We suspect most restaurant operators have run into the damage caused by a wrong order, a dish served to the wrong table, or an order lost along the way. Every one of them weighs on your mind, because they do a great deal to destroy the trust of customers who have come in to eat. But technology keeps moving forward, and it has produced innovations that clear these problems away — such as restaurant management systems and online billing, which have become an important part of a restaurant’s marketing strategy.
Getting to know restaurant management systems and online billing
A POS, or point of sale system, is a shop-management system — and hearing the name, many people think it is nothing more than a till with a barcode scanner attached. But a POS today can do far more than ring up payment and show the day’s sales. It also makes life easier for the operator, the shop and the staff, to the point where it has become an important part of a restaurant’s strategy, making the work easier for staff and the service faster for customers. Its main capabilities are:
- Ingredient management
- Ordering by QR code
- Sales reporting
- A range of payment methods
These features keep the work in a restaurant flowing, with no need to worry about the ordering process where an order can go astray from the outset and lead on to the next problem, at the till. Creating the bill online pulls each table’s order through to the kitchen directly and produces the bill for payment, so there is very little chance of anything going wrong.
How do restaurant management systems and online billing make a restaurant business easier to run?
1. They cope with a lot of orders at once
It is easy to make a mistake writing down an order by hand, especially when there are a great many orders coming in, or an order is complicated. Reading the whole order back, or asking the same questions again and again to confirm you have it right, can wear a customer down.
2. Customers get a better ordering experience
When ordering is easy, customers are more likely to finish placing an order, because they can do it quickly themselves. That is why the buyer’s experience matters so much: when someone is ready to order, having to call a member of staff over or wait for someone to take it down can be a problem — and an online bill solves exactly that.
3. There is more time to check each item on the order
When orders all arrive at once during the rush, the small details of an order can easily slip past, because everything is discussed and written down in a hurry — so something goes unrecorded or is not understood the same way on both sides. Letting customers place their own order online means they get exactly what they wanted.
4. Producing the bill for payment is easier
Waiting is one of the things that bears most heavily on a restaurant’s strategy, particularly now, when everyone lives at speed. Sometimes asking for the bill means the customer wants to leave as quickly as possible, and having to queue to pay on top of that can undo a whole good experience. So if customers can settle up from their own table without walking over and queuing at the counter, it does a great deal for that final impression — and it takes work off staff who would otherwise have to ring it all up.
5. Keeping customers’ orders in check
A lot of orders coming in is a good thing, but customers often try to order everything at once without stopping to think whether the quantity suits the number of people, or whether they can really finish it — and food routinely goes to waste. So letting customers tap in an order themselves, a little at a time, without calling a member of staff over, keeps orders from all landing at once.
6. Managing ingredients and knowing what is left
A restaurant management system helps you plan your purchasing efficiently by showing how much of each ingredient is left, so you can order in good time as something runs low. That way you avoid the problem of a dish coming off the menu because a key ingredient ran out through a miscalculation.
7. Sales reporting
You can pull up sales reports whenever you like, anywhere, at any time, and check the sales for each outlet even when the owner is not in the restaurant. Customer information is easy to get at too, and the sales figures can be analysed together to adjust the menu to what customers actually want.
Look after your restaurant by strengthening your marketing strategy with a restaurant management system — restaurant POS software from Qashier that keeps your work flowing, with nothing to worry about on the payment side. It covers everything from managing the ingredients and the stock in the restaurant, to letting customers order by QR code themselves with nothing missed, through to payment and the sales data that shows you what is selling well, so you can keep the kitchen running efficiently.