Why You Need Brewery POS Software For Your Brewery Restaurant

When it comes to determining the right point of sale (POS) software for your brewery restaurant, it makes sense to utilize the tools built specifically for your type of business. Here are 8 particular features of brewery POS software that would best support your growing brewery restaurant’s success!

1. Experienced, Helpful Support

Your POS system should provide a customer support team that’s knowledgeable about breweries and are available via phone or email when you need them the most. Some POS companies charge per request or per month to access their support members, and that’s simply not a company that’s invested in your business’s success. 

When narrowing down your brewery POS software options, look for one that comes with unlimited customer support. You’ll thank yourself when your brewery has a chaotic Saturday night down the road and needs a question answered ASAP!

You should also consider the brewery-specific expertise of the support team on the other line. Will they know the difference between a sixtel, a barrel, and a keg? The ease of communicating any of your struggles comes in handy, especially in a pinch!

2. Craft-y Reporting

To truly understand your brewery and make proactive decisions about overall business operations, you must have POS software that tracks the data you care about and gives you access to it at any moment. This will help you save time and money, in addition to setting your brewery up for success in the future!

Let’s break down some brewery-specific stats that your POS software should track:

• Ounces Poured: You need to know how many ounces of beer you’re pouring, by size and time. This way, you can track trends in what brews are selling the most, and make educated decisions regarding production, marketing, and distribution.
• Hourly Sales by Product: You need to know what products you’re selling during what time of the day. This kind of report collects data on when exactly menu items are ordered, versus when the payment is transacted, which is really important in a brewery setting. We’ve all been at a brewery for some afternoon brews and ended up staying for dinner… and then dessert beers, too! Your brewery POS software needs to collect the information on when each beer was ordered, instead of documenting when that bill is eventually closed 6 hours later. With this data, you can curate timed menus with only the most popular menu items. Otherwise, you risk wasting unused food!
• Comps: Comps itemize all discounts taken which helps you identify areas of waste in your brewery and eliminate them to increase your bottom line. If you can find trends of different issues that were quickly remedied with a comp or a discount, you can stop those situations from happening. For example, if you see a rising trend in comps for incorrect beer pours, you may chat with servers on how to mitigate those mistakes. 

You want to be knowledgeable about your brewery’s happenings when you’re on and off the floor. Finding a brewery POS software that accurately collects the data you care about is key to optimizing your business operations. 

3. Beer-Centric Integrations

Another pro of using brewery-specific POS software is that it typically integrates with tools you’re already familiar with or using! Here are a few examples of Arryved POS’s integration partners in the craft beer industry:

• Ekos Business Management: Ekos reduces manual bookkeeping of POS and ecommerce transactions with your accounting system, so you can run your brewery restaurant smoothly. Syncing your POS software with Ekos eliminates manual processes and duplicate entries so you can focus on growing your business and gain complete visibility to the metrics that matter the most. 
• Yellow Dog Inventory Management: Inventory management for food and beverage is easy with a robust integration between Yellow Dog and your brewery POS software. 
• QuickBooks Accounting Software: Daily sales get imported into QuickBooks, so you can then cross-reference your brewery POS reporting with your bank deposits. 
• Shogo Accounting Automation: Shogo automatically syncs daily sales data to an accounting software of choice—so you know what your guests purchased, and how they paid for it. 
• Craftpeak Online Solutions: Craftpeak helps breweries sell their beer online with pickup, local delivery, and shipping options, and also builds websites with brewery-specific features to help you connect with customers. 

The purpose of a brewery POS software for your brewery restaurant is to make your life easier by using the latest technology available. Integrations like these do just that!

4. Mobile & Cloud-Based

A mobile POS system refers to all of the hardware and software components of a mobile, cloud-based point of sale system. Mobile POS systems use smartphones and tablets as the payment terminals. That means you can not only accept payments from anywhere in your brewery, but you can accept a wider variety of payment forms! (Credit/debit cards, RFID contactless payments, and digital wallets, to name a few.)

The mobility part of this kind of POS system is really important to any bustling brewery. Afterall, brewery restaurants are dynamic spaces—people change seats, beers get shared, and a thirsty guest may ask for another round on their way to the restroom! With a mobile POS, your staff can take an order from anywhere on-premise, or even take some brews on the road and sell them at a local farmers’ market. 

Mobile POS systems are also cloud-based, which means all of your data resides in one place that you can access at any time. You could be slinging cans at a local outdoor market and your awesome staff could be hosting trivia back at your brewery restaurant—all beer and food sales from the day will be automatically uploaded to your database and stored online, without requiring any type of local networking. 

5. Offline Mode

Speaking of your data being stored online without local networking, your brewery POS software should support offline mode. Frankly, the weather is out of your control and thus so is your electric power. Outages happen and in order to be proactive about any what-if’s regarding a storm, the best brewery POS systems offer offline mode. 

Once you return to a Wifi connection, all of your sales from the day (either from an off-site farmers market or from your brewery itself) will sync to your online database. Say hello to accurate reporting with no sales data lost! 

6. Dynamic Tab Functionalities

The actual tab functionalities offered by brewery POS software are extremely important to daily brewery restaurant operations. Here are some dynamic tab features to look out for when shopping around for your brewery restaurant:

• Splitting tabs can be a server’s worst nightmare when there is a packed picnic table full of guests ready to skedaddle. The best brewery POS softwares make this function a quick couple taps of the finger!
• Merging tabs should be a similar process of creating a parent tab and absorbing the appropriate checks under one.
• Tab tags are identifiers that any server can tack onto a tab to organize big groups. For example, if a baseball team comes in every Tuesday after their game, you can tag each of their tabs with a baseball naming convention. This not only helps staff keep track of everyone in a group, but it also allows you to look back after their season and see how much revenue was generated from all of their tabs every Tuesday. Perhaps it’s worthwhile for your brewery restaurant to start finding ways to invite more sports teams to dine and drink with you!
• Card on file is a dreaded practice for staff and customers alike. Every guest hates realizing that they left their card at the last taproom, just as every server hates the liability of holding on to a full rolodex of credit cards. Your brewery POS software should allow your servers to keep a tab open without having to hold on to the physical credit card. 

These tab functionalities speed up processes in your staff’s day-to-day, and those number-crunchers in the back of house will also appreciate the data organization! Any functionalities that make your brewery restaurant more efficient are a must. 

7. Pickup & Delivery Capabilities

With the uncertainty of the pandemic and no definitive end in sight, it’s obvious that you can no longer bank on a majority of your brewery restaurant sales coming from on-premise diners and drinkers. You need a brewery POS software that supports pickup and delivery capabilities, so your customers can enjoy your menu items from the comfort and socially distant safety of their own homes. 

And this isn’t necessarily a feature you’ll only utilize while COVID continues to wreak havoc on the world. Putting processes in place to offer pickup and delivery eliminates the limitations of having all your sales come from on-premise at your brewery restaurant:

• Capacity: Your brewery restaurant, especially during the pandemic, has a limit to how many people can comfortably enjoy libations within it. 
• Geography: You’re only serving those in your brewery’s neighborhood or existing customers that know about you already. Think of all the drinkers and newfound fans you could reach when offering delivery!
• Hours: Your brewery restaurant is only open certain times of day. If someone has a hankering for your delicious Sour Ale and a side of sliders, they must wait until you’re open for business!

All’s to say that enabling these new methods to enjoy your menu offerings casts a wider net of customers for your growing business and benefits your bottom line. 

This of course requires the support of your brewery POS software to host an online storefront and also requires some extra staff to fulfill and deliver orders. If you’re not quite sold, check out how Cabarrus Brewing released specialty beer during the start of the pandemic in March 2020, and sold out in 18 minutes. 

8. QR Code Menus, Ordering, & Payments

QR code menus, ordering, and payments are a pandemic-induced tool that the hospitality industry will be hanging on to for many years to come. These matrix barcodes popped up on tables across brewery restaurants these past couple of years, enabling guests to view menus, submit orders, and even check out right from their own smartphone. 

Besides the obvious time-saver this process is for hustling staff members (especially in the wake of a labor shortage) there are many other benefits to reap for brewery restaurants that use brewery POS software with QR codes:

• Tap List Management: Is your Porter keg kicked? A digital menu is much easier to update than a paper one, and inventory management solutions ensure that empty kegs are removed from the menu in real-time. That way, no thirsty guest is disappointed when a server tells them the beer they want is no longer available. 
• Decreased Wait Time: Time is money, for both your busy staff and your toe-tapping customers. Our tech-savvy world is accustomed to Amazon packages piling up on the doorstep seemingly instantly after being ordered. QR codes let customers order what they want immediately upon sitting down, and also let them check out from their own device right when they’ve got the itch to leave. 
• Breed Cicerones: With all the time saved on administrative tasks, brewery staff instead have time to gain expertise on your beer and food. They can educate themselves on the organic ingredients that go into your delicious goods, impress guests with their thoughtful recommendations, and invite customers to the upcoming Karaoke Night! Remember, QR codes enhance the interactions between staff and guests instead of eliminating the interactions completely. And those enhanced interactions are reflected in bigger tips: 24% higher to be exact!
• Fluid Seating & Service: As mentioned, your brewery restaurant is a dynamic space with a lot of moving parts. QR code ordering dismisses the idea that servers are assigned to certain tables, and creates a cohesive team mentality. This means no single server gets overwhelmed, and all guests’ needs are taken care of by a rotating team.

If you’re interested in learning more about how QR codes benefit your guests, staff, and bottom line, download the free Ultimate Guide to QR Codes in the Taproom for free! It also breaks down easy steps for implementation and ideas for how your specific brewery restaurant can start small. 

If your brewery restaurant is searching for POS software with brewery-specific features built by a team of craft experts and enthusiasts, request a free demo with an Arryved POS specialist today!