Important Things to Consider in Your Small Business POS System

When you’re considering a small business POS system, there are 3 key factors to keep in mind:

• Is the POS system a good fit for your hustling staff?
• Is the POS system a good fit for your adoring customers?
• Does the POS system set you up for positive business growth?

Of course, many factors play into answering each of these questions. Let’s dive in!

Your Small Business POS System Must Meets Staff Needs

Your staff are your peers, friends, and teammates in running your business. You want to be sure that not only they love the tech you choose, it makes their jobs easier, too! After all, if your staff are happy, that positive energy funnels down to your guests.

Portable, Durable Hardware

Service staff interact with POS devices every minute of a day on the job. It’s crucial that you ensure those devices don’t tie them down—literally or operationally!

Whereas traditional POS systems are stationary, requiring staff to refer back to a single location to enter orders and close tabs, the future of small business POS systems is all about mobility. With mobile, cloud-based technology, staff can carry around their own POS device in a back pocket or apron, making it easily accessible whenever a hungry customer flags them down. 

Thanks to cloud-based technology, there’s no loss of synchronization when working with multiple POS devices. All POS devices sync to the same cloud, so when a staff member enters an order tableside, the kitchen and bar staff see the order reflected instantly on their own devices. Now they can get started on assembling the order, and the server can start the next table’s tab!

It’s also important to consider whether your small business POS system has the durability required to survive the daily wear and tear of life in a restaurant, bar, or the like. Someone’s bound to spill or drop a device in the heat of the moment, after all! 

Intuitive, Easy-To-Use Technology

Besides the hardware itself, as a business owner you also need to think about how intuitive and streamlined the actual system is of your potential POS, too. Our friend who runs PR and marketing at Arryved, Maura Hardman, said it best: “The more innocuous it can be, the better everything is!”

But “easy-to-use” is vague. Let’s look at some dynamic tab functionalities that make a small business POS system easily navigable and service-savvy:

• Seat numbers: Every order placed seamlessly corresponds with the seat number of the person who requested it. This makes it easy to deliver drinks and food to a table quickly and quietly (in case someone at the table is about to get to the punchline of their joke!) because service doesn’t have to ask “Who ordered the steak? The fish?” Plus, seat numbers make it easy to split a check for a large party. 
• Modifiers: Modifiers are tools that help staff seamlessly personalize any dish for a guest! Whether it’s the temperature they’d like their burger cooked or the choice of sides they’d like, the smartest small business POS systems prompt servers with questions when a modifiable order is placed. This ensures staff doesn’t forget to ask, and ensures each plate and drink is made to a guest’s liking. 
• Card on file: This feature lets servers swipe a card and hand it right back to guests, while still keeping their tab open. This saves staff time and the headache of finding it in a crowded rolodex in a few hours. Guests prefer this method, too!

Curious what other kinds of features reduce service friction? Ask your staff! They’ve likely worked with multiple POS systems in their career, and know which features they find to be the most beneficial in the interface. 

Facilitates High Quality Service

Of course, timely service is top of mind for all hospitality staff. As mentioned, cloud-based technology makes sure that orders are communicated to appropriate staff instantly, ensuring that food and drinks are assembled and delivered at optimal speed. That, and with a no-fuss interface, the actual ordering process is streamlined for staff and guests alike, too. But what makes exceptional service, exceptional?

When servers have the time and space to engage, educate, and upsell customers. Savvy tech is helping you out with the speed of everything, but it’s also giving your staff an opportunity to tell guests about your brand’s story, events coming up this summer, or how that sprig of rosemary in their cocktail came from the community garden across the street. 

These kinds of interactions separate a good customer experience from a superb one. When guests learn more about what makes your business unique, they’re more likely to appreciate the quality of your products and come back again next weekend. Plus, a guest’s superb time will be reflected in your servers’ tips, so they are all for turning the charm on if given the chance with your small business POS system. 

Saves Time On Administrative Tasks

That cloud-based technology is not only making service faster, it’s also saving your staff the task of running tickets to the kitchen and bar, and running receipts to corresponding tables. There are two other features especially important to small business POS systems that save staff time:

INTEGRATIONS

Integrations are third-party softwares that work with POS systems to make them even more data rich and efficient. These softwares specialize in a certain area of business, and essentially take care of time-intensive tasks like the following:

• Inventory management
• Accounting and reporting 
• Business management
• E-commerce solutions
• Staff scheduling 
• Kitchen display systems

Trust me, industry staff are very grateful for these softwares, for the sake of both their sanity and their time!

REPORTING

Robust, comprehensive reporting is another feature that saves staff a ton of precious time. Again, cloud-based technology ensures all of your data lives in the same place—i.e. cloud—and it’s updated in real time, just as POS devices are. Plus, the best small business POS systems provide pre-built reports on the data you care about the most, so staff members don’t need to spend hours in an Excel sheet. 

But more on data and reporting to come!

Your Small Business POS System Must Satisfy Guests

There’s a whole ‘nother party you have to consider when deciding on a small business POS system, and this one pays YOU: your customers! The following features are all about catering your POS to allow for guest flexibility. 

Service Autonomy With Contactless Ordering

In this digital age, there isn’t one singular way for guests to order anymore. And your small business POS system needs to consider all the ways in which people prefer to buy!

QR CODE ORDERING

QR code ordering flooded food and beverage businesses during the pandemic, and its continued use in the industry is due to its ability to streamline the ordering process and enhance guest satisfaction. 

By letting guests open, add to, and close their own tabs, you give them complete control of the dining experience. Plus, when servers drop plates or notice a drink is running dry, they have the time to make a thoughtful recommendation for the next round or tell them about the delicious ingredients that went into their meal. 

The ease of adding to your own tab results in higher tab size, and more engaging service results in bigger tips. See the data to prove it in The Ultimate Guide to QR Code Ordering!

ONLINE STORE

Ordering online has become even more prevalent recently, and it’s key to offer that convenience for guests wanting to order from their favorite food and drink spot. Whether you decide to sell merchandise only, or offer curbside and delivery, an online store diversifies your revenue streams, and you don’t want to miss that opportunity.

The best small business POS systems make hosting this platform free, and allow you to customize the site to fit your unique branding. 

Seamless Fit With Your Service Model

It’s also important to consider what kind of POS system would best fit your current service model. If you’re running a casual brewpub with small plates, for example, a QR code ordering feature makes a lot of sense for your guests that are accustomed to a combination of counter and table service. Likewise, if you run a mobile business like a food truck, a POS system without offline mode prevents you from doing business in certain areas. 

This consideration is all about ensuring that your guests don’t even realize you’ve made a switch with your POS—the only change they should notice is that service is even speedier than it was previously!

Menu Offerings Are Enticing & Accurate

Your menu is your first opportunity to wow your guests. Offering unique, seasonal items that make guests’ mouths water is a recipe for service success. So it’s critical to consider the menu options offered by your small business POS system. 

Digital menus are the easiest to manage, because you can make changes online and they’re reflected immediately across all staff and guest devices. No need to reprint!

Plus, savvy POS systems even allow menus to automatically update based on the time of day or the inventory in stock. Timed menus are especially helpful for Happy Hour, where prices or menu items can automatically update from 3-6PM. In the same vein as ensuring no price confusion for guests during Happy Hour, automatically kicking out-of-stock items ensures that no guest orders something no longer available. 

Digital menus are also a great tool to incentivize guests on particular menu items or help the indecisive choose. Add stars, hearts, or other icons next to guest favorites, and put all the most popular items at the top! 

Some places, like Heliotrope Brewery, use their menus as a means to educate their guests on ingredient lists and local products they use. This is yet another way to engage your guests and spark their interest in your brand!

Loyalty Programs That Engage Your Biggest Fans

Speaking of sparking interest in your brand, loyalty programs are a great way to engage your biggest fans and build your community reputation. The best small business POS systems offer fully-integrated programs that give you the flexibility and insights you need to understand and delight your guests. 

Using customizable perks to reward guests for certain behaviors not only helps boost your bottom line, but it cements customer allegiance because they know they’ll get something in return for spending money with you. Satisfied, rewarded guests are brand enthusiasts, and that increases the chance they’ll spread the word about you to their own friends and family. 

Offering a loyalty program also creates community within your business for members. Seeing a fellow Mug Club member across the bar or sporting exclusive merchandise around town makes members feel special, and they’re even more likely to advocate for your brand. 

Your Small Business POS System Must Facilitate Business Growth

You’re in this industry for the smile-inducing work, but you’re also in it to make some money and grow your brand name. The last major consideration to make about your small business POS system is whether or not it sets you up for long term success.

Fair, Transparent Fee Structure

There are plenty of nuances as far as credit card processing fees and the rates POS companies charge for them. (You can read more about that here!) For now, we’re focusing more on the features available to you and if the fee structure gives your business room to grow.

The best small business POS offers an all-in-one system that makes every feature available for no additional fees. This kind of structure encourages trial and error, and thus gives you the flexibility to test features as you see fit. 

For example, you may be curious about how QR code ordering will be received by your guests. With a POS that doesn’t charge for their QR code solution, you can try the technology out without being worried about a sunk cost if it doesn’t work out. After all, your POS system should embolden you to try new things!

Other unnecessary fees that can limit your growth, and therefore you should beware of, are additional login or hardware fees. Purchasing more POS devices is reasonable, but paying monthly fees just to use more employee logins or hardware is unreasonable. These kinds of charges only come from POS companies worried about their own bottom lines!

In short, your small business POS system should offer features and a payment structure that you can fearlessly grow into, instead of holding your business back with frivolous fees. 

Data Insights That Inform Your Future

The only way to grow your business is to identify what’s working and what’s not so that you definitively know the best path forward. You can find those insights in a comprehensive reporting dashboard provided by your small business POS system!

Here are example reports that come in handy when making business decisions:

• Hourly sales by product: This report shows the exact time a product was ordered and sent to the kitchen or bar. If you know the time each product is ordered, you can curate timed menus with the most popular menu items. That means you’re making informed menu decisions and keeping food fresh and costs down!
• Hourly total sales: This report totals orders by hour of the day. Over time, you can see when your business is the busiest, and plan staffing accordingly. Plus, this gives you the ability to push marketing efforts and plan events around your slower times to keep traffic steady. 
• Employee performance: By looking at total sales by employee, you can pinpoint the staff that are seemingly the best at charming guests. Make sure they’re on the schedule for your next event or busiest weekend nights!

With reports like these, you can confidently move forward with informed business plans!

Exceptional, Unlimited Customer Support Available

Lastly, a small business POS system that sets you up for growth is one that offers world class customer support every day of the week. A team that’s readily available via phone or email to answer any question that comes up allows your team to focus on guests, and POS support to focus on your POS. 

Unlimited support means they’re available even when disaster doesn’t strike, too! That means you’ll have help accessible for tracking down a report you’re curious about or spitballing additions to your online store. After all, your POS system and their team should be your partner in business, instead of just another line item on your monthly bill.

Choosing a small business POS system is an exciting time. Just be sure to keep your staff, guests, and bottom line in mind!

Arryved POS has a proven track record for helping businesses grow and succeed. Request a free, custom demo of the all-in-one system today!