In previous posts we discussed how the right point of sale system can increase the profitability of a café. The focus was around increased revenue through Customer Loyalty. But customer loyalty may not be right for every business. Your café may be in a captive market like a train station or stadium where it is the automatic choice of the consumer. In this instance you may not need a loyalty system to increase turnover.
The business needs to handle as many sales as possible in a short time.
What Do We Mean by Productivity?
Productivity from a Point of Sale point of view is processing an order, fast and efficiently, to ensure that as many sales as possible can be made during peak times.
What is the Value to the Café?
Let’s take a scenario where your café has busy periods during 10am to 1pm and at times there is a queue of customers. Your customers are regulars and you see them most days as they full fill their caffeine habit.
Taking an average coffee purchase, a regular customer is spending around $78.50 per month (or $945 per year). If during those peak times, 3 or 4 customers are making the decision NOT TO PURCHASE then productivity is costing your business $3780 per year. It is safe to assume that if it happens 2 or 3 times then the customer will find an alternative café.
How many times have we heard or even said “I really like café ABC, but it takes so long to be served I started going to café DEF”. Now not only has the café lost the $945 from that first customer they have also lost the chance to impress their friends. It is probably not worth calculating if those 4 customers told 4 friends, but it would be A LOT of money lost through productivity.
How Does a Point of Sale System Help?
The ideal Point of Sale System for a café will be fully integrated and require ONE process to serve a customer.
If your Café’s standard process is anything like 1. Take the Order, 2. Write the Coffee Order on a Post It note, 3. Write the Food order on a docket book, 4. Enter the sale in to the cash register or POS system, 5. Enter the amount into the EFTPOS terminal, 6. Give the post it to the Barista, 7. Give the Food docket to the Kitchen, 8. Take the payment. You fall into the UNPRODUCTIVE category and risk missing out on thousands of dollars of sales!
Compare the above with a sales process in a Café using an efficient Point of Sale System. 1. Take the Order, 2. Enter the sale into the POS system. (The POS system sends the order to the barista and to the kitchen and is integrated with the EFTPOS), 3. Take the Payment.
3 Steps v 8 Steps allows you to sell to more customers during those peak times.
When the price of a reasonable Point of Sale system starts from less than $4,000 then missing out on 4 customers a day during peak periods is costing you, in a little over 12 months, more than the cost to boost your productivity.
Turbo Boost Your Café’s Productivity!
- Let your customer’s PRE PAY for their coffee and reduce every sale to 2 steps.
- Integrate your POS system with Web Ordering and/or Android / IPhone ordering and reduce every sale to 1 step, and Kiss the Queue Good Bye!
- Implement a card based loyalty system and remove cash and EFTPOS from the sales process. Reducing banking fees and EFTPOS transaction fees and increasing sales processing speed.
In Summary, if you have those queues at lunch time then productivity is costing you sales and money. A Point of Sale system will help elevated the issue increase your sales and profit.
POSmate has been involved in providing Point of Sale systems and Loyalty systems to the hospitality industry for over 23 years.
For more information or previous articles feel to contact POSmate on 0406 103 016 or via email raymond@posmate.com.au
By Raymond Gaud, Director / Principal, POSmate