To run a successful bar or nightclub, establishments must to go above and beyond serving beer and liquor and create an atmosphere full of opportunities for their customers. Bar POS systems can not only streamline service on busy weekend nights, but also enable more effective marketing to earn repeat customers.
Here are five aspects of your establishment that can be optimized with a bar POS system:
Inventory
For bars and nightclubs, it’s important to keep a well-stocked inventory on-hand – you should never run out of your customers’ favorite beer or shot. Customers can become frustrated if they are not able to order their drink of choice, and especially if inventory becomes a recurring problem at your establishment.
A bar POS system can include reporting features that allow alcohol-serving establishments to monitor their popular products, peak times, overall sales performance and inventory usage to ensure that purchase orders are optimized, no matter the timeframe or season.
Recipes
Aside from having optimal amounts of beer and liquor on hand, bars and nightclubs should also have an optimal amount of ingredients to make sure they are able to make mixed drinks correctly. Imagine a customer ordering a piña colada only to find that your establishment has run out of pineapple juice – it is simply unacceptable. Monitoring pour levels is important in making sure that the right ingredients are always available, even for your least popular mixed drinks.
On the flip side, it’s important to monitor pour levels to ensure that employees aren’t using too much alcohol. Small overpours can add up over time and translate to wasted resources and inventory discrepancies. However, this phenomenon is hard to control – managers don’t have time to watch each employee make each drink.
Bar POS software allows managers and owners to monitor pour levels to make sure that ingredient amounts and pour levels are standardized and employees aren’t overpouring.
The benefits of doing so are two-fold: managers can mitigate the risks of employee theft and inventory shrinkage and customers will be pleased to receive consistent drinks during each visit, regardless of the bartender – rather than ones that always seem to taste “a little off.”
Special events
It is quite common for bars and nightclubs to host special events such as happy hours and open mic nights – they help to attract new customers and promote drink or food specials. But sometimes these occasions require changes to the menu that can be confusing and hard to accommodate.
Establishments can not only benefit from analyzing performance metrics to schedule special events, but also create new menus and items especially for these events. You can quickly and easily flip back and forth between your everyday menu to a happy hour one that includes discounts on high profit margins.
Marketing
Your bar POS software can enable you to unleash the power of upselling, or going above and beyond the average transaction. The system’s reporting features can help you determine your best times to promote drinks and food items. You can also include recipe information on your POS so that employees have quick and easy access to information about new products if they are asked.
Liabilities
Liabilities and risks are usually among bar and nightclub owners’ biggest concerns – there are many laws that govern these establishments. Without protecting your customer’s safety, your establishment could cease to exist. Your bar POS software allows employees to check ages of patrons, monitor pour levels and limit consumption on drinks with high alcohol content to keep that from happening.
A POS system that was made exclusively for family restaurants will be wholly insufficient in managing a bar or nightclub. It is imperative for owners of liquor-serving establishments to invest in a system that was purpose-built for their unique operations.
