One of the most important purchases a food truck business makes is one that too often becomes an afterthought: the point of sale system. In fact, a food truck’s POS equipment serves as the foundation for the entire operation.
The best cash register for food trucks lets the operators focus on serving quality food to their customers quickly and efficiently. The food truck’s POS system also manages all back-end functions, such as billing, payments, inventory, and bookkeeping. It helps keep diners happy by supporting a range of ordering and payment options, including online and contactless payments.
Here’s a look at the features that will keep a food truck business rolling in the fast lane to success.
Choosing a POS that’s as Mobile as Your Business
Any business on wheels will need a POS system that travels well. Along with managing receipts, securing locations, and tracking supplies, the business has to make sure people know where and when to find it. Mobile POS technology and cloud connections ensure that you’re ready to conduct business from anywhere. They also keep customers up-to-date on your times and places of operation.
The combination of cloud-based POS and mobile payment processing guarantees that sales data is safe and accessible from any location 24/7. Food truck operators can update menus and employee schedules from the cab of their truck, or view detailed sales reports that match those used by brick-and-mortar businesses.
Perhaps the most valuable feature of mobile POS for food trucks is their simplicity. Detailed sales reports and other POS features are accessible with little effort. The business can have a branded app and website for customers to use as their primary access point, placing orders and making payments with no human contact required.
Record-Keeping Is the Key to Monitoring Your Business’s Progress
Success in business starts with a rock-solid plan. A food truck’s business plan serves as both a road map and guidebook for its day-to-day operation. As with any enterprise, data is the key to tracking how well the food truck business is doing in achieving its short-term and long-term goals.
A food truck POS system ensures that business records are accurate and up-to-date. However, the real value of the data a POS system collects is the insight it provides into areas of the business that are doing well, and areas that need to be improved. An example is knowing whether patrons are being charged the correct amount of sales tax. Because sales tax rates vary from location to location, it’s important that a cloud-based POS system is able to automatically adjust the sales tax rate to correspond to the area where the transaction occurs. The result is more accurate record-keeping and less potential tax liability for the business.
In addition to calculating tax rates, the POS system tracks payroll processing, expenses, inventory levels, and the popularity of various menu items. It also generates easy-to-read reports that can be used to share financial information with government agencies, financial institutions, and potential investors.
Learn More About What Makes Your Customers Happy
More than most businesses, food trucks rely on word-of-mouth advertising to grow their operations. The best cash register for food trucks goes beyond completing sales transactions by incorporating customer relationship management features.
For example, special offers and promotions can be linked to each customer’s account, so when the customer reaches a certain milestone, such as their fifth sandwich purchase, the POS system can automatically apply a discount. Similarly, the POS system can pair items that naturally go together, such as suggesting a beverage or side that goes well with a food item a customer ordered.
Inventory is always a challenge for food trucks because of their limited storage space. Yet one of the fastest ways to lose customers is by running out of the items they want. A food truck POS helps ensure that the menu items your customers crave are always available by tracking inventory in real-time and triggering alerts when items start to run low so that new orders can be placed in a timely manner.
Make Sure Your Food Truck Is Ready for Click-and-Collect Ordering
The practice of choosing and paying for items prior to picking them up was gaining momentum prior to the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now click and collect ordering has become the preferred approach for a great number of retail customers, including food trucks. POS systems allow businesses to adapt quickly to the extra steps that click and collect ordering adds to workflows.
These are among the features to look for in a cloud-based POS for click and collect:
- Click and collect options are prominent on a branded website and mobile app
- Automatic payment options are available for returning customers
- Order management includes automatic notification to customers
- Confirmation of payment occurs before orders are prepared
- Online and on-site orders can be integrated
Other advantages of click and collect ordering for food trucks is the opportunity to upsell before and after the customer arrives to pick up the order. These include impulse buys as well as special offers to returning customers based on their past purchases.
For food trucks and other mobile businesses, a dynamic POS system becomes a lifeline to customers, employees, and suppliers by integrating all aspects of the operation, from marketing and customer outreach to employee scheduling to inventory management and accounting. Finding the best cash register for food trucks becomes central to the day-to-day and month-to-month operations of the business.
talech is a leading provider of point of sale software and hardware. We can help you tailor a POS system to the unique needs of your business, along with guiding you about the best cash register for food trucks. Sign up for a demo to see the whole system in action, and ask about other features if you didn’t see something you need. Our expert staff will be happy to answer your questions and help you find the ideal solutions to your unique challenges.
