Monthly Archives: November 2013

Recent research conducted in Australia indicates that 55% of table service restaurant goers prefer use tableside ordering and payment methods. Even with this statistics available, less than 15% of table-service restaurants are currently taking advantage of the available mobile or tableside options as the preferred point of sale location.  Furthermore, only 25% of restaurant owners are currently using applications in the cloud to manage their businesses, when a staggering 98% of restaurant owners, whom have ventured into the cloud, say they will never go back to the old way of managing their business.

There are several reasons for this disconnect, and the two most common reasons for this is that many restauranteurs have a fear of change, a lack of awareness or they have yet to experience the benefits of mobile technology & cloud solutions and the relevance to their business.Before you try to convince yourself that you have missed the boat on mobile and cloud solutions, you should read further...

Research indicates that 55% of restaurants plan to invest in technology in 2014, and those investments will almost always consist of mobile and cloud solutions. When it comes to incorporating mobile cloud solutions into your restaurant, don't get left behind your competitors.  The reasons why you want to go mobile and into the cloud are:

1.    You'll streamline your operations

Tablets and smart phone solutions offer more efficient ways to perform current processes. Mobile solutions can assist users in performing core business functions with enhanced accuracy and speed, from completing payment transactions to taking food orders and performing core business functions with enhanced speed and accuracy.

2.    To stay connected

Most mobile solutions are designed specifically for restaurant owners and managers and allow them to communicate with their POS system and their employees via a smart phone or mobile device. That means you do not have to be physically present at your restaurant, and stay connected while you're on the go. A good example of a cloud based point of sale solution is VEND, the latest and fastest growing cloud point of sale solutions in Australasia.

3.    To save money

One of the great things having mobile cloud solutions as part of your business strategy is that apart from buying mobile devices like iPads or iPhones, it doesn't require any additional hardware purchases or large disruptive installations. Restaurants can almost always use their current POS hardware and systems to interface with a mobile and cloud solution without having to make costly investments.

4.    To attract new customers

By incorporating mobile and cloud solutions into your business strategy, you will appeal to the tech savvy customers, most of whom rely on their smart devices for just about anything and everything.

5.    And....you'll learn something!

These are just a few of the possibilities that mobile solutions can bring to the table. (No pun intended). The key is to implement a mobile and cloud strategy that will improve the dining experience, increase profitability, streamline your business and provide added convenience for your customers.

Case Study:

Take Pasta Pantry for example, an Italian food chain that prides itself on quality, service, innovation and reliability. They started off by using the cheapest cash register you can get, it cost about approximately $150, and they had absolutely no idea what was going on regarding their sales until they came across Vend, and it seemed the perfect solution.

“For us, Vend, Xero, and Shopify are a match made in heaven.”

Vend had all the features Pasta Pantry needed to operate its business efficiently, plus there were no huge overheads that ate up cash flow.  Affordability is just the icing, it is Vend’s functionality takes the cake. When sales started going through Vend the business owners were pretty excited to see for the first time what was happening. They can now get rid of underperforming menu items and actually be able to tell customers if they have something in stock, saying goodbye to guesswork.

Pasta Pantry did their research and found that many business owners use massively over-complicated point of sale systems, and they have to push a million buttons to get to the “lasagne with chips and salad”. As for Vend, the employees love it, even though none of them are very computer savvy, so it’s nice to have a simple interface. They all picked it up really quickly.

“Modern, multi-channel retail” is what Vend and other cloud services are described as. Vend and other web-based services like Xero and Shopify are very easy to use, affordable, and can be operated and accessed from almost anywhere, and on top of that they also work together.  Pasta Pantry were already using Xero, so that was a big plus. Setting up all the accounts in Xero that Vend posts sales and totals into was a pretty straightforward  process, now Xero shows all the sales and inventory data much better than it used to.

As per their original plan, Pasta Pantry had an online shop from the beginning. What they did not have was an easy way to manage it. They were using Wordpress with an e-commerce plugin for their online store, a completely separate system that meant doubling up on all inventory transactions and manually finishing sales.

There is definitely an easier way, and it wasn’t long before Pasta Pantry found it when they realised you could enter the product into Vend and it posted straight to Shopify automatically I was pretty amazed. Just that functionality probably saved the business over $100k per year.

It certainly seems as if Vend, Xero, and Shopify are a match made in heaven for restaurant owners.

For more information on Vend bundles, please click here, or contact us on www.pos99.com.au