Frustrated with unreadable grease-stained paper slips? Would you like to know for certainty how much of any product to order in the coming week - instead of just going by a “best guess”? Then you have made the first decision to help your business.

A point of sale (POS) system can give you a new level of control over your restaurant operations, helping you increase efficiency, boost profits, and fine-tune inventory management. When upgrading from a cash register and hand-written orders to a restaurant computer system can be hard, but the return on investment can really make it worth your time and effort.

Restaurant Point of Sale - Buying Tips
•Always prepare for the worst. As with any computer system, backups are important. Talk to your vendor about automated backup schedules.
•Clean all. Preventative maintenance is important to ensure that you will get maximum usefulness of your equipment.
•If you don’t like the heat… When choosing printers, remember that the heat in the kitchen can be enough to ruin thermal paper. Impact technology is a better option.
•Use the Internet to locate sites that specialize in POS and offer to send your requests to multiple dealers We recommend POS-For-Restaurants.com. Restaurants have very specific POS needs. POS-For-Restaurants is here to help you find an the BEST and most qualified point of sale supplier serving your geographical area and knowledgeable with your specific type of restaurant.
What is a restaurant POS system?
To review in-depth service offerings from multiple restaurant POS providers, use BuyerZone’s free vendor comparison tool.

A basic POS system is a glorified cash register, but with additional tools and features that help you run your restaurant in the most efficient manner. The typical restaurant POS station consists of a computer and cash drawer, a receipt printer, and a touch-screen monitor. Most restaurants have several such stations, with additional components depending on the type of restaurant.

For retail-style restaurants like sub shops, POS systems often include printers in the food preparation area, eliminating the errors that can happen when hastily-scrawled orders are passed back to the kitchen. For quick-service restaurants, POS systems are practically a requirement for living up to their name: orders taken on terminals in the front are displayed on monitors in the kitchen, ready to be quickly assembled and delivered to the customer.

POS systems are NOT all the same, subtle but important differences exist depending on the type of restaurant. POS systems need to be set up with your seating plan and menu plan so they can communicate customer requests to the kitchen and bar, track reservations and seating, and handle properly transactions.

Fine dining POS systems typically include more stations: multiple server stations, a bar station, a hostess station, and printers in the kitchen than more basic POS systems. They also have more flexibility - including creating and storing open checks, let servers send priority orders to the kitchen to start the next course, as well as track which server is serving which customers.

Restaurant point of sale benefits
POS systems can greatly reduce the amount of time your staff spends in the kitchen and speed up the order process. The efficiency gain is always well worth the effort. If a restaurant with 20 tables and an average check of $45 can increase turnover by one party per table, that is an extra $900 on a busy night. Just consider the additional savings that come from an even smaller shrinkage:employees can’t provide food at no or reduced charge to friends.

In addition to the direct cost savings, restaurant POS systems offer detailed reports that can help you make more informed business decisions. Sales reports help you better predict volume and schedule employees appropriately. Inventory reports can help you to order the right product week after week, adding profit to your bottom line. And comprehensive reports let you immeditately identify which items are sellers, the items that generate the greatest profit margin, and which items you should eliminate

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