General Manager’s Guide To POS In The Back of House & Back Office

The behind the scenes stuff is what makes it all go smoothly in the front of house. That’s why General Managers prioritize the back of house (BOH) and back office!

Preparation, accounting, inventory, and production happens back here, and your POS can sync it all under one system. Thank goodness!

Kitchens Run Better With The Right POS Hardware & Integrations

Of course, the food your kitchen pumps out depends on high quality ingredients and inventive chefs. But ensuring orders are customized to your guests’ liking and made efficiently depends on your POS. 

Cloud-Based Printers Maintain Order Accuracy & Save Staff Time

Thanks to mobile POS devices and cloud-based systems, paper tickets to communicate between servers and kitchen staff are no longer necessary. Instead, you can set up your servers’ POS devices to send orders straight to your kitchen printer. (And this goes for dedicated bar printers, too!) 

This expedited process saves your staff both time and steps. Rather than having to scribble down each order on paper tickets and hand deliver them to the kitchen, the order is automatically sent there. 

POS printers also optimize order accuracy. Because the order is entered directly by the server and received instantly by kitchen staff, there’s no discrepancy over what the guest wanted. 

Both these benefits make for better guest experiences, too! 

Kitchen Display Systems (KDS) Keep Staff Organized

Kitchen display systems (KDS) are another handy tool for busy kitchens. These systems take everything great about printers (speed and accuracy) and optimize the process even more!

KDS eliminates the need for an expeditor to shout out each order as it comes in. Instead, with solutions like Arryved’s integration with Fresh KDS, each cook owns a station and only sees orders that pertain to their particular preparation duties, maximizing efficiency for each staff member.

Captain Lawrence Brewing Company combined Arryved’s mobile POS with Fresh KDS technology to better manage their robust kitchen operations and serve up the guest experience they had always envisioned. Having each cook only see the dishes for their particular station reduced confusion about what’s in the queue and the individualized KDS screens eliminated the possibility of forgotten plates. 

“It’s helped us to be faster in the kitchen,” said Jeff Skiba, the Director of Hospitality. With 41% of their sales coming from food alone, this was a game changer in terms of reducing staff workloads and improving guest experiences.

More Integrations For The BOH That Improve Business Operations

KDS isn’t the only helpful integration in the BOH. Here are a couple more that make all the difference for your team and yourself. 

Accounting Integrations Save You The Spreadsheet Headache

Reporting is arguably the most valuable POS feature because it contextualizes your sales and helps scale your business. You’ll need to combine that information with the other money you’re spending—such as rent costs—in order to have a holistic picture of your business’s financial health.

Accounting integrations automate that flow of sales information into your accounting software, so you don’t have to spend the time and manpower to manually input that information yourself. Plus, it eliminates the possibility of human error and you save additional time on any reconciliations. 

Tahoe National Brewing Company takes advantage of Arryved’s integration with Shogo to streamline their accounting needs. Arryved’s straightforward file export capability paired with Shogo’s flexible accounting features lets Tahoe National upload their sales data directly into QuickBooks. They can even split revenue into various categories, such as food, beverages, and events. The ability to get granular with different revenue streams helps inform the most profitable path forward in addition to saving the Tahoe National team time!

Inventory Management Integrations Give You Insights & Control

Properly managing inventory is a huge task for the BOH and it’s crucial to your business’s profitability. If you’re out of something, you can’t sell it!

Inventory management solutions help you manage your food, beverage, and retail inventory operations so you can account for everything sold and everything still on hand. You likely sell from a physical establishment, an online storefront, and maybe even at offsite events. It’s necessary to track all of your goods in one place and get inventory depletion information in real-time for optimal accuracy. Inventory management is a set-it-and-forget-it tool that helps you plan future production, know when to move products out of storage, and track existing goods. 

BarTrack in particular is a premier inventory management and Smart Draft system for beverage businesses. The integration helps improve beverage quality, save time with synced data, and maximize revenue. Just ask Grist Brewing, who was able to reduce pour costs by 5% and save nearly $20k per month using the Arryved and BarTrack integration! 

“In a short period of time we have dramatically reduced our pour costs through identifying principal causes of waste and creating a specific plan to successfully remedy those causes,” beams Chuck Norman, Grist’s Owner. “We would highly recommend all breweries use the BarTrack system. It’s a guaranteed return on investment.”

POS Tools That Inform Production Schedules & Ensure Superb Product Quality

Now that you’re appropriately tracking inventory, it’s time to make a realistic plan for production schedules and ensure that what you’re making tastes its best every time. 

Inventory Reports That Advise Efficient Production

It should come as no surprise that your data is what will most accurately help your team decide when to make what. Your storage and bottom line will thank you!

Sales By Category Report

This report gives a summary of sales broken down by category, item type, quantity, and size. If inventory is moving, guests like it and your BOH team should make more of it!

Arryved helps you get granular with this report, filtering by item size and using ounce-level tracking. That way, your craft business can determine which beverages are the best sellers, down to the drop! For example, if a certain beer is selling the most pints than any other tap, you might want to pounce on that profit maximizing opportunity and get to brewin’ more.

Three Hands Mead uses this report to ensure consistency in their products. “Being small batch, not every batch is identical,” explains Cody Lenz, the Co-Owner. When reports reflect a mead dipping in popularity, he knows to check that particular batch. “We try to be as consistent as we can, but is there something off with a batch or has it been sitting too long and the flavors have changed?” With this data informing beverage product quality, Three Hands ensures they’re proud of each glass of mead they serve. 

Best Sellers By Volume Report

Just as tracking pour size is important, so is tracking the volume of product you’re selling. It’s much more accurate than tracking dollar amounts sold!

Best Sellers By Volume tracks barrelage through your taps, so you know which liquid is really your guests’ favorite. Your best seller isn’t something anecdotal that you can identify just by watching the taps pulled at your restaurant or craft business. It’s the one that’s leaving taps at the highest volume. 

Plus, because experimentation and tap rotation is top of mind for craft folks, this report holds all parties responsible for prioritizing the best sellers first! 

This report also helps maximize profits. If your flagship Lager in a growler is selling the highest volume, consider mixing up how you offer it to see what makes your customers tick. Experiment with the growler price, or consider packaging it in a 6-pack instead to see how buying behavior changes. If a 6-pack is more profitable than a growler, and the same amount of volume is leaving your taproom, then use the growlers for something else and push those 6-packs instead. 

Hourly Total Sales Report

See which hours you’re selling the most product with Hourly Total Sales. This report helps your business determine a lot of important things: when to staff up, when to throw events to offset slow periods, and when to make more products!

Raíces Brewing Company uses this report to determine dates for their programming initiatives to ensure events are worthwhile from a business perspective—they intentionally host events when they expect to be slow in order to drive traffic. This also helps Raíces determine a good production schedule: They can prepare for busy days or big events by using their historical hourly data! 

Process & Production Software Guarantee High Quality Products

Believe it or not, crafting the perfect plate or perfect pint starts long before you lay your hands on any ingredients. It starts with the space and tools your team works with. 

Kitchens, kegs, and the like must be pristinely clean and in prime condition before you begin cooking or brewing. Just as with your FOH, your BOH team needs SOPs to do their jobs well, too. Those documents should always start processes at ground zero with ensuring clean equipment. 

Cleanliness isn’t only a health precaution, but SOPs guarantee that every dish and drink tastes identical and the way that it’s intended to. Plus, it makes training new hires easier because they have documentation for reference!

Production Software & Data Works With Your POS To Make Great Stuff

Inventory management integrations do more than track ingredients you need; they also help determine when ingredients are fresh and need to be used by. That way you save money, reduce waste, and ensure your BOH team is only using the best of the best. 

For craft beverage businesses, inventory management software also helps you determine when your products taste the best and how long they’re good for. Unique brews vary in their aging profiles, so this is important information in order to please guest palates. 

Speaking of guests, you must go beyond your products to curate exceptional experiences for them. Let’s dive into the next chapter: