What are the four pillars of a restaurant POS?
We’ve covered the components, features, and integrations of a restaurant POS, but that’s only half the story. Beyond the hardware, software, and services are the actual values your restaurant receives.
The best way to think about these values is as the pillars of a top-notch solution. The perfect POS will hit four values: reliability, ease of use, support, and training.
Let’s take a quick dive into how to evaluate these four pillars.
A. Reliability
Few work environments can match the frantic pace of a restaurant. The last thing you need to worry about is whether or not the POS is working.
A question restaurants often ask about cloud-based POS systems is, Will it work if I lose connectivity? If it’s a good system, the answer is yes.
A restaurant POS should provide an Offline Mode capability. This ensures your service is able to operate normally when connectivity is lost. Offline Mode is automatically triggered whenever the system senses a loss of connectivity. During this time, you can open and close checks, fire off orders to the kitchen, print receipts, collect payments, adjust tips, and more – all the critical functions for the restaurant. Once the connectivity is restored, the system will kick back online and automatically begin syncing payments and checks automatically.
B. Ease of use
One of the main benefits of a restaurant POS should be how easy it is to use.
A user-friendly system isn’t just a “nice-to-have.” When servers are able to spend more time with guests, suggesting the best wine pairing for the entrée or whetting their appetite for dessert, rather than fiddling around in the POS, that puts time and money back into your pockets. Each feature, from how you split a check to how you modify a menu, should be built specifically with the restaurant in mind. It not only saves time, it enhances the hospitality.
C. Support
Restaurants don’t operate on a month-to-month schedule. It’s day by day, shift by shift, minute by minute. When something is not working, you can’t wait to schedule an appointment for next week.
Legacy point of sale providers will regularly charge for the ability to call for basic troubleshooting, and restaurant owners have estimated the fees can climb north of $2,000 a year. In some cases, they’ll refer you to a field office, which only operates on a Monday through Friday schedule.
Restaurant POS providers typically take a different approach, offering support as part of their service. This means basic support services don’t come at a cost that racks up month after month. Plus, their support call center will be open 24/7/365. Top-tier providers will also assign a dedicated account manager to your restaurant who is provided to ensure you get the most out of the product and satisfaction with the system.
D. Training
You should specifically ask if the product includes a Training Mode function. This works by allowing staff to train on a terminal and learning the features of the POS while using your venue’s data, such as your menu, without having to take all of your terminals out of service or impacting your reports. Not all restaurant POS systems include this feature or offer the ability to put a single terminal into Training Mode without putting the entire system out of service, so be sure to drill into this capability when making your choice.