Posts Tagged ‘restaurant hardware’
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.
The basic POS systems you may see on restaurants and fast food chains are touch screen monitors, programmable keyboards, or scanners and handheld devices. Cash registers can be baught with or without a built-in cash drawer, printers can be dot matrix or thermal, programmable keyboards can have covers for spill protection and scanners can be a CCD scanner or an autosending laser scanner.
Touch screen technology: With its flexible user interfaces and programming, many retail business owners prefer to use touch screens. With this type of POS hardware, an employee can easily set orders and cancel an order within a second. It can also reduce mistypes and fasten ordering. 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 directly sends the oder to the kitchen! These types of handheld devices are perfect for your staff who interacts with your customers, when up-selling desserts and drinks roaming around table per table.
POS keyboards: Most grocery stores prefer to use this type of POS systems, since they can program individual keys for specific item codes and prices. The standard POS keyboard is a 101-key, which you will find with any computer. Other have built-in magnetic stripe readers for processing credit cards, others are small and flat, like what we usually see in fast food chains.
Scanners: This restaurant hardware reads bar codes and converts it before inputting it’s information to a POS system computer. It speeds up sales transactions and accurately inputs a customer’s product or service details that is being purchased. It typically connects through Y-connectors (or wedges) that make them function as an extension of the keyboard.
Volume of customers: For diffent types of volume of customers, using a scanner could be very helpful. If your counter line holds several customers, make your staff use a CCD scanner or entry-level laser scanner. If the line is loaded with customers, then you’ll be needing the help of autosensing laser scanners. This type of scanner turns on when an item is placed in front of it, easily scan the barcode, and then turn off again. But if the counter line is overflowing with customers, an omnidirectional scanner would be the right scanner to use, using its 15 or 20 lasers simultaneously, it can scan a bar code from any angle!
Other Restaurant Hardware To Consider
Cash drawers: Used to store cash, credit card slips, gift certificates and other important papers. When looking to buy a cash drawer, look for a sturdy construction of at least 18-gauge steel, don’t just buy one because your local POS supplier tells you that it’s the latest or simply because it looks fancy. Go for the most reliable cash drawer since the usable life of cash drawers are measured, you also have to make surer that you can replace rollers, bearings, and other parts. Most cash drawers opens only when it is signaled by the POS printer.
Point of Sale printers: Every retail store owner has them, every POS system needs one of course! A POS printer is needed for printing a receipt 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.
POS Customer display: 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 need 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: This piece of restaurant hardware is used to read credit cards. Some keyboards and touch screens has a built-in magnetic strip readers for convenience.
Fingerprint ID readers: If you want to limit which POS terminal can a staff use, then this type of restaurant hardware can be handy. You can also use this for employee logins thus preventing any of your employees from logging in inplace of somebody.
Remember, when purchasing for POS systems, hardware or software, make sure to know the item first before heading to your local supplier. It doesn’t matter how expensive or cheap a POS equipment is, keep in mind 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 definitely help your POS computers 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.