the drain if you do not watch carefully! Just by a simple customer’s change mistake, you loose money, especially when a staff of yours abuses their power and help themselves take a few extra bucks from the cash register or give away huge discounts to their friends and families.
If the above issues have already happened to you, well don’t let it happen again! I suggest now would be the best time to consider having a POS system. 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)
- Unorganized data
Since money is involved here, you might want to consider inveting on quality POS systems that will take care of the job smoothly and improve your business’ efficiencies. So buying cheap, poor quality POS systems can lead to the downfall of your business. You’ll be throwing away money because of its poor features.
A good and reliable POS vendor can tailor the appropriate POS solution for your needs, which can improve your business’ performance and satisfying more customers. So requesting for a free POS system quote would be a great idea, because expert POS vendors can provide the exact needs of your business, complete with the features that will make your business boost its sales, without having to spend an extra thousand dollars.
Questions to consider
If you plan to request for a free POS system quote, below are some of the things you might want to consider asking to a POS vendor. What’s great about this service is that when you submit your details, it will be matched to the most qualified POS suppliers in your area. And only they will be able to acquire your details which in return prepare the proper POS solution that fits your business needs and then send you their offers. The below information are some of the questions you might want to ask:
- Is the POS software user friendly? Which OS will it run?
- Is POS software compatible with my current business management applications?
- Can I try the software out before buying?
- Do I need more than one terminal? What about POS cash registers?
- Will I be able to use the same POS for other marketing strategies like a gift card system?
- How robust are the reporting features?
- Will I be able to pinpoint where some of my losses are coming from?
- Can I get set up fast?
- Does it require extensive staff training?
- When it comes to customer support, what level can I expect?
- Is there a lender available if my equipment repairs can’t be made on-site?
- Are there POS all-in-one solutions available or do I have to buy everything according to its package?
More information and an online resource
For further information on how to request for a free POS system quote, kindly visit POS-For-Restaurants.com
The author of this article is the Customer Relations Vice-President for POS-For-estaurants.com with its 20 years and more of restaurant POS systems experience serving the automation needs of restaurants of all types throughout the U.S.
For the longest time, most restaurant owners thought of their POS system as a fancy cash register. Now technology has evolved and became more advanced it is slowly becoming vital part in the retail systems, many innovations today have become standard features within the POS industry.
1. Wireless Hand Held POS Devices. Wireless hand held devices has become one of the superb restaurant handheld POS equipment that can serve your customers faster and more accurate. Servers can present your daily specials to your customers on the spot, process credit cards while walking to the next table, send a quick bread requests to the kitchen, and add walk-ins to the waiting list – all from the handheld device. Your servers will be able to spend more time interacting and keeping your customers happy.
2. The “Sticky” Paper Printer. One of the newest innovations are the printers that uses “sticky” paper. These printers use paper that is similar to a Post-It which allows you to reposition the receipt over and over again. The paper can be printed to whatever length is needed, and then stick to almost any surface where it will remain unless you remove and/or plan to stick it elsewhere. With these kind of 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. You can use it for all orders, exceptions, specials, as bag tags or any combination.
3. Digital Menu Board or Signage. Your POS system can be used to deliver media rich content, using video, audio and pictures. You’ll find some POS packages have fully integrated and seamless digital menu board software that allow you to create content using the same database. Menu pages, titles, menu items and prices can all be twined with high-quality multimedia to give your restaurant menu board a dramatic, interactive display without having to purchase an additional system.
With a digital menu board, you can easily sent to display content from your restaruant’s database in real-time, so the menu board continually updates throughout the day!
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 further, using sound and motion graphics, to engage your customer.
5. Paging Customer Cell Phones. Some restaurants are opting to take a more modern approach by paging customers’ personal cell phones. You can do this by letting your host or hostest take the customer’s cell phone number and inputs 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 to report to the front of the restaurant so they can be seated. This may be convenient way for guests who want to roam around farther than ordinary pagers will allow and you won’t fear of the customer walking away with your pager.
The tips I gave you above are just the tip of the iceberg when is comes to knowing what restaurant POS solutions is best for your business. Better watch out for more…
The author Michael Tash 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.
This article is more of a continuation of what I wrote last month about Spring cleaning for your PC. Since computers are something most people use but neglect to maintain properly, I figured I’d continue down that track with some more of what I consider the basics.
This is very important for restaurant owners and other retail business owners out there. whether you are using the latest restaurant POS equipment or not, computer problems can still greatly affect your business’ performance. By following these few reminders, you’ll be able to keep your business in tip top shape.
1. Your Computer Needs Maintenance. Just like your car needs an oil change, your computer needs regular maintenance to keep it up and running smoothly and extend its usable life. Tools like disk cleanup, defragmentation, and updating your virus protection files are vital to keep your machine running at its’ best and to avoid small problems before they become really big problems.
2. An Anti-virus Software is A Must. As I always say, the most important piece of software you should have is an anti-virus program. By now you should probably be aware of the attacks coming from the internet and sneaky virus-infected emails. Anti-virus software will notify you before you open the infected file and release the virus to do damage. What you should also remember is anti-virus software cannot repair the damage a virus has already done. The anti-virus software requires updates and you can do this at least once a month so it’s using the latest protection against sneaky viruses that may infect and damage your system.
3. Never Forget To Backup! I cannot stress the importance of a good backup plan! CDs and DVDs, memory sticks and external USB hard drives are all make good backup media. And once your backup plan is ready, use it regularly!
All computers will eventually retire one day. I hate to tell you this, but no matter how new or old your computer is, it will stop working one day. Like any other computers, yours is also a machine that’s expert in calculating, storing and processing data. Unfortunately, machines don’t last forever.
Files your computer holds can be priceless to replace. Think of all those financial data, e-mail contacts in your email address book, pictures, recipes, and on and on. One day you’ll open your computer wait for it to start and get disappointed because it has already retired! At the same moment you’ll begin to realize how important it is to have a BACKUP. Well, what are you doing to backup all of your computer data? I find it surprising that most people don’t even have a backup plan. You will never realize just how much you have on your computer until it is gone! So if you don’t have a backup yet, better start planning on it.
In the retail industry, like in restaraunts and fast food chains, having a backup is gravely important. Why? Because there are so many business info you’ll be needing for future references, just like your employee and customer information, products and services data of the retail establishment, and so on. To be able to effectively track down sales and inventories, a reliable restaurant POS system must be used. And by maintainning your POS systems in good condition is the perfect way to protect it.
4. Letting An Expert Do The Job. If you need a computer service, seek out a trained, qualified technician. Your friends’ son may know a bit about fixing your problem, but many times the problems become worse. This will cost you time and money in the end. Remember, your computer system is the ‘center’ of your business. Trained, qualified technician’s are experts in their field and will have the skills and resources to properly fix your problems in a timely, cost effective way.
The author of this article is the Vice President of Customer Relations for 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.
Looking to buy 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 must keep in mind when installing systems that will help run your operations and store all of your critical data.
1. Network cabling. The majority of systems are computer-based, designed to run on MS Windows technology. Which means your workstations and computer equipments communicates over standard Ethernet networking. Although wireless communications have been the talk of the town these days, it is still highly recommended to “hardwire” your computer stations. Some vendors include this service in their bid; while others specify that cabling must be arranged with a third-party vendor.
Regardless of who will work on the cabling, make sure all cables are properly plugged and tested before installing any equipment. Each computer equipment needs to have a cable drop. A cable drop is the wiring between a computer and its Ethernet transceiver.
For a restaurant POS system, the restaurant should be wired with CAT 5 or 6 network cabling that runs from 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, because these devices can sometimes cause communications interference.
2. Electrical. Installing a dedicated and isolated circuits for your equipmments such as your POS computers, network devices like hubs and routers, and phone systems that can share. There should be no other electrical equipment on this circuitry. Preferably, your network, phone, and electrical service will be near one another. An isolated circuit means its a separated ground from that of the main electrical service. This helps prevent spikes and surges that can damage motherboards and hard drives. Note, however, that you’ll still want to use surge protectors at each workstation.
3. Designing workspace. When designing workstation areas, make sure to leave some extra space to comfortably fit all equipments there. Tabletop space for server stations should be large enough to hold a computer monitor, guest check printer, and possibly a credit card terminal if you’re planning to use separate credit card equipment. Leave enough space below the tabletop to hold your computer, surge protector, power strip and a battery backup (UPS).
If you plan to place your workstations on millwork surfaces such as granite or woodwork, have your contractor pre-drill holes to place cables or power cords beneath the surface. A 2-inch hole should be enough space for cords and cables on most POS systems.
For cashier and bartender stations, tabletop space should also be large enough to 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 fit perfectly in.
4. Service Plans. Many vendors may offer service plans as part of your original purchase. The fact is, business grade systems are composed of hardware that will not last forever especially in a restaurant environment. Printers will eventually break, fans will fail, and hard drives will crash. How often they rely upon the conditions under which they operate. Dirt, dust, heat and moisture are not friendly allies to office and restaruant POS equipment.
There are those people who rarely experience problems wih their computers while others continue to deal with same problems. The best thing a retail business owner can do is to invest in good equipment and maintain it to prevent future damages. Many restaurant POS solutions provider will offer ongoing service agreements that are basically extended warranties. The annual cost for these services usually ranges from 10 percent to 20 percent of the original purchase price.
Remember that computer systems represents as 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 of this article is the VP of Customer Relations at POS-for-Restaurants.com — With over 20 years of restaurant experience helping businesses like yours to use your technology more efficient and make your business more profitable .
Imagine wasting tons of hours of work – or imagine losing your menu database, employee records, financial records, or all of the data your restaurant has ever produced or compiled for several years.
What if a major storm, flood, or fire destroyed your office and all of your files? Or if a virus wiped out your server… do you have an emergency recovery plan ready for implemetation that you can immediately enforce to save your files? How fast do you think you could recover, if at all?
Many retail business owners tend to neglect or forget 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 done.
After working with a lot of 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 can cost 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 don’t think about the importance of regular preventative maintenance and disaster recovery planning because they are already very busy with more immediate mundane fires demanding their attention. If the POS system and network is working fine 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 antivirus is up-to-date, or that the network is in tip top shape.
Here Are The 4 Most Important Things You Should Do To Be Sure Your Company Is Protected From These Types Of Disasters:
While it’s! impossible to plan for every potential computer disaster or emergency, there are some easy and cheaper ways you can do instead that will help you avoid the vast majority of computer disasters you could experience.
Step#1: Make Sure You Are Backing Up Your System
It just amazes me how many businesses never pay attention to back up their computer network. Imagine this: you write the most important piece of information you could ever write on a chalk board and I come along and erase it. How on earth are you going to get it back? There’s absolutely no way! Unless you can remember it, or if YOU WROTE A COPY OF IT, you can’t recover the data then it is lost. That is why it is very important to back up your network. There are a number of things that could 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 To Be Sure Your Backups Works Fine
Another big mistake I see. Many restaurant owners set up some type of backup system, but they never check to make sure it’s working right. It’s uncommon for a system to LOOK LIKE it’s backing up when in reality, it isn’t. We’ve seen companies shell out huge amount of money to retrieve data they THOUGHT they backed up? Never let this happen to you.
Step #3: Keep A Back Up Somwhere Other Than Your Office
What will you do do if a major disaster struck your office, like a flood or huge fire, destroying everything including your back up tapes, CDs or hard drive? What happens if your restaurant gets robbed and took EVERYTHING? Keeping an off-site back up is simply and a smart way to keep multiple, redundant copies of your data.
Step #4: Be Sure Your Antivirus Is ALWAYS On And Up-To-Date
You would have to be living under a rock to not know how ravaging a virus can do to your network. With virus attacks coming from spammers, downloaded data, visiting infected web sites, and even e-mails from friends, you cannot afford to not be protected.
A virus does not only corrupt your office files and bring down your network, but it can also hurt your reputation. If you or one of your employees unknowingly 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. And with over 20 years of restaurant Point of Sale experience, POS-For-Restaurants can help you use your technology to be more efficient, be aware of the dangers that could happen and more profitable.
For the longest time, most retail business owners thought of their POS system as a fancy cash register. With technology becoming more advanced, most innovations have become a standard feature within the retail POS industry. Below are more tips that can help your business increase its sales:
1. Scheduling Your Staff. Many restaurant POS packages include some level of “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 accessing staff schedules, unlimited shifts and multiple job positions for each staff. You are also able to tie in any number of security functions to multiple 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 simply managing efficiently and effectively your time & attendance information.
2. Software Upgrade Assurance or SUA. SUA is a software maintenance program that gives you a distinct advantage when purchasing a POS system. You are able to help stretch your investment and prolong the usable life of your Restaurant POS system. Customers who are on an SUA plan will always have the latest version of their POS software. This basically keeps their POS system new. Whenever you receive an upgrade it is as though they just bought the latest POS system in the market with the newest and most up-to-date features your restaurant can greatly benefit from. The most current feature set ensures that you have the best possible ROI by allowing you to have a full advantage of the power its features can offer.
Another 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 acquire their benefits. Ma customers are satisfied receiving the huge benefits of this program that help reap the full return on your POS investment.
3. Handling Tips. Some of the point of sale software products includes a tip tracking feature. Once you set an staff as a tipped employee, the system will require tip declaration prior to clock out. Any server of waiter who ring sales will get their total sales tracked. Tips collected through credit card sales are also tracked and shown on the server closeout report. Prior to clock out, the server/waiter will be shown their total sales, the charge tips collected collected and then asked to declare their cash tips. By this, you will be able to accurately track and manage all declared tips, charge tips and hours of work 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 of visits, frequency of visits, their 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.
Some of the restaurant POS packages come standard with a frequent diner or customer loyalty package that eases things within your business. They utilize secure methods of tracking your guests and their buying habits. You can establish a database of account numbers using your guests information.. You can use their phone numbers or whichever number system you wish to use. However, the most popular and secured method is through magnetic cards with your business logo on them. These cards act as a constant reminder of your restaurant by having your business logo in their wallet or purse. The POS software will secure the reward programs you set in place to prevent your staff 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 restaurant reward programs takes your employees out of the game and place you in charge.
If you pay enough attention to your business needs, you will find that there are so many ways you can do to help run your restaurant more efficiently. So stop wasting more time and money relying on POS system that doesn’t work for you, instead focus more on what restaurant technology best suit your business needs.
The author is the VP of Customer Relations for POS-for-Restaurants.com. With over 20 years of restaurant experience, POS-for-Restaurants.com helping business owners you their technology to be more efficient and more profitable.
Tired of dealing with undecipherable hand-written? Would you like to know for sure how much of each specific food item to to order tomorrow or next week – instead of just going by a best guess? Then you’ve taken the first step to see increased productivity and profits.
A point of sale (POS) system can give you a new level of control over your restaurant operations, helping you increase efficiency, boost profits, and polish inventory management. When upgrading from a cash register and hand-written orders to a restaurant computer system can be hard, but the return on investment can really make it worth your time and effort.
Restaurant Point of Sale – Buying Tips
•Prepare for the unexpected just at your busiest time. As with any point of sale system, you know that backing up your critical data is necessary. Be updated, ask your POS vendor about automated backup schedules.
•Clean up now. Preventative maintenance ensures the reliability of all your computer POS equipment.
•If you dislike heat… When choosing printers, remember that the heat in the kitchen can be enough to ruin thermal paper. Dot matrix printers are a better choice.
•Find the right dealer. Each restaurant have specific POS needs. POS-For-Restaurants can help you locate an experienced point-of-sale company in your area who is the best option for your restaurant.
What are restaurant POS systems?
If you wish to have an in-depth review on offered services from multiple restaurant POS providers, you may use BuyerZone’s free tool for vendor comparison.
In the most basic sense, a POS system is very similar to a cash register. The typical restaurant POS station includes a computer and cash drawer, a printer for receipts, and a touch-screen monitor. Almost all restaurants have such electronic POS registers, with additional attached accessories depending on the needs of your restaurant.
For retail-style restaurants like a sandwich shop, printers are often included with their POS systems in the food preparation area, eliminating the errors that can happen when hastily-scrawled orders are passed back to the kitchen. And for quick-service restaurants, POS systems are practically a requirement for living up to their name: orders taken on terminals in the front are displayed on monitors in the kitchen, fastening food preparation and delivery to the customer.
POS systems are NOT all the same, subtle but important differences exist depending on the type of restaurant. POS systems need to be set up with your seating plan and menu plan so they can communicate customer requests to the kitchen and bar, track reservations and seating, and handle properly transactions.
For fine dining restaurant POS system they typically include more stations: they can have multiple stations for their servers, a bar station, a host/hostess station, and printers in the kitchen compared to most basic POS systems. They also have more functionality — including the ability to create and store open checks, let servers send “fire” orders to the kitchen to start the next course, as well as track which server is responsible for which table.
Restaurant POS benefits
With a POS system can greatly reduce the amount of time your staff spends in the kitchen, speeding up the order process. The efficiency gain is always well worth the effort. If a restaurant with 20 tables and has an average check of $45 can increase total sales for a given period by one party per table, which gives an extra $900 on a busy night. Additional savings come by reducing shrinkage: servers can’t make complimentary food available to their friends without properly placing an order in the system.
In addition to the direct cost savings, restaurant POS systems offer detailed reports that can greatly help any business owner in making decisions. Sales reports help you better predict volume and schedule your staff appropriately. Inventory reports that you can quickly understand help you order the proper ingredients at the proper time, reducing waste. And comprehensive reports let you immeditately identify which items are sellers, the items that generate the greatest profit margin, and which items you should eliminate
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The author of this article is the VP of Customer Relations at POS-For-Restaurants.com with over 20 years experience helping restaurants nationwide increase their efficiency and bottom-line profits using restaurant POS systems.
You may visit POS-For-Restaurants.com for more information on how our national network of restaurant point of sale experts can help your business achieve greater success in these difficult economic times.
How Many Restaurant POS Terminal Should I Use?
- Peak customer volume
If you want to efficiently handle huge quantity of customers, you need to plan for the number of POS stations based on peak business. - Considering the number of employees taking orders
One station per 3-5 servers would be sufficient in a table service environment. You may want to add extra stations for handling high volume areas such as the bar and cashie stations. Switching from an ordinary cash register to a POS system, many people tend to forget that their POS system will not only be used for cashing people out, but will now be used for order entry as well. - Restaurant layout
A good restaurant layout affects your employees service. So if you have a bar, assigning a separate station for your bar tender would be easier since he can serve customers from there quickly. - Having proper location where your customers pay for their meals
Having proper locations where customers can pay for their meals is also important, you don’t want to keep them waiting do you? For paying at the front, you should have one or two dedicated cashier stations faster transactions.
Which style of POS computer is best?
- Desktop: standard desktop computers.
- Least expensive computer option
- 3 Year Onsite Warranty Standard for this component
- Takes more space but can be hidden away beneath a counter
- Flexible enough for adding extra ports
- Latest CPU speeds and memory
- Screen and computer are separate; in case of technical problems problems are isolated.
- Small form factor: smaller than desktops.
- More stylish than the desktop
- Has 3 years standard onsite warranty
- More Space Saving
- Fewer options for expandability
- Latest CPU speeds and memory
- Screen and computer are separate; so you can easily isolate which ones has technical problems.
- All-in-one terminals: the combination of computer with touchscreen technology.
- Stylish, space-saving terminal with fewer wires required
- 1–2 Year Manufacturers Warranty (Not onsite)
- Comes standard with sufficient ports for almost any operation
- CPU speed is generally slower than the other two options but sufficient for the Point of Sale needs.
- Screen and computer are combined
How many cash will I need?
- Your servers may carry their own cash banks, but it is still advisable that you have a cash drawer to stations where you want to end transactions.
Should I consider having integrated debit cards?
- Using your POS systems to process credit card transactions allows you to keep records of every transaction you process in one convenient location.
- With the advance of high speed internet transactions processing time can reduced to 3-4 seconds per transaction.
- If you do not have a high speed internet, we suggest using a standalone terminal for processing transactions.
How many kitchen/bar printers?
- Having one printer for your kitchen would be sufficient for your restaurant, not unless you have different sections serving different dishes inside your kitchen then it would be better if you place printers on all sections.
- For example, appetizers can be printed on one printer and all your entrée dish on another printer.
- We recommend impact (dot-matrix) printers over thermal printers for kitchens and bars because their loud printing alerts cooks and bartenders that an order is coming through and because tickets printed on thermal paper become unreadable when exposed to heat.
Do I need more that one receipt printer?
- It’s a good idea for every station to have a receipt printer.
Is a back office computer needed?
- Having a back office computer allows managers to access POS systems for checking inventory levels, changing a menu, and even adjusting employee clock times.
- A back office computer is not necessariliy required unless you have 4 or more stations. It is however a good idea that you use a back office computer to host your database if you have 4 or more stations so none of the stations has the extra load of running the database.
More information is available at POS-For-Restaurants.com
The author of this article is the Vice-President of Customer Relations at POS-For-Restaurants with over 20 years of experience serving restaurants of all types and sizes throughout the U.S.