Cafe POS System - What features add value to your business?

In previous articles, we covered the importance of POS systems in restaurants, due to the complexity and demands of a restaurant's operation. What about small F&B businesses with simpler operation processes such as cafes? Is a POS system still a necessity? 

The answer is yes, if you are looking to boost your cafe business productivity and make your business scalable. Here are some features to look out for when buying a POS system to value add your cafe business.

Easy to use and fast ordering interface

Ordering speed relates to how well you can capitalize on your peak hours to get more revenue. Since most of the ordering is done at the counter, it is important that staff can easily process an order with a minimal amount of clicks on the ordering touch screen, to get more orders and move the queue faster. This heavily depends on the fundamental design of the software you choose. A good POS software gives you an intuitive design with less work from the user while achieving the same goal.

Easy menu set up

New dishes and pricing adjustments are common for a cafe. Your POS system should allow you to add, edit and remove dishes with ease. It should not be a tedious task which requires you to spend hours on, taking away your focus on important aspects of your business. 

Online/Cloud-based reporting

As a cafe business owner, you may not have time to be always in your shop. Hence, having a POS system with cloud-based reporting is essential. This way, you will be able to get real time data of your cafe and manage it remotely as long as you have a stable internet connection. 

Cloud-based backend

A traditional POS system’s backend offers a wide range of features. However, the disadvantage is that you have to be in front of your POS system to perform these backend functions. With a cloud based backend POS system, your backend will not only be accessible locally but also online. Cloud-based backend allows you to manage your stores remotely, empowers you to timely roll out business plans. Tasks such as menu updating and launching of promotions can be easily carried out for single outlet or chain cafes, increasing operational efficiency.

Cashless payment integration

With today’s constantly advancing technology, payment is no longer limited to cash only. There are a wide variety of payment options for your customers to choose from, most of which are cashless payments. As a cafe business operator, you can expect that most of your customer demographic is the younger, tech-savvy generation who are fascinated with convenient lifestyle including cashless payment.

Your POS system should be able to link up with cashless payment terminals to provide convenience to your customers during check out. On top of that, cashless payment also boosts payment security and accuracy as it eliminates the chance of human error incurred upon re-entering the bill amount into the payment terminals.

By digitalizing payment through cashless payment integration, you do not need to worry about day end cash discrepancy and at the same time, provide your customers with a fuss-free ordering process.

Inventory management

Inventory management is not only limited to the retail industry. Your consumables like disposable cups, straws, etc., will run out as well. Your cafe POS system can help you create stock in cycles and prevent running out of these often overlooked items, through low stock reports and alerts.

Recipe management

Recipe management is a feature which is closely related to inventory management. This is a feature that takes inventory management and makes it useful for F&B businesses such as cafes. With recipe management, you can pre-set a close estimate of the ingredients used for each dish. 

Whenever a dish is sold, ingredients of specified quantities will be deducted from your inventory, providing you with a low stock report to prompt you for stock ins and ensuring that you never run out of stock for your best sellers.

Keep in mind that in the F&B industry, quantities of ingredients used are close estimates, hence, it is a good practice to have a stock take every once in a while to ensure your inventory reports are as accurate as possible.

Customer rewards and loyalty programme

As a cafe owner in today’s competitive F&B industry, ensuring that you have a steady flow of returning customers is as important, if not more important than customer acquisition. Your POS system helps you with just that. POS systems of today have features that help you keep track of your member’s reward points and expiry. 

This helps you to run reward and customer loyalty programmes without the hassle of manually keeping track of your customers’ details.

Automating promotions

Creating attractive promotions is essential for your cafe to be competitive. POS systems provide you with the option to set promotion rules based on certain purchase criteria, within a preset date range. This way, when your customers’ purchase matches your promotion criteria, they will automatically enjoy the benefits. 

This powerful feature helps you ensure consistency across your customer base when they are eligible for promotion benefits, and also boosts ordering efficiency by reducing the extra clicks needed to apply a discount or a free item.

Getting a POS system for your cafe

If you are looking to get a POS or upgrade your current cafe POS for a maximum productivity boost, drop us your contact information below and we will be in touch with you to arrange a free demo, to help you make a more informed decision on your cafe POS system.