While serving good coffee and tasty pastries is essential, there’s much more to running a trendy café. To keep your café running smoothly, you’ll need to be proficient in various administrative and business skills.
Of course, you don’t have to do it alone or without assistance, so what better way to improve your café operations than with a cutting-edge café POS system?
With so many café POS systems on the market, each with its unique features, it can be challenging to decide which one is best suited for your cafe. So, in this article, we’ll focus on the essential features your café POS system should have to make running your café operations that much easier.
1. Order Management
Keeping track and following up on customer orders is essential to running a café. While writing down customer orders on paper is perfectly serviceable, it can lead to errors that can negatively impact customer satisfaction.
Having a café POS system with a dedicated order management system can significantly reduce potential ordering mistakes and help your front-of-house and kitchen staff better track customer orders, and streamline your café operations.
For added efficiency, look for café POS systems that integrate directly with self-ordering kiosks and kitchen display monitors. The former can help reduce wait times and ensure that all your orders are customer accurate, whereas the latter allows your kitchen staff to track orders from the POS system directly.
2. Kitchen Display Integration
A café POS with kitchen display integration can help to improve the accuracy and efficiency of your baristas and kitchen staff by displaying the necessary order information directly to them, acting as a central hub for all orders in your café.
Furthermore, a kitchen display system is constantly updated with the most recent information about a customer’s orders, so any additions or changes are reflected as soon as the customer requests them.
With a kitchen display system in place, your café can deliver more accurate orders, reduce potential waste, and reduce the possibility of employee and customer frustration due to miscommunication.
3. Clean & User-Friendly Interface
Given it’s intended to make your café operations more efficient, the last thing you need with your café POS system is to have your staff stumbling through a difficult-to-understand interface!
While a simple user interface may not contribute directly to better café operations, it enables new and current employees to quickly learn and operate the café POS system, which can help save time and additional costs for training.
A clean user interface will also help your staff provide better customer service by reducing the likelihood of minor errors during the billing and ordering processes. A user-friendly interface for POS systems that offer self-ordering or online ordering can make it much easier for your customers to place and pay for their orders.
4. Online Ordering
A robust café POS system with online ordering is an essential part of running a modern café, whether you want to diversify your revenue with an online order and delivery service or integrate online QR code menus to streamline the onsite ordering process.
Apart from improving revenue and efficiency, some of the other benefits of online ordering include:
- Better profitability with cross-selling and promotions
- Real-time online order tracking and updates
- Faster service times
- Better customer experiences
- Customisable branding and online menu
- The ability for customers to order from any device.
5. Delivery Partner Integrations
Save yourself the logistical troubles of running your delivery service by investing in a café POS system that offers direct delivery partner integrations that can run your deliveries for you!
With delivery partner integrations, you’ll not only be able to improve customer outreach by attracting customers loyal to their favourite delivery partners, but you’ll also ensure much higher order accuracy and lower wait times.
6. Detailed Reporting
Some café POS software can generate sales reports to help businesses track their performance and sales. These reports can assist café owners in identifying popular items and high revenue generators, which can help gauge demand for specific café items to ensure you have enough stock.
Having detailed performance and sales reports benefits any business, cafes included. By utilising a café POS system with a robust reporting feature, you can quickly assess the overall performance of your café business and make the necessary changes that can help to improve both efficiency and profitability based on your analytics.
7. Flexible Payment Options
A café POS system that supports flexible payment options can help to streamline the payment and billing process, improving customer turnover times and overall customer satisfaction. Allowing groups to split the bill and offering multiple payment options such as cash, cards, and digital wallets can only be a net positive for your customers!
8. Cloud-Based POS System
Whether you own a café chain with multiple locations or want to manage your café operations from the comfort of your home, a cloud-based café POS system can provide you with increased efficiency, ease of management, and convenience.
With a cloud POS, you can easily access real-time information and reports from any of your café outlets. Furthermore, storing your café POS data in the cloud as a backup ensures that you’re unlikely to suffer any accidental data loss.
9. Inventory Management & Tracking
Keeping track of your café inventory through traditional methods can be difficult, so having a café POS system that manages and tracks your list for you can be a critical feature when looking for a POS system.
With a dedicated inventory management system, you’ll be able to track and manage your inventory accurately, allowing you to be aware of when items and ingredients are running low, better optimise your stock purchases, and prevent your café from running out of certain items at critical times.
Finding The Café POS System That Works For You
Choosing the suitable POS systems in Perth to improve your café operations can be difficult, so we hope this list of must-have POS features has helped narrow down your options!
Remember, your café POS system does not have to be the most technologically advanced on the market. You’re good to go as long as it meets your requirements and has all the necessary features!
