Time Mastery Now

For such a long time, most restaurant owners thought of their point of sale system as a fancy cash register. With technology becoming more advanced, many innovations being developed today are becoming standard features within the POS industry.

1. Wireless Hand Held POS Devices. Wireless hand held devices has become one of the superb restaurant handheld POS equipment that can serve your customers quicker and more accurate. Your waiters will be able to present daily specials to your customers on the spot, process credit cards from table to table, send a quick bread requests to the kitchen, and also the ability to add walk-ins to the waiting list - right from the handheld device. By this, your servers can spend more time interacting and keeping your customers happy.

2. “Sticky” Paper Printers. Another one of the newest and most brilliant invention for POS systems is the “sticky” paper printers. This kind of printer uses paper that is similar to a Post-It that will allow you to reposition the receipt over and over again. Print the paper to whatever length you need, and then stick to any surface where it will remain until it is removed and, even, placed elsewhere. With these printers, the paper can stay with the order through the entire order process. The new paper is also liner-free so no need to manage non-recyclable waste and can be easily removed and restuck to a different surface - again and again. Use the paper for all orders, instant and special orders, as bag tags or any combination.

3. Digital Menu Board/Signage. Your POS system can be used to deliver media rich content, using video, audio and pictures. Several POS bundles have fully integrated and seamless digital menu board software that allow you to create content using the same database. Menu titles, pages, menu items and prices can all be twined with high-quality multimedia to give your restaurant menu board that gives both a dramatic and interactive display without having to spend extra money for addtional devices.

With most digital menu boards, you can easily do menu changes, change scheduled price, daily specials and continually update it throughout the day by sending content to be displayed from the store database in real-time.

4. Self-Service or interactive Kiosk. Have you thought about a customer self service kiosk for your restaurant? Many of our clients have. There are POS packages out there that allow adding a kiosk with no separate software required. With this method, adding a Kiosk to your restaurant has never been so easy. Most kiosk software is designed to cut down on labor costs and speed up the ordering process, enabling a whole new level of profitability. The Kiosk will pull menu items directly from your menu database on the POS terminal, providing a seamless integration into your POS system. Most packages can enhance the customer’s user experience even more, using sound and motion graphics, to engage your customer.

5. Paging Customer Cell Phones. Some restaurants are opting to take a more modern approach by paging customers’ personal cell phones. You can have your host or hostest take your customer’s cell phone number and list it into the cell phone paging system keypad. And when their table is ready, the paging system sends a call to the cell phone with an automated voice message to notify the guest to approach and report to the front of the restaurant to be seated. This may be convenient way for guests who want to roam around farther than common pagers will allow and there is no fear of the customer walking away with your pager.

This small list is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to restaurant technology. More to come in the following months…

Michael Tash is Vice President of Customer Relations of POS-for-Restaurants.com — helping business owners use their technology to be more efficient and more profitable with over 20 years of its restaurant experience.