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A good POS is very important in the daily gear of any business, especially in one of restoration.
Your choice can determine the agile daily rhythm, excellent customer service, or be an insistent stone in the shoe of the business routine.
Fortunately, and unfortunately, the market for POS terminals is very broad. I say unfortunately because when there are a multitude of options, the decision becomes more complicated.
We have from the POS terminals that the banks themselves offer us when we work with them, which we can find for free on our website, and those of payment, specialized in specific niches. I’ll talk to you about the latter today.
To facilitate the task, I will comment on five aspects that you should analyze about POS terminals that are sold as “tailor-made for restoration”, and which, deceptively, are not. At the end, I will tell you which is the best option today in 2018.
- Ease of use and intuitive
If your POS complicates the work, and makes having a notebook and a pen faster and more efficient, that POS is bad.
The POS should be simple, keep in mind that those who use it have a few minutes to operate with it, and always in front of the diners. It should not have lags, complicated menus, or deep navigations.
- Control of your warehouse
You know better than I, who am writing to you: one of the least glamorous tasks in a restaurant is inventory control. It’s tedious, and nobody likes it.
The POS should be able to help you control your warehouse by calculating the consumption of your supplies for each sale, giving you a daily or real-time summary about it, even sending you alerts to replenish. In addition, of course, the control of entries and exits of your inventory.
- Compatibility with payment methods
The ways to pay are many: in cash, with mobile apps, credit cards, Bitcoins, and even PayPal, not forgetting Apple Pay. The more you accept in your business, the better.
People, especially in the 20-40 age group, use money and credit or debit cards less and less and pay with mobile phones. If your client is in that band, analyze well the payment methods of your POS.
- Technical support
Do a search in Google or specialized forums and look for the opinions of the POS that you have or plan to buy and analyze if the technical support is fast and if it really solves the problems.
Also call them or check with them what they promise you about it and compare.
Maybe you are an expert in managing your restaurant, and maybe you are even capable of repairing anything in your kitchen, but that doesn’t mean you have to be an expert in the development and maintenance of POS terminals and apps.
- Cost
There are many ways in which POS terminals charge for their services, some charge a percentage per operation, which is the most traditional way, others handle a flat rate, and others have a fixed cost per operation.
I recommend that you do a simple calculation: the average food of your restaurant, always in cost, and then make calculations with the way you pay, especially if the POS charges you per operation.
It is best to have a flat rate, especially if you have an already established restaurant with a fixed and constant income.
The best option today: Storyous, the only exclusive POS for restaurants
Storyous aims to fill a huge gap in the POS market in Spain, and that is restoration. Yes, there are many and very good solutions, but the market is fragmented and there is no solution designed solely and exclusively for the catering business.
What makes Storyous special is that it focuses on three key areas: control, efficiency, and security.
It has three functions or areas of work, I will tell you briefly:
- The customer-facing sales system, focused on saving time and versatility in handling and managing each table
- Command summary
- Sending the order to the kitchen with automatic printing
- Cancellation of orders
- Combination of different orders in one
- Separate an account for payment between several people
- Printing and managing invoices
- Table control
- Real-time control of your inventory regarding the supplies consumed in each order
- Closing of cash and cash control (separates what is charged by payment method)
- Summary of each table
- Management of several establishments in a single application
- Installation and maintenance of the POS, always personalized and with technical support
The good thing about this company is that it has a flat rate, and packages according to the type of establishment, and with really cheap fees: from € 29 to € 79 per month. You forget about minimum orders or payments per operation.
The company emerged in 2012 and on its own page you can see how important restaurants already trust them.