Every restaurant or cafe owner's dream is to get a full house of customers enjoying themselves in their stores every day. That's because happy customers not only mean you'll get to make money from them today, they are also more likely to come back a few more times in the next month or year and recommend your place to their friends.
This is why good cafe or restaurant owners devote so much of their time into keeping their customers happy – angry customers are not simply good for business.
Thankfully though, there are many ways to keep your customers happy.
While the quality and taste of your food and your cafe or restaurant's ambiance play an important role in the success of your business, another important part of any restaurant experience is the process of ordering, waiting and paying for the food itself.
No matter how good your food is, nobody likes getting it served to them an hour later, or worse, getting the wrong dish.
And even if the entire experience went great, no customer wants to get ready to make payment for their orders only to find out that you're billing them for food they didn't eat, or that it will take an extra 10 – 15 minutes for you to sort out their bill.
We all know how disastrous that can be!
Luckily for you, a reliable and well-designed POS System fitted for your FnB business is all you need to smoothen out all these problems for you.
A good FnB POS System will automatically help you issue an order ticket from your customer's table to your kitchen. The same ticket can then be drawn up according to the table number upon checkout, ensuring a smooth and no-hiccups checkout process.
Well, it doesn't have to be if you pick the right FnB POS System.
But with so many choices in the market all promising an array of features, which should you go for?
You surely don't want to pick one now only realize a few months or a year from now that it doesn't actually have everything you need and you have to move to a new one. Moving from one POS System to another can be a painful and sometimes expensive process as you have to reconfigure everything from scratch!
To help you pick the best POS System for your business and not waste money in one which won't work for the long term, we've compiled this quick and easy guide for you.
In this guide, we explain why you need a POS System, the types of POS Systems in the market today and what to look out for in a good FnB POS System.
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While every retail store needs a POS System, an FnB business needs one even more. That's because, with a cafe or restaurant, there are additional processes that retail stores don't have to deal with.
With a normal retail store, you mostly use a POS System to capture payments, print receipts for your customers, manage inventory and check sales reports.
For FnB businesses, though, your POS System goes beyond just what a normal retail POS System is built for. On top of capturing payments, printing receipts, managing inventory and providing you with sales reports, your POS System should also help you streamline communication between your waiters, cashiers, and your kitchen staff.
So that when your customers put in their orders to your waiters, and the order ticket goes directly to your kitchen to start cooking. When they're done with their meals, they can then make payment for their meals at the cashier by drawing up the same ticket.
A POS display where customers usually make orders and payments.
This setup covers your cafe or restaurant from the front desk to back kitchen, ensuring that every part of the process is in sync, and error-free.
While these components make up the basic set up of an FnB POS System, there's a lot more to look into if you want value-for-money. What are they? Let's take a look at them in the next section.
When considering a POS System for your cafe or restaurant, the POS System's hardware and software are only starting points.
Beyond that, it's worth considering how your team might interact with the POS System, how easy it might be to train new staff on the software and how the POS System scales with your restaurant or cafe's growth.
Reliable. Having a stable POS System software is probably the most important thing to consider. You never want to use a software full of errors and unfixed issues.
Slip-ups on the job will not only mess up your operations, but it will also leave your customers really angry.
Choose tried and tested POS Software that has a good history of updates and fixes to major issues. They will be your best and most reliable partners, even on your busiest days.
User-friendly back-end interface. Since it's most likely that you and/or your staff are not highly technical, you'll be able to benefit from a POS System with a user-friendly back-end.
This way, you can manage your SKUs, inventory and check sales report all by yourself.
You never want to get a POS System where you always need to invite a technical person to do even the most basic tasks for you. This can be troublesome and sometimes costly.
Easy to understand reporting. Checking and analyzing sales trends in your cafe or restaurant can help you to plan for near future.
A good POS System will display the most important information for you to draw your own conclusions from in an easy-to-understand way.
Waiter app and kitchen display system. If you buy a POS System, but still need to manually send your order tickets to your kitchen, then you are missing out on a simple, but a crucial component that can help you save hours of your manhours as well as lower the errors in your restaurant or cafe.
A good POS System for FnB businesses cannot do without at least an option to connect your back kitchen with your front-facing waiters.
Affordable, easily available hardware. The last thing you want to do is get stuck with a POS System which uses expensive proprietary hardware.
Instead, look for the POS System which you can use on standard, readily available POS hardware. This way, if any replacements are needed, you can do it cheaply and quickly.
Easy to learn. You never want a POS System where you need to bring in experts each time you hire a new staff. In the FnB business, it's pretty common to bring in new staff every now and then, especially during peak periods.
Having to bring in a trainer each time can be costly.
Instead, you want the POS System itself to be easy to learn so anyone can pick up the skills to run it within a day or two.
Good, responsive support. Regardless of how reliable a POS System is, you'll still run into issues you may want support with one day. Be sure to pick a POS System supplier who invests in their support so your issues can be fixed in a timely manner.
Scalable pricing. If you're just starting out, you don't have to fork out RM10,000 just to get started. You want to have a POS System pricing that is flexible enough to be affordable when you are just starting out and becomes cheaper as your business grows.
Online access to sales. You want a POS System that gives you access to your sales report from anywhere there's an internet connection. This way, even if you are away building a new business or on a vacation, you can still be on the pulse on how your business is doing day to day.
In this section, we take a quick look at the most common types of POS Systems in the market, explain the differences between them and provide you our recommendations on which one you should go with.
There are generally two kinds of POS Systems you will see in the market: the Cloud and the Standalone.
How are they different and what's the reason we recommend going for Cloud POS Systems?
Cloud POS Systems are hosted on online servers. The first advantage for you is that you don't need to buy a full-fledged computer to keep the POS System files. You can access it using an app online.
The second advantage with Cloud POS Systems is access. As outlined in the previous section, one of the most important features you should look for in your POS System is if you can access the sales reports online.
This way, you can stay up to date on the sales in-store, no matter where you are.
Finally, with Cloud POS Systems, you can be assured that your software stays up-to-date, because it is being checked and updated constantly online.
Even if you don't have an internet connection at your store, most Cloud POS Systems still work just fine. All you have to do is bring your POS terminal device (usually an iPad or Tablet) where you do have an internet connection and update your sales using a sync feature.
The only downside of Cloud POS Systems have is that you are usually required to pay a monthly fee. However, the benefits above far outweigh this single disadvantage, making Cloud POS Systems the popular choice amongst new FnB business owners in Malaysia and around the world!
The only time we would recommend going for a Standalone System is if you really hate paying a monthly fee and don't mind dealing with outdated software.
Now you know the difference between cloud and standalone POS Systems, there's another difference between POS Systems you need to be aware of: POS Systems designed for All Purposes and POS Systems designed specifically for FnBs.
As you have seen above, FnB businesses require additional features.
While All-Purpose POS Systems come with the basic retail features, they are usually lacking in some of the crucial FnB features such as Waiter, Table Management and Kitchen Display.
This is why we recommend picking FnB specialised POS Systems over All-Purpose POS Systems.
For the same costs, you are usually getting a more customised POS System when you opt for an FnB specialised one.
If you are looking for an all-in-one, FnB specialized POS System in Malaysia, the good news is, your search can end here!
Slurp! is an all-in-one POS System specially designed for cafe and restaurant owners just like you.
With Slurp!, you can be assured that your POS and order system needs are well-taken care of and spend your time on what matters most: serving your customers.
With more than 1,000 FnB businesses trusting Slurp! to help them with their businesses, you can be assured that your business is in good hands with Slurp.
If you are interested to know more about Slurp! and how you can use it to streamline your cafe or restaurant business, we'll be happy to show you!
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