How POS Can Meet the Demand for Guest Empowerment
How can restaurants help to meet the growing demand for self-service and empowerment?
Today, self-service is woven into the fabric of consumerism and is an increasingly important part of many verticals’ paths to digital transformation. Brands across the board are embracing kiosk trends to reinvent the customer experience for a more personalized, interactive experience that is convenient, intuitive, and easy to navigate. Self-service solutions help meet this need for personalization while providing a treasure trove of data and increased ROI for the restaurateur.
Self-service can also solve a variety of challenges for restaurants. Not only do they address the problem of waiting in line, but they can also increase profits. Kiosks never forget to upsell or promote new menu items and limited time offers, which boost basket sizes. Solutions like Toshiba’s Pro-X Hybrid Kiosk can be valuable for restauranteurs by facilitating line busting, faster orders, and throughput, while also addressing operational challenges and providing a modern consumer experience.
Restaurant POS has evolved past its original role. How can operators leverage an integrated POS?
In general, a POS system helps restaurant operators simplify their operations and provides increased efficiency for their customers and staff. This can include reducing waiting time, faster scanning of items, quicker payments, better security, and 24 x 7 access to data. With omnichannel POS platforms, businesses can leverage the accumulation of critical information about customers and help engage them, by designing customized loyalty programs that are tailored for specific groups of customers. Offering mobile checkout and contactless payments have become staples for the restaurant environments providing a more fluid customer experience. With all this technology, restauranteurs need to also work with their technology partner, like Toshiba, who not only provides hardware like the Toshiba TCxTM810 family with versatility that enables restauranteurs to use one POS solution in multiple configurations throughout their store, but also considers the restaurant ecosystem providing partner solutions and services for the full scope of their business.
Printing solutions remain critical to restaurant operations, what are some critical considerations for restaurants seeking a printing solution?
Ideally, find a printer that is compatible with your current POS system. Printers should be compact yet rugged enough to maintain peak performance in restaurants, especially the kitchen. Speed and graphics are also essential to consider. Mobile printing solutions and thermal printers are also extremely valuable to these operations. Integrated mobile printing solutions enable staff to print from smartphones, laptops, and tablets, minimize errors and delays, reducing waste and increasing customer satisfaction. Thermal order printers are the industry standard for both front-of-house and kitchen printing. They are much cheaper to run for higher print volumes as they don’t require expensive ink cartridges and are significantly faster to operate. Designed for performance and built for reliability, Toshiba’s retail hardened TCx Printer family, is environmentally friendly with low power use, and a paper saving option.
Our data shows that the digital disruption is on the rise. What are the benefits of an end-to-end solution for restaurants adapting to this evolving tech landscape?
Technology is making its mark on the restaurant industry by changing the way restaurants operate and adapt to new challenges. In today’s digital and physical world, restauranteurs must be agile and adapt quickly to stay ahead of customer expectations, improve competitiveness, and explore new business models to improve long term business viability. Technology convergence necessitates an end-to-end-solution for restauranteurs because it enables restaurant operators to continue to make day-to-day interactions more frictionless, as customers will never want to go back to a less-convenient model. It’s not just the customers who can benefit from restaurant innovation relative to technology. Restaurant owners and operators can gain efficiencies as well in terms of managing restaurants with real-time visibility into how the business is performing, helping with everything from sales growth to cost optimization.
Technology is becoming disruptive to the industry in many ways — particularly to those who have been slow to adopt it based our recent 2023 State of the Future of In-Restaurant Dining report. Toshiba works closely with leading restaurant ISVs to ensure clients receive innovative offerings for their business including restaurant management, front of house and back of house capabilities, and payments, to name a few. When combining these software solutions with our retail hardened Toshiba hardware and services, the Restauranteur can be assured of an end-to-end solution designed to keep their systems running, even in the harshest restaurant environments.