Running a restaurant involves juggling numerous operational aspects, from managing orders to tracking inventory and ensuring customer satisfaction. A robust Point of Sale (POS) system is not just a tool but a mission critical partner in this dynamic environment. Here’s a comprehensive look at what makes a POS system the best choice for restaurants and the key features and benefits you should consider.
1. Intuitive User Interface
Let’s face it, if you’re the owner or manager of a busy restaurant, you know that staff turnover is a thing. On Monday you can be training an employee that you’ll be replacing by Friday. (Honestly, it’s hard to keep the names straight.)
The restaurant POS system needs to be easy enough for staff to navigate without a lot of training, and yet, strike the right balance of complexity and ease of use so that the POS still does everything you need it to do – specifically, manage orders accurately and efficiently while preventing errors, theft, and shrinkage. The majority of tasks should only be two or three button presses away, and screens should be colourful with intelligent design elements that help make functions self-explanatory to prevent people from getting completely lost and never lead people to irreversible errors.
Key Feature: An easy-to-navigate interface that minimizes the learning curve for staff.
Benefits: Simplifies onboarding for new employees, reducing training time and costs.
2. Comprehensive Menu Management
Experienced restaurant managers running efficient food and beverage services understand that good menu management is incredibly important. A well-designed menu can either improve the effectiveness of a restaurant POS system while a poorly or lazily done menu can hinder accuracy, cause errors, shrinkage and cause the restaurant to unnecessarily leave money on the table.
Updating the prices on today’s feature items, or updating the seasonal menu should not be a heavy lift. Items should be quick and easy to search for – even when you’re not completely sure what it’s called. You should be able to remove items from the menu without much trouble, either to reuse them again at a later date, or remove them from the list completely without much effort. Sizes, timing, context, discounts, descriptions, permissions, modifiers, pictures, and up-selling should all be accessible from no more than a couple of screens. Finally, you should only have to manage one menu for all your selling channels – bar POS, table service POS, self-service POS Kiosk, mobile POS app, and online ordering should all be updated from a single list, so that you can focus on managing the restaurant, not managing multiple POS systems.
Key Feature: Flexible menu customization, including modifications for different times of the day or special events.
Benefits: Better menus increase speed, reduce errors in order taking by ensuring clear, up-to-date screens, with better accessibility and fewer touches.
3. Mobile and Tableside Ordering
This restaurant POS feature is more polarizing than any other – restaurant owners and managers are either 100% in favour of mobile ordering or dead set against it. But we regularly see it increase order accuracy, reduce labour cost, and increase table turns so dramatically in operations that when the benefit is properly calculated, it’s hard to refuse the feature.
For decades, service staff took the order twice: Once at the table, usually on a small pad of paper; then again after they walked back to the POS station. Mobile handheld POS empowers waitstaff to order food and beverage for any customer and any table from anywhere they are – whether they are tableside, line-busting, or answering the restaurant phone from the kitchen. The result is potentially a restaurant that can serve double the number of customers with the same number of staff, enabling the restaurant manager to reallocate labour to other tasks key to better service – kitchen staff, food runners, etc.
Pro Tip: As the customer service improves and output increases, tips increase, making it easier to attract and retain staff.
Key Feature: Take orders directly at the table or anywhere around the restaurant.
Benefits: Speeds up order-taking and reduces errors, leading to quicker service and higher customer satisfaction.
4. Robust Reporting and Analytics
To begin by saying that restaurant point of sale systems need to provide reports is cliché – they all do that. It’s true of course – the data is important. But, few restaurant managers ask the key question – “Specifically, what data is essential, and precisely what will be done with it when I have it?” Looking at multitudes of random reports in abstract is a waste of time without a use case. Data you won’t use because you don’t know how to use it is useless anyway. This of course is where your advisors, reputable POS dealer support, and good training often comes in.
When assessing data availability in a restaurant POS system, the important thing is data integrity, availability, and uniformity of data across platforms. How quickly and easily can the restaurant run a report? Do I understand how to run a report intuitively or do I need a degree in data science? What happens when the POS terminal is offline? What happens when the restaurant is offline? If you can’t count on the data being available and accurate when you need it, the reporting system is irrelevant.
Ensure that the reports in the back office are the same as the POS reporting – there’s no point in having a cloud system that enables you to run reports from HQ or your home office only to have problems reconciling the data between the staff at the restaurant and at the office.
Lastly, ensure that the data is available to an API (Application Programing Interface) that will allow access to your data, and ensure that API isn’t out of reach – if you can’t afford the API it’s not very useful to you. 3rd party tool integrations such as PMS (Property Management Systems), labour scheduling, inventory management systems, and accounting interfaces can move data for you to the systems that need it, and make that data more useful in formats that provide you much more value in shrinkage control and labour savings than just reporting alone.
Key Feature: Reliable, actionable and accessible data to assist with processes and effective decision making.
Benefits: Good data in the right places at the right time rather than data for data’s sake.
5. Integrated Credit & Debit
Connecting the credit and debit payments directly to the POS is one of the easiest ways to reduce human error and theft, while streamlining the front-end payment process, with the least amount of effort by the merchant. Look at your competitors – they all have integrated payments. It’s more secure, more accurate, and frankly there’s less nonsense at the end of the day, week, month or year because it’s always penny accurate.
Integrated payments for restaurant POS is a no-brainer. For more information check out my previous blog topic: Integrated Credit and Debit: Why Merchants Should Insist On It
Key Feature: Electronic payments are integrated directly into the restaurant point of sale system.
Benefits: More secure transactions, higher accuracy, and less administration.
6. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
During the Covid lockdowns many independent merchants and restaurants realized only after they had been shut down that they had no efficient way to communicate with their customers because they had not been collecting their names, addresses, phone numbers, or email addresses. So they could create take out menus, online ordering systems, come up with ingenious ways to do safe curbside pickup and contactless deliveries – all to no avail – they had no way to communicate it to their customers. Learn from that mistake.
Collect customer data and communicate exciting new products and services, offer promos and events by email and text, provide loyalty points and incentives for repeat business, bundle it all up with an app on their phone, and maintain a relationship with your guest – or simply put – someone else will.
Key Feature: Tools for managing customer data, preferences, and loyalty programs.
Benefits: Personalized engagement through more direct service and personalized marketing to encourage repeat visits and higher sales.
7. Cloud-Based Functionality
As internet connectivity becomes more reliable and faster, cloud-based restaurant POS has become more and more appealing from both a cost and convenience perspective. The ability to access the back office data from the desktop at home, the iPhone in the car, the iPad on the patio, or the laptop on the beach – literally anywhere in the world – has become a standard expectation of restaurant owners. The fact that you don’t have the expense of the database server and the responsibility of backing up the mission critical database is a huge bonus.
Additionally, the restaurant POS database already located in the cloud makes web connectivity options like online ordering, mobile apps, loyalty points, kitchen video, self-service kiosks, 3rd party delivery apps like Uber Eats, Door Dash, and Skip The Dishes easy to connect to.
Key Feature: Cloud solutions for data storage, remote access, and automatic updates.
Benefits: Manage your business from anywhere with internet access with any web-browser, and easily scale multi-location operations without the administration or overhead cost of on-premises servers, backups, and advanced network security management.
8. Kitchen Display System (KDS)
Paper and ink ribbons are expensive and messy, and in the digital information age, it makes sense to examine the ability to communicate restaurant kitchen orders without it. Kitchen display systems can be used to improve the output of a kitchen by adding additional stations that enable real time order confirmation and in the event of an error, instant order recall. Consider Kitchen Display to improve the customer service where traditional paper printers might have been considered nice but cumbersome, such as beverage management, delivery packaging confirmation, expo, salads and desserts, and other side stations where keeping track of orders is helpful but paper is not necessary or helpful.
Key Feature: Digital screens in the kitchen for real-time order management.
Benefits: Improves communication between front and back of house, reducing order mistakes. Speeds up order preparation and delivery, enhancing kitchen throughput.
9. API (Application Programming Interface)
Along with the popular adoption of Cloud Restaurant POS technology is the increase in access to APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to POS data has become easier than ever. Third party software development companies use APIs to connect and communicate to and from restaurant POS systems. Examples of these systems are inventory management systems, liquor inventory, reservation systems, labour scheduling, accounting integrations, and 3rd party delivery management (ie. Uber Eats, Skip The Dishes, and Door Dash). Just make sure the cost to access these APIs is not so high that it’s out of reach of your restaurant, so do your research before committing to a solution.
Key Feature: Ability to integrate with other value-add cloud software systems like accounting, delivery services, inventory, liquor management, property management, or reservation systems.
Benefits: Reduces manual data entry across systems, saving time and reducing errors.
Choosing the Right POS System
When selecting a POS system, consider not just the features but also:
Support and Training: Look for providers with a long track record, local support and customer service and training resources. Software products come and go, it’s the local relationship that matters most.
24/7 onsite service with hardware plans: Everything develops wear and tear, and everything requires maintenance and replacements. Is your time better spent managing your business and selling your customers, or running around trying to be a Mr. Fixit with your POS System? Plan for onsite service when it fails, and make sure your POS dealer has a plan when things go wrong to get you back up and running, with an up-front all-inclusive service fee so that you can budget for it and you never have to ask questions or experience surprises – the system is always running because the service is automatic and invisible.
Cost vs. Value: The point of sale system is not an appliance. It is a critical financial management system that your entire business operates on. It requires a thoughtful and serious investment, and if it is properly planned, invested in, and maintained, it will provide far more benefit than cost. Be sure to carefully do the math to evaluate the total cost of ownership against the benefits and features offered.
In conclusion, the best POS system for a restaurant should not only handle transactions but also act as a central hub for managing all facets of restaurant operations. By focusing on systems with these key features, restaurant owners can enhance operational efficiency, improve customer satisfaction, and ultimately drive profitability.
Remember, the best POS system scales with your business, adapts to your needs, and supports your vision for future growth.
About Armagh POS Solutions
Armagh has been serving the retail, restaurant and grocery industries in Canada since 1979, delivering solutions for a range of operators from single-unit small businesses to multi-unit national chains.
We are specialists in touch screen and scanning point of sale (POS) systems for both restaurants and retail stores, cash registers, scales, liquor inventory control systems, and grocery label and wrapping equipment.
With 40+ years POS industry experienced the sales staff at Armagh provides experienced consultants in point-of-purchase management, customer service efficiency, process automation, and restaurant order management.
Armagh’s award-winning Catapult Retail POS Software and Digital Dining POS Restaurant Software are best-in-class, and Armagh is a QIR and Diamond Toshiba Alliance Partner.