We all know running a restaurant is hard. The average net profit margin is just 6.2%. But that’s for the lucky few who make it; sixty percent of new restaurants don’t make it past year one, and 80% of those who do won’t last more than five years.
So what’s the problem? Labor costs are on the rise, so staff must work as efficiently as possible to be productive and pull their weight. The price of ingredients is on the rise, and spoilage is always a looming threat. Butcher cut too much meat? It ends up in the garbage. The business is sell it or lose it, making inventory management another critical need.
While you can’t eliminate the cost of labor, ingredients or other overhead entirely, you can widen margins by optimizing how people work, and how you use supplies. And the best way to do it is by using a robust retail store point of sale system.
Small Restaurant Point of Sale Systems Optimize Operations
Restaurant owners do what they love. But, they’ve got to do more than just get by. Like any business your restaurant must be profitable, which is where your ideal small restaurant point of sale systems come in.
Don’t let the name fool you— these systems aren’t just for retail stores. The right POS system has all the features you need to make running your restaurant easier and more cost-effective every day. It does this by addressing major sources of high costs.
- Labor costs: When staff multi-task and work more efficiently, you can get more done with less people. Make how they work more organized and make sure everyone is coordinated by sharing in-sync, real-time information such as seating or menu changes.
- Ingredient costs: A POS system tracks your inventory with live data, even during your busiest hours. It records data that can be used to create reports, so you can look for sales trends. Are you still using handwritten labels? A POS system prints out barcode stickers you can print and add to new inventory as soon as they arrive. This helps you to keep your most-used ingredients in stock and shows you what items to purchase less of. You’ll reduce spoilage, and wait staff will know which items to recommend based on freshness.
A POS system has labor-optimizing and ingredient cost-cutting features that include:
- Table and position management: On a busy night customers want to be seated promptly, not kept waiting. Keep track of table availability with features that give you a view of each room’s floor plan, enabling you to edit each table’s occupancy status. This gets the ordering process off to a good start and puts customers in a good mood.
- Order management: A POS system enables you to coordinate courses and immediately send tickets to the kitchen or to printers.
- Inventory management: As the night goes on, the system can track sales of each dish and enable kitchen staff to make notes about sold-out items. Or print out barcodes that you can add to newly-arrived food items, helping you to track freshness and usage.
- Item voids: Customers can change their minds pretty fast. Void an item and instantly notify kitchen staff of changes to an order.
- Easy ticketing: Avoid confusion when it comes time to pay the check. Split items across table positions and give each customer their own, easily-split check. Calculate taxes and gratuities with a few taps. And apply discounts or coupons with ease. Your wait staff aren’t accountants! A POS system eliminates this major bottleneck of their time, which is also a big source of customer frustration.
- Real-time synchronization: The right POS system keeps all of your data updated and in sync, across all devices. It ensures every user is kept up to date with any changes made by co-workers, such as notifications of sold-out dishes. This unifies staff across roles, including the front and back of the house. And, it means you can easily run the restaurant during Internet outages.
- Kiosks with customer-facing displays: Do you run a QSR? Then your customers demand the convenience of kiosks and customer-facing displays. Kiosks enable customers to make and pay for their own orders themselves, which lowers the need for staff while optimizing ordering and payment. Customer-facing displays are easy to read and use touch-screen monitors that customers can tap. They improve the customer experience by adding extra convenience, making it easy for customers to view important info at a glance, such as their order’s details, tax, coupons or loyalty program information.
Grow Your Margins, Grow Your Business
So many people go into the restaurant business because they have a passion for the art of cooking. But it shouldn’t be a labor of love alone. You can make food patrons adore and turn a strong profit time using a retail store point of sale system.
With it, you can optimize your daily operations and cut costs, making the way you do business better. Sure, you can spend time looking for other, manual ways to raise efficiency. Or, you can get results using small restaurant point of sale systems that have been shown to cut margins before. No matter what you do, find the right solution and grow your margins. Your business will grow, and you’ll have one of the few restaurants that strike long-term success.
If your margins are tight talech can help. Our POS system can optimize how your staff works and give you real-time visibility of inventory. By making the main sources of cost more efficient you can lower expenses and increase your profit margins. From order creation to a summary of the day’s take, our POS offers all the functionality you need to make operations more efficient with just a few taps of a screen. And, you can try our system out anytime. Request a free demo and see how talech can help grow your profit margins today.
