POS Systems A must-have in today’s bar industry

How to Pick the Right Point of Sale System for your Bar

Bars, nightclubs, pubs, lounges, cafes and bistros can all take advantage of the many features point of sale (POS) systems offer to streamline their processes and improve customer loyalty. Whether you’re running a sports bar or the latest hot spot, you need a platform for payment processing.

The best bar-POS systems can do a lot more than just payment processing; they can be used in tablet form by your bartender and waitstaff to accept orders, they can open a bar tab for a customer who might want to order more drinks as the night goes on, they can help with inventory tracking in the back, they can integrate promotions such as happy hour deals as well as loyalty programs and they can be used for bar management, customer management and employee management. So getting a good POS system gives you an allin-one, user-friendly solution that will make running your bar that much easier.

Whether you’re just looking to make the day-to-day operations of your bar a lot smoother or you are trying to grow your small business, a POS system can be invaluable. It can take a lot of the hassle away, leaving you free to focus on plans, strategies, innovations and employee management.

What should you look for in a bar-POS system?

There are many choices when it comes to bar-POS systems, and the best choice for your business is one with maximum functionality and a reasonable price point. Of course, the fact is that each bar, lounge, cafe or nightclub is different and offers different benefits to its customers. You may specialize in ambiance, in different types of drinks, in creating a cozy interior, or in offering cutting-edge music to your customers. But there is one thing that all bars and nightclubs have in common: they want to provide good service to their customers, and they want them to keep coming back night after night. In order to do this, there are certain features you might need from a good POS system.

Benefits of a POS system include:

» Mobile POS systems improve the customer experience. » POS systems offer fraud protection. » A POS system makes ordering easy. » Your POS system should enable you to track sales. » Your POS system should help you with inventory management. » A POS helps you run promotions and loyalty programs.

Should you run a bar without a POS system?

Obviously, there were bars long before there were POS systems. So it’s not completely impossible to run a bar without investing in a POS system, but it does put a lot of pressure on employees who not only have to make sure that customers get their orders but also keep track of the money coming in and money going out. An employee who is overtaxed is likely to make a lot of mistakes, which is clearly bad for your business.

Without a POS system, you also miss out on all the add-ons we’ve discussed, especially the management tools. You’ll have to do your inventory management manually, which means that there is greater scope for human error. You’ll also have to keep track of all the open tabs. If you or your waitstaff forget about even one open tab, that’s going to mean a loss for your bar.

Plus, it becomes more difficult to figure out exactly what direction your business is going to take in the near future when you don’t have access to sales reports from your POS system. Sure, you can sit down and calculate all your sales before making business decisions, but this is a lengthy procedure and wastes a lot of time, which could be better spent doing something else.

So it might be possible to run a bar without a POS system, but it’s certainly a lot more difficult. Instead, it makes sense to invest in a good POS system like Heartland, which gives you all the above benefits and more. It’s easy to train your employees to use the system, and you get to pick and choose the features that you want to use. Heartland’s POS systems offer very reasonable monthly fees and substantial value to bar owners.

Want to learn more? Visit the FRLA blog to read this article in depth.