Operating a bar can be a great experience—but it can also be fraught with challenges and worries. Fortunately, a good bar POS system has the potential to mitigate most problems. Here are four ways bar POS reduces stress for bar owners and managers:
1. Helping to maintain tight control over money, inventory, and employees. A good bar POS system produces detailed cash management reports that include, but aren’t limited to, register reports and information about overages/shortages. You’ll know exactly where your money is and where it’s going, and you won’t need to worry about how employees are handling cash because the system makes them accountable for every coin and bill they handle during their shift.
On the inventory management side, a bar POS system ensures that you’ll rarely, if ever, experience the anxiety that results from running out of beverages or ingredients—particularly during peak periods. The system’s reporting features lend insight into what your best-selling drinks are and when your establishment is at its busiest, ensuring that you have appropriate quantities of product on hand when you need them.
Some bar POS solutions can also be programmed to generate re-orders only in accordance with user-defined inventory levels, as well as to require employees to enter the specific brand and quantity of liquor they use to pour each drink. Pour limits can be set for individual beverages, so it is easy to identify which employees may be dispensing excessive quantities of liquor at a discount or no charge.
2. Supporting compliance with liquor laws. The mere thought of fines, loss of liquor license, increased insurance costs, or even being forced out of business as a result of non-compliance with regulations that govern alcohol service is enough to keep most bar owners and managers up at night. A bar POS system allows you to rest easier by leveraging age verification peripherals (e.g., scanners that read the 2D bar codes on drivers’ licenses) and software (e.g., solutions that limit the number of drinks employees can ring up per tab) to enforce age-related and other restrictions on alcohol consumption.
3. Maximizing customer traffic and beating the competition. With a bar POS system in place, you’ll be less inclined to “stress out” about slow periods, keeping patrons coming back, and/or the fact that another new establishment is opening down the street. Why? Such a system makes it easy to plan, promote, and hold special events as well as special promotions—both of which attract new customers and cultivate loyalty among existing ones. Using your bar POS’ features, you’ll be able to plumb sales reports to determine the best times to hold these events, identify customers whose preferences may dictate their interest in attending a given event, leverage integration with social media to get the word out, and more.
4. Minimizing mistakes while facilitating a high level of customer service and satisfaction. Fewer order errors mean happier customers—and fewer worries for you. A bar POS system standardizes the order-taking process, ensuring, for example, that the bartender doesn’t use the wrong brand of liquor because he misread a handwritten ticket or that the kitchen sends out chicken tenders when a patron has actually ordered buffalo chicken. Bar POS peripherals can also improve overall order accuracy via touchscreen monitors and receipt printers.
Admittedly, there will be days during which you do, as a bar owner and/or manager, have something to worry about. But with bar POS on your side, these instances will be few and far between.
