Shout It Loud

For such a long time, most restaurant owners thought of their point of sale system as a fancy cash register. Now technology has become more advance and slowly becoming an essential part in the retail systems, many innovations today have become standard features within the POS industry.

1. Wireless Handheld Devices. Wireless hand held devices has become one of the excellent restaurant handheld POS equipment that can serve your customers quicker and with improved accuracy. Your servers are able to present daily specials to your customers on the spot, process credit cards from table to table, send a bread request for table 37 to the kitchen, and also the ability to add walk-ins to the waiting list - all from the handheld device. With this, your servers are able to spend more time interacting and keeping your customers happy.

2. “Sticky” Paper Printers. Another one of the newest and most brilliant innovations is the “sticky” paper printers. These printers use paper that is similar with a Post-It which allows you to reposition the receipt over and over again. The paper can be printed to whatever length is required, then stick to any surface where it will remain until it is removed and, even, placed elsewhere. With these printers, the paper can stay with the order through the entire order process. The new paper is also liner-free which eliminates the need to manage non-recyclable waste and can be easily removed and restuck to a different surface whenever you want. You can use the paper for all orders, instant and special orders, as bag tags or any combination.

3. Digital Menu Board or Signage. Want to deliver media rich content, using video, audio and pictures to your customers using your POS system? Many POS packages have fully integrated and seamless digital menu board software that can be used to create content using the same database. Menu titles, pages, menu items, and prices can all be interlaced with high-quality multimedia to give your restaurant menu board a dramatic, interactive display without having to purchase an additional system.

With most digital menu boards, you can easily do menu changes, change scheduled price, daily specials and continually update it throughout the day by sending content to be displayed from the store database in real-time.

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. Cell Phone Paging. 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 place it into the cell phone paging system keypad. And when their table is ready, the paging system sends a call to the cell phone with an automated voice message to notify the guest that he or she may now approach the host or hostess to be seated. This can be a convenient way for guests who want to roam around farther than common pagers will allow and there is no fear of the customer walking away with your pager.

These tips are just the appetizer when is comes to knowing your restaurant POS equipment. 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 business owners use their technology to be more efficient and more profitable.