Flexibility and trust are becoming the two most important characteristics of successful restaurants as the foodservice industry continues to preserve through and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Restrictions on gatherings and movement have already forced restaurateurs to find new ways to deliver quality food to their customers; but what once were considered temporary solutions, may wind up becoming popular mainstays.
Mobile POS for restaurants is an important tool in reaching your diners and maintaining convenience and confidence in the restaurant business.
How Eating Out Has Changed
Your own experience will no doubt be a reliable source of information, but there have been plenty of useful studies summarizing the critical changes owners and managers must make to successfully serve their diners during the COVID-19 crisis.
A recent report from Datassential found that 42% of people had ordered a “family meal bundle” from a restaurant during the pandemic, and that more than 75% of first-time bundle orderers were likely to do so again.
In a similar finding, the National Restaurant Association found that 60% of restaurant foods were consumed off-site in the first half of 2020, and that such orders were likely to account for 80% of industry growth by 2025.
The main takeaway is that customers are now well-aware of and enjoy the dining options restaurants can offer them, so restaurants must learn to adapt to and meet these changing customer preferences.
What Mobile POS for Restaurants Is
A mobile point of sale (POS) device for restaurants lets you meet the demands for curbside deliveries, walk-up-windows, and expanded home delivery options that are gaining in popularity.
This revolutionary tech turns your smartphone into a point of sale device that, coupled with a mobile card reader, lets you take orders, process transactions, and issue digital receipts just like a traditional cash register does. With the added benefit of mobility though, you can now be standing by the restaurant window, talking through an idling car, or meeting someone at their home.
Mobile POS carries the basic functions of full-service terminals, allowing you to split bills, make modifications to orders, and record customer information. Plus, the financial transactions are protected by leading end-to-end encryption and authentication technology.
How Mobile POS for Restaurants Create Brand Loyalty
Aside from the quality of your food, the convenience, quality, and security of your services are the biggest assets you have in building a positive brand. The dining experience should be similar to a duck gliding gracefully across the surface while beneath the water its feet paddle furiously; in other words, your diners don’t need to see how hard you’re working to make their evening memorable.
Mobile POS for restaurants gives you the power and flexibility to pull off that illusion. You can keep your customers focused on their meal by accommodating their requests while discretely and securely dealing with the final bill in a way that doesn’t interfere with their night out—even if that night out is at home.
Leave your guests thinking only of your food and hospitality and you’ll earn their loyalty. Let them pay for their meal in a secure and convenient manner and you’ll earn their trust.
In addition, mobile POS devices are cost-effective and provide many organizational advantages.
More Bang for Less Buck
As a broad rule, mobile POS for restaurants—and small or mobile businesses in general—is usually available without monthly fees. The devices lack the full power of a complete POS system, so the trade-off is you’ll usually pay a small fee per transaction, and/or be urged to use a preferred financial institution.
Regardless, you still have access to a device that can make your food available for sale wherever there’s a willing audience, which can include fares, markets, and conferences that can expand your exposure.
Since your mobile POS app operates as a digital extension of your business, you can use it to track sales and expenditure, as well as to generate reports on the health of your restaurant. You can quickly work out the leading dishes by time period, venue, and customer demographic, and then use this information to streamline your purchases and improve customer retention.
The better organized your business is, the better able it is to respond to diner demands and the emerging trends that are shaping the current- and post-COVID landscape of the foodservice industry.
Mobile POS for Restaurants Helps You Prepare for the Future
Most of the advantages achieved through a mobile POS app can be even better realized with a complete point of sale package that ties together every aspect of your business, but there’s still plenty to be gained from the less-costly, start-up version.
As customers begin to reestablish trust with restaurants and the dine-in experience, having a portable, secure, and flexible alternative that can help you deliver quality food in any manner the customer prefers is an invaluable tool.
We may not be certain of what diners will want from restaurants in the near future, but with a mobile POS device, you can be ready to meet them halfway—literally!
