Your point of sale (POS) system is overflowing with valuable data. Are you making the most of it?
If your restaurant is running on a modern cloud-based platform, you already understand that your POS platform is more than just a way to take orders, process payments, and print receipts. The major players in the space — Toast, SpotOn, Square — have evolved into comprehensive restaurant management ecosystems.
These all-in-one systems provide a full suite of tools including:
The point is, your POS platform is more than just an efficient tool for ringing up burgers and beverages. It’s also a robust source for data. Restaurant POS analytics and POS reporting can offer deep insights into every aspect of your operation.
These insights can be used to make smarter decisions about pricing, staffing, marketing, and more.
We want to be sure that you’re not only using the best POS system for your business, but also making full use of the data. So let’s break down the six key numbers your POS should be giving you — and what you can do with these numbers.
Let’s start with the obvious one. Naturally, your point of sale system is really effective at tracking food sales. Food sales are, of course, the heart of your business.
But it’s not just about what you're selling. It's about how much your business is making on each item you sell. Modern restaurant POS analytics can provide detailed reporting on each menu item. This means you can:
You can use these findings to adjust your pricing, cut underperforming items from your menu, create specials based on your most profitable items, and more. Make sure you're using your POS reporting to identify and seize margin-boosting opportunities.
If you have a liquor license, alcohol sales probably give you your best profit margins. That’s why a lot of restaurants use alcoholic beverages as part of a “loss leader” strategy.
With this approach, you may use certain food specials and discounts to get people in the door, with the expectation that your alcohol sales will ultimately make up the difference. With POS data, you can see exactly what’s working and what’s not. This means you can:
In short, alcohol sales are not just an add-on. They can be a strategic way to boost your profit. Once you pin down the data, you can fine-tune your menu, adjust your pricing, and train your team to upsell drink specials.
Your POS system gives you the power to drill down your sales data with incredible precision. With just a few taps, you can see your current and historical sales data for any hour of any day. This is absolutely one of the most important POS reporting capabilities, one that can help you make more informed decisions about staffing, pricing, promotions, and more.
Perhaps the underlying data shows that you’re losing money by overstaffing on slow weekday afternoon shifts. Perhaps the data reveals a seasonal surge in Friday lunch traffic.
These findings can help you:
This underscores the importance of POS data in your decision-making. When you understand your sales trends down to the exact hour, it becomes easier to identify and eliminate waste, recognize opportunities to boost profit margins, and manage your personnel more efficiently.
POS reporting also makes it possible to understand the performance of your product mix with greater accuracy. This function can help you identify your top-selling items and see which items aren’t moving — and adjust your menu accordingly.
In short, your POS should be able to tell you which dishes are actually bringing in cash and which are just taking up space on your menu. As a result, you can make data-driven decisions like:
Most of the industry’s leading POS providers also offer integrated inventory management, usually as a paid add-on feature. And many of these inventory management systems already incorporate AI technology, which can help to automate reordering based on your POS system’s product mix reporting.
You can also learn a lot by breaking down your sales data based on individual revenue streams. Your POS system makes it easy to see exactly where your money is coming from. You can break down sales by:
Restaurant POS analytics can give you a lot more clarity on pricing strategy, menu offerings, marketing efforts, and more.
Let’s say, for instance, that your POS reporting shows that 60% of your Friday afternoon revenue comes from cocktails and alcohol sales. Since you’re already doing well with alcohol sales on that afternoon, maybe you should consider promoting a Thursday happy hour to boost midweek performance.
Your POS sales mix data makes it possible to spotlight, and build on, the things that are already working.
Labor is actually your largest controllable cost. While the costs of hiring and wages continue to rise, you can rein in your labor expenses by deploying your labor resources more efficiently. Your POS reporting can provide the insight needed to do exactly that.
Today’s all-in-one POS system comes fully integrated with a variety of labor management tools. Team members will usually clock in and out of shifts using the POS system. This gives you the ability to:
These data points can help you identify inefficiencies, enhance training, and better align shift scheduling with expected customer traffic.
Most POS systems are designed to be user friendly. But there is still a learning curve. That's why many of the leading POS companies offer onboarding specialists who, for an added fee, will:
For restaurant owners who don’t have a tech background or unlimited time (which is most of us), this higher level of support can be a smart investment.
Still, I must offer one important warning to all restaurant owners and operators. POS reporting can deliver insights, reveal patterns, and help you understand your own business a lot better. But you still need to learn how to use that data to make effective decisions.
POS systems won’t do the hard work for you, but they can help you do the hard work better, faster, and with more precision.
The importance of POS data can’t be overstated. And the good news is, whether you know it or not, you probably already have access to this information.
If you don’t have access to this information, now is a great time to reevaluate your POS system.
Are you getting everything you need out of your platform? Schedule your personalized consultation today and we’ll take a closer look together.