A Data-driven Climb to Success: How Can POS Machines and Restaurant Analytics Help Restaurant Owners be Profitable?
With QSRs (Quick Service Restaurants) and multi-cuisine restaurants spreading across India, especially the metros, restaurant owners are tasked with constant menu engineering to stand out from the competition. However, it is not enough to know what differentiates the food outlet from others, at least in the vicinity. Checking the popularity of each dish and keeping a tab on consumer behaviour remains critical, requiring owners to collect and crunch massive data sets regularly.
Why a Robust POS is a Must-have
Given that F&B industry segments such as QSRs are projected to grow at the breakneck speed of 8.7% CAGR between 2024 and 2029, Restaurant Tech devices such as POS systems can no longer be limited to processing payments. Advanced POS solutions have become instrumental in gathering critical data insights, helping restaurants drive optimum customer satisfaction that plays a role in profit maximization. Once the data is collected and analyzed, the decision-makers can also determine which processes in their operations require streamlining.
The Combined Force of POS Machines & Restaurant Analytics
Here are some advantages of POS with Restaurant Analytics (with AI capabilities):
- Sales Insights and Revenue Growth: The software enables business owners to access the sales data at a single touchpoint. While getting a snapshot of the revenue generated might be easy with traditional POS systems, total revenue hardly suffices to indicate the most-sold items, the days of the weeks the item has the most demand, and the items frequently paired with the in-demand dish.
This is where a POS with Analytics abilities can save the day, offering comprehensive insights on each item and the entire menu. It is worth adding that restaurants can create targeted marketing offers or campaigns by leveraging insights such as the popularity of items and the demographic that orders them.
- Inventory Management: Updating an inventory is nothing short of exhausting. In this regard, a POS with Analytics can be a game-changer by not only speeding up the process but also making it accurate, i.e., free of human error.
Also, given the dishes sold and their recipes, the device can potentially be programmed to send alerts when a stockout comes close (implemented in some POS machines that can roughly guess inventory levels by units chosen by the user). Preventing stockouts can make sure that the most popular items on the menu can be served at any time. An accurate replenishment cycle ensures that the finances are used only when needed and is not stuck with unused inventory while also preventing spoilage as almost all the items in stock are perishables. In other words, a solid POS can automate operations and save costs.
- Personalization: When a customer walks in, it can be a good practice to ask for their phone number, so that that if they are repeat customers, the front desk and service professionals can inform the kitchen about the regular orders. It goes without saying that understanding customers’ preferences is critical for building brand loyalty – yet keeping track of all the historical data of every customer can be difficult. This is where the CRM integration of POS proves to be handy. On the other hand, the Analytics features of the POS software allow the user to get a concrete understanding of a customer’s order history.
To further build loyalty, owners can achieve more than just prompting customers to try the latest dishes on the menu which are close to their taste, thus getting first-hand feedback on the menu update. Customer data can also be used for personalised offers. For instance, loyal customers may receive discounts on their favourite dishes, increasing satisfaction and encouraging repeat visits.
POS Machines in Restaurants Which Can Deliver Maximum Success: Discover Factors to Consider
Selecting the best POS for restaurants in India can be a daunting task, especially as the customers are often very fussy about their food habits and are price-sensitive because it can be a challenge for owners to focus on engineering an effective menu while also offering smooth service. Here are some key considerations:
- Ease-of-use: Choosing a user-friendly POS machine can ensure smooth adoption by staff
- Customizability: Features tailored to one’s unique restaurant type fast-track billing (particularly helpful during peak hours) and make data collection against unique fields easy
- Third-party Integration: Ensuring seamless integrations with third-party delivery platforms such as major food aggregators, including Swiggy and Zomato, and other software such as CRMs and loyalty programs can turn out to be game-changing
- Cloud-Based System Over Locally Hosted Systems: A Cloud POS system offers remote access to analytics and reports, allowing owners to always stay in control
- Scalability: Opting for a system that can grow with the business, especially if an owner has a franchise planned, can be more economical and convenient
The Restaurant Tech market is saturated. Hence, selecting the right POS for one’s restaurant can be difficult. Let’s see how one of the most sought-after solutions in the market, QPOS, can help restaurants take better charge of their operations and profitability.
How Implementing QPOS can be Transformative
In addition to keeping an accurate track of the sales data, QPOS helps owners or decision-makers get a real-time snapshot of the monthly, weekly, or daily performance of the restaurant. The user-friendly and scalable software comes with an NLP chatbot that fetches the exact data set that the user might be looking for by following simple instructions in English. Similarly, for personalising services, the chatbot’s on-demand data insights can redefine how effectively the outlet drives customer satisfaction. As the bot saves report-making and data-crunching time, businesses gain more time to do what they love doing the most: innovate around food.
The efficiency of Restaurant Analytics provided by QPOS is enhanced by the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) capabilities of the software, particularly for inventory management. A major use case of this ability is when vendors send physical bills to the restaurant. Instead of going through the laborious and time-consuming process of manually updating the inventory information in the restaurant database, users can leverage the OCR ability of the cloud-based software to instantly update the inventory data.
We at QPOS also understand that one-size-fits-all solutions may not meet the unique business model and offerings of the venture. Therefore, we strive to ensure that the POS system can be customised to the specific needs of the user.
Curious to know more? Contact us today!
