You know the importance of speed if you own a fast-food restaurant. While speed, efficiency, and a well-curated menu play a massive role in delivering that quick service promise to your customers, one key piece of the puzzle can determine the success or failure of your restaurant: the point-of-sale or POS platform that you use.
This article will discuss six features that your point-of-sale system for quick-service restaurants should have. These features will guide you in running your business efficiently and improving customer relations.
Mobile dining solutions with QR codes
A full-service restaurant can increase guest patience, but customers who visit a quick-service restaurant want immediate service. In 2021, a new study showed that customers have less patience with drive-thru eateries. A poll shows that 77% of customers are reluctant to wait more than 10 minutes for their orders.
Diamond Elite’s web-based menu pages allow customers to browse the menu and place orders. They can also close their check using contactless payment options. Allowing your guests to place orders can help you reduce inaccuracies and upsell opportunities.
You can quickly create a QR code that guests can scan to place their order. This allows them to serve themselves while the staff can focus on food preparation. Instead of standing at the counter, guests can walk or wait in their cars until they get a text confirming that their order has been processed.
Online ordering integrated
Online ordering is a powerful digital tool that has proven extremely useful. Online ordering is growing at a 300% faster pace than in-house dining. But how do you make it work for your food service business?
Online ordering can increase restaurant revenue by allowing customers to place orders wherever they are. It opens up your business to new customers. The guest can linger over the menu without feeling pressure and enjoy the user experience. Online ordering allows guests to place orders more accurately, which leads to happier customers and less inventory.
Consider each option’s potential benefits and costs when deciding whether to use an online ordering platform such as Grubhub, UberEats, or your online ordering system. These services can be expensive and often involve high commission fees, and you also have no control over your customers’ data. Online ordering solutions can help you manage your brand and make money.
Offer self-service kiosks
The self-ordering kiosks simplify the guest experience in fast service environments by being convenient and contactless. Kiosks make ordering easy and allow guests to modify their order using the available add-ons or modifiers. They can also help streamline your front-of-house operations, allowing your staff to focus on more critical tasks. This is a considerable benefit in times of staffing difficulties.
Your kiosks can be fully integrated with your POS system using a cloud-based POS like Diamond Elite. This allows staff to 86 items or add daily specials to the POS terminal and send them directly to the kiosks.
Self-ordering kiosks are a great way to cut wait times, give guests control over their experience and let the staff handle other tasks.
Inventory management
Keeping track of your inventory is crucial no matter what kind of restaurant you run. Quick-service restaurants are more demanding than ever because of the perishable nature and speed of business, making inventory management even more critical.
You should use fresh and perishable ingredients more often (hello, fast casual health concepts!). To reduce food waste, your turnover should increase your overall profit margins. If your inventory turnover ratio exceeds 10%, this could indicate that you’re not keeping enough stock on hand or maintaining par (periodic auto replacement) levels.
The pen-and-paper inventory management and the more technical Excel inventory strategy are no longer sufficient. A quick-serve POS platform that integrates food inventory management tools can help reduce error margins and allow you to concentrate on food service, not numbers crunching.
Sales and customer detail reporting
The biggest challenge for any restaurant is to decide when and how to pivot menu selection, especially with historical inflation. It is much easier with the right POS system for quick service.
Choosing a POS platform with integrated reporting and analytics allows you to keep up with real-time performance. Cloud-based POS platforms such as Toast enable access to data anywhere and anytime. You don’t have to wait for weeks or days before you can review the results.
Want to know how your new menu item is performing? You can track the sales of any menu item on all your menus with a product mix report. Perhaps you need to decrease your business days because of the current worker shortage. To identify the slowest days, you can view performance on particular weekdays.
Integrated sales reporting allows you to work smarter, not more complicated, and keeps your restaurant’s quick-service menu running smoothly.
Marketing, customer engagement, loyalty programs
Loyalty programs and customer engagement can tap into your existing customers by offering rewards for returning repeatedly.
Punch cards are long gone when it comes time to reward returning customers. Integrated loyalty programs make it easy to allow new customers to sign up using opt-in prompts at the checkout screen and self-order kiosks. This will help you grow your customer base without wasting time. You can customize your sign-up bonuses, set accrual or redemption rates, and offer birthday incentives to personalize the experience to suit your brand and budget.
These are just a few features a solid quick-serve restaurant POS system can offer to help you grow and expand your business. Contact us to learn more about Diamond Elite.