Decreasing costs while bolstering productivity ranks high among common goals set by restaurant operators of all types. Such an objective is easy to meet, providing that a restaurant POS system has been implemented. Here are three ways a restaurant POS system can help you bring costs way down and send productivity on its way up.
Labor optimization. A restaurant POS system can ensure that the use of human resources doesn’t blow a hole in the budget. It can also enable labor savings without adversely affecting productivity and, in turn, both customer service and the bottom line.
Restaurant POS systems facilitate this by providing enterprise-wide access to labor data. Management can obtain a detailed view of performance — e.g., how servers on a shift are handling a full dining room, how long it takes a team from the kitchen staff to produce a number of orders, or average order-taking time per minute in the drive-through lane. You can then make adjustments, such as assigning more or less servers per shift.
Additionally, a restaurant POS system can help with labor optimization by comparing labor against historical patterns. For example, if a report generated by the restaurant POS system shows that in the past, two servers provided adequate coverage in the dining room on Tuesday nights, but three servers are now employed with no change in customer traffic, you could make the money-saving decision to cut back Tuesday evening server assignments. Operators with multiple restaurants can leverage labor data from the restaurant POS system to assess how individual locations with similar metrics compare to each other and make adjustments, achieving consistencies and potentially eliminating unnecessary human resources expenditures.
Inventory management. The inventory management module in a restaurant POS system allows restaurateurs to set minimum and maximum in-stock quantities for each ingredient. When these “quotas” have been reached, the system can generate a warning and an automatic re-order, ensuring that replenishments arrive by the time they are needed and only in quantities that don’t exceed the maximum to prevent spoilage and waste — and the costs associated with them.
Cloud-based infrastructure. Some restaurant POS system offerings are delivered in “as-a-Service” bundles that include software and hardware; the software piece is available on a subscription basis, at a monthly fee, with applications and data stored in the cloud. When this is the case, management has “anytime, anywhere” access to data, including (but not limited to) sales and labor data — from anywhere there is an Internet connection. Situations come to decision-makers’ attention earlier than would otherwise be possible—sometimes immediately—and can be rectified faster, preventing wasted time and money.
For instance, if a restaurant manager accesses data through the cloud-based restaurant POS system and notices that sales warrant adding staff, he can do so right away. The result is improved overall staff productivity—before the situation escalates and customers are lost because they feel they are receiving poor service.
When a restaurant POS system is coupled with the right hardware, you will realize an even better return on investment (ROI) and enhanced productivity. Case in point: Ruggedized, purpose-built POS terminals and tablets are designed to withstand damage from spills, accumulated dirt, exposure to extreme temperatures, and accidental falls to the floor. Replacement and repair are therefore needed less frequently, leading to financial savings, while there are few broken POS devices to cause interruptions as proprietors work to rectify the problem. Moreover, when POS terminals used with a restaurant POS system have capacitive touchscreens, the latter continue to accept input even if their surface is damaged, again saving money and guarding against compromises to customer throughput speed.
Clearly, a restaurant POS system can be an asset to every foodservice establishment, no matter its focus. The three benefits described above represent only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the gains to be made with this technology in place.
