Why Restaurants struggle

A lot of people ask me, why do Restaurants struggle? In my opinion it’s because they spend so much money making things look good, the last thing they think of is controls. A lot of owners think they can do it manually, but then realize 6 months into it that they are losing money and then they think they can’t afford a proper POS system.

For over 19 years I have watched the industry change and grow. When I first started helping clients try to understand how to put controls in their business and help with their bottom line profits, it was a struggle because I watched servers, managers, and owners try to do everything “old school” with paper and pen, which was understandable considering there was not a lot of technology besides a basic cash register. Then when cash registers became more popular, we discovered that it was a lot easier than using a calculator to ring in orders and we could do things like ring in PLU’s (price Look up) but the problem that occurred with that is that the order would not go directly to the kitchen.

After many years, I realized that the cash register was not enough to keep things under controland that the most important part to controlling a business was the kitchen printer,if your staff doesn’t see it, they can’t make it. It was a struggle for kitchen staff as well, because of common mistakes like penmanship errors which often resulted in food not being prepared the way the customer asked which resulted in food waste. Not long after this,Panasonic cash registers that had a kitchen printer was introduced. This is when the restaurant industry changed dramatically and noticed a great improvement on the bottom line profits.

But it was not until my company and I were installing more advanced touch screen POS systems that I realized why restaurants continued to struggle. I began to create solutions to help my clients make higher profits. First we started with things like making sure the system reminded servers to ring in beverages and side orders, for example: 5 servers in a restaurant forgetting to ring in 2 coffees per day over a 30 day period is approximately $525.00 per month. Those same 5 servers forgetting to ring in 2 side orders per day at an average of $1.00 per side is approximately$300.00 per month. Then we came up with ways for servers to speed up table turns, and to print bills faster. We thought of a way to prevent restaurants from having their administration adding up slips to get the total daily sales and the servers adding up bills to get the client totals,think to yourself:  hiring the extra staff just to do reporting, that results in a huge amount of labor costs, we are talking thousands per year! So we thought to ourselves, why not create one simple report that shows everything and that’s what we did. 

We strive to help our clients make the right choices for their business. The hospitality business is hard now and always changing, and with restaurants only making, on average between .03 -.08 cents on each dollar, the correct solutions need to be installed to make sure you are getting paid on every dollar.

The days are gone now when POS systems were just made to ring in orders and printing bills. Social media is everywhere, and technology is constantly expanding and becoming more powerful. Why not grow with the times instead of fearing it? With our Aloha POS, it is changing the way we do business in restaurants. With Aloha, we now can do things like ordering items and paying your bill on your phone, your customers being able to  share their comments through Facebook and Twitter, loyalty programs to show your customers how much you care, and gift cards so that your customers can give them to their family and friends.

Aloha allows us to show you how to drive more business to clients than ever before, and it’s only getting better!

So why struggle anymore, make the right choices upfront and install Aloha today, because it works!

Marvin Hayes - Solutions Advisor
East Coast POS