EPOS System for Restaurant

 With a plethora of cloud-based EPOS systems on the market, and new ones appearing every week, it can be incredibly hard to decide which one is the best for your business. This is especially the case when it comes to EPOS System for Restaurant  where there are a lot more moving parts to think about, and the pressure to get it right is even greater as the POS plays a crucial role in operations.

Many systems offer a one size fits all system, where they claim to be able to work in most environments across hospitality & retail. In theory, that’s a nice idea & certainly works for a lot of verticals, but in practice, restaurants have totally different needs to a shoe store.

Here, we’ll outline how you can steer clear of the pitfalls that many people encounter when implementing a new Restaurant EPOS. What should you be on the look-out for to ensure your Restaurant can run efficiently?

Lots of the nuances in EPOS for Restaurants are often things people don’t consider…at least not until they realise that they aren’t possible with the system they’ve chosen. These little things can make a huge difference to operational efficiency & are certainly worth investing in.

· Flexible Table Maps: Many systems allow you to create a basic table map, whereby you can allocate orders to specific tables. The better systems however give you more flexibility in how those maps are laid out, how easy it is to make edits ‘on the fly’ and how easy it is to move guests & items between the bar & different tables. Think about how often you shift tables around or push them together.

· Coursing Management: One of the keys to a successful Restaurant is a well-run Kitchen. And one of the keys to a well-run kitchen is the management & timely delivery of different courses. Look out for systems that allow you to split courses when sending to the kitchen & allow you to override course defaults (for those times where a customer wants a starter as a main).

· Stock control & Ingredients: Keeping an accurate track of all of your stock is key to keeping pricing up to date & your margins where they should be. Lots of basic systems give you the ability to keep a stock count for single units (bottles, cans etc) which works for some products (usually drinks). However, the better Restaurant EPOS systems also enable you to keep a track of individual ingredients. Look for systems that allow you to set up a list of ingredients & then tie those ingredients to recipes for each product. Some systems do that themselves, whereas others integrate with platforms dedicated to inventory & purchasing.

 

In addition to back-office stock functionality, consider whether you’d like the stock of certain products to be shown on the front end POS. This can be used to show floor-staff how many of certain dishes are remaining to ensure they can only sell what’s available. This makes things easier in the kitchen, and reduces the chances of having to disappoint customers in the restaurant.

· Printer routing: Not so crucial in smaller restaurants, but important for larger restaurants is the ability to be able to send products to a multitude of different kitchen & bar printers. Do you want all food to go to one printer & all drinks to another? Or do you have multiple prep areas in the kitchen, each responsible for different products on the menu?

· Table Transfers: What happens if somebody decides that they want to move to the nice table by the window? Or when a couple bump into their friends and decide to join tables? An effective restaurant system gives you the ability to quickly and seamlessly move orders from one table to another, or merge two orders into one.

· Bill Splitting: We’ve all been out for dinner as a group, and paying the bill is almost always a palava. Look for systems that allow you split the bill in a multitude of different ways; by seat, by number of people, by item & by amount.

· Detailed reporting: Systems built for restaurants specifically tend to have more in the way of restaurant specific reporting. This is data that can be incredibly valuable if used correctly. Look out for systems that give plenty of information on things such as average spend per head, floor performance, individual table performance, throughput times, user performance.

· Day parts: Lots of restaurants are open from breakfast through lunch to dinner, with different pricing and different products on offer throughout the day. This can result in very large menus on your POS which can be confusing for staff. Look for systems that allow you to manage which products appear on the screen by time of day. You should also look for systems that allow you to manage pricing by time of day. Systems that have these features should also allow you to report by day part.

· Cash Management: In a restaurant environment where there is a lot of money handling, you need an EPOS that can manage that cash for you. You need to be able to track all transactions in granular detail so that you always know your cash position. Look for systems that allow you to set up and manage multiple cash drawers with start of day floats, petty cash throughout the day & a blind end of day cash up. If you want to give your floor staff pouches to manage their own cash then look for a system that allows you to do this.

Support & Training

It’s not often something people think about until something goes wrong, but when it does, you need to know that there’s somebody who can help just as well at 11pm on a Saturday as they can at 9am on a Monday. The best restaurant systems have a dedicated support team available 24/7. Make sure that phone support is available for urgent issues…the last thing you want, is to have to wait 2 hours for an email reply when your EPOS is down.

Cloud-based Restaurant EPOS systems aren’t necessarily complicated, but they can be complex. Although much of the basic functionality can be figured out quite quickly without assistance, it’s important to know that help is available at the start to drill down into the finer details. You should look for systems that offer initial training to get you up and running as quickly as possible. With cloud-based systems, training tends to be a remote screen sharing session which works well and we’ve found that 2 hours is typically plenty. Onsite training & installation is often available at an additional cost, although it’s usually not needed.