Tips For Choosing The Best Point-Of-Sale System For Your New Restaurant

If your family is opening a restaurant, then you need to use a point-of-sale system to track your orders and inventory. While you may be feeling overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices that you have for a point-of-sale system, the good news is that there are some tips you can use to ensure you choose the right system to meet both the current and future needs of your restaurant, such as:

Tip: Insist on Demonstrations of Any Potential Point-of-Sale Systems

When you are shopping for a new point-of-sale system for your new restaurant, you should insist that vendors give you a very thorough demonstration of their system before you choose one to purchase. Make sure the demonstration includes running through typical orders your servers will be placing, as well as those showing you how to use the backend inventory and bookkeeping functions. This will allow you to spot the differences between different products and will help you choose the best one for your restaurant. 

Tip: Talk to Other Family Restaurant Owners

There is no reason to reinvent the wheel when buying a point-of-sale system for your new business. Reach out to other local restaurants and go speak to their owners and staff about the point-of-sale systems that they are currently using. Ask them what they like and dislike about their systems to help with your purchasing process. Most small business owners are more than willing to help others get their businesses set up and you should take advantage of this when you are shopping for your point-of-sale system.

Tip: Choose a Point-of-Sale System that is Easy for Employees to Use

Since restaurants typically have a fair amount of staff turnover from month to month, it is important that you choose a point-of-sale system that will be easy for your employees to learn how to use. The more complicated the system is to use, then the more training that will be necessary for new employees. This cuts into your bottom line because time spent training on the point-of-sale system takes away time where your servers could be assisting customers with their food and drink orders.

Tip: Always Select a Point-of-Sale System Before Purchasing Hardware

Finally, you should always select a point-of-sale system for your new restaurant before you buy the hardware necessary to use it. Point-of-Sale systems are available from a wide variety of different software manufacturers, and this means that they often have different hardware requirements. The last thing you want to do is purchase a software solution and discover that it will not run on the new iPads or other hardware that you have already purchased. Instead, decide on the software you want to use and then purchase hardware that the software manufacturer recommends for running it.