Goa, or more commonly known as the party capital of India attracts a major chunk of tourists which, in turn, has a huge impact on the hospitality industry of India. The city has many restaurants, shacks by the beaches and bars to facilitate the vacation vibes for tourists. The increased tourism and customer demands for a luxurious experience at their favorite bars have brought in a dire need to automate the restaurant operations. Getting an ideal restaurant management software for your restaurant in Goa would not only make your operations smoother but, also help you attract more customers, for a simple reason of convenience.
Having said that, you must have a detailed plan about how to choose your ideal POS and an idea about the kind of features you’re looking for. Not every restaurant POS goes with every kind of restaurant format. There are differences in the required features of a POS, depending upon the kind of restaurant you’re running.
Let’s read more to understand how one should buy restaurant management software for themselves.
Restaurant POS Features Checklist For Buying A Restaurant Management Software In Goa
Goa has always been famous for its shacks, bars, and lounges. Getting the right restaurant POS for your restaurant format becomes crucial as it directly impacts your sales. For instance, a bar POS should generally have an anti-theft feature whereas, a regular breakfast restaurant POS should have proper billing and inventory software.
Features You Should Be Looking For In Your Ideal Restaurant POS – Breaking It Down For Each Restaurant Format
Running a restaurant business is pretty tough anywhere you go, but a state like Goa has its challenges to overcome!
Having a heads up about the trends in the restaurant space in Goa is a better way to ensure smoother operations at your restaurant. Before choosing an ideal software, you should know the features that you should be looking for before opening a restaurant.
Generally, a restaurant management software would help you by streamlining several operations at your restaurant including billing, inventory management, order taking, and so on. There are a couple of general features that each restaurant format would want in their restaurant POS. These features include the ease of use of the software, the devices it would work on, the waiter performance analysis, and so on.
i) Ease in Ordering
Let us start by mentioning that all the restaurant formats require the feature of easy ordering in their restaurant POS. The restaurants and shacks in Goa are known around the globe for their perfect chilling ambiance and party vibes. It needs a great amount of effort and resources to keep that vibe alive. A restaurant management software is therefore demanded in such situations where the customers would have the benefit of ordering their drinks and food from their tablets, without even having to interact with your first-line staff.
Tablet ordering is not just quick and effective, but also attracts several tourists. It must be noted that many-a-times there is a communication barrier between tourists and the first-line staff. The barriers sometimes lead to a wrong drink delivered, or even the staff members being fired! Customers ordering on their own through a tablet, would solve the problem and ensure that there is maximum efficiency at your restaurant. It also decreases the waiting time for customers, on crowded nights as they can place their order while waiting to get a table.
The ease in order taking directly impacts the number of tables you cater to. Since the orders that are placed on tablets are directly sent to the kitchen the minute you place them, and the chef starts preparing it, this saves a lot of time spent on one table. Such a quick transfer of information and quick services makes the customers feel wanted and might make them want to come back for the great services.
ii) Quick And Efficient Billing
Goa mostly attracts international clients because of its scenic beauty and party vibe. Most of the travelers, from within or across the country are looking out to relax and have a nice vacation. While they visit a restaurant, the consumers would mostly expect a luxurious and comfortable experience, without any time taking transaction or billing processes. This is why it is an absolute must to have an efficient billing feature in the restaurants of Goa. It should be mentioned that all restaurant formats, including QSRs, fine dinings, bars, bakeries and so on would need the feature of quick and efficient billing in their restaurant POS.
An ideal restaurant POS would be the one that gives you enough options in which you can pay, has a split billing feature, accepts payments through multiple modes and works in multiple currencies. This is better for the major crowd of tourists visiting your restaurant.
People generally visit Goa in groups, or as couples. This is why it is always better to have a feature of split billing in your POS, allowing you to have separate bills for separate individuals in the group. Also, keeping an integration of different modes of payments would help you enhance your sales as not everyone would like to pay through cash at your restaurant.
iii) Table Management To Tackle Your Crowded Nights
As a restaurant owner from Goa, you would be familiar with crowded nights and handling a lot of customers at one go. Although it could be both daunting and stressful to keep such large groups of people happy altogether, restaurant management software could be your savior. Table management/reservation feature is generally looked for in a fine dine or a bar POS. Since these two restaurant formats have a higher average spend or order ticket size, it is safe to say that customers would want to make a reservation before they come to a restaurant.
An ideal restaurant POS would help you manage crowded nights by simplifying your table reservations by estimating the exact wait time and increasing the table turnover by taking orders from the customers who are waiting for their tables.
iv) Menu Management
Since the restaurant trends in Goa constantly keep changing, you may be losing out on your customers because of a non-updated menu. The need to bring new recipes and dishes to your menu could not be stressed enough. Customers expect the restaurants to serve them with Goan cuisines and changing specialties.
Having said that, you should look for the menu management feature if you have a QSR or casual dining since you would need to keep updating your menu with the changing trends.
Especially for a restaurant owner of multiple outlets in Goa, you would need to be able to instantly add or remove a specific menu item. Using restaurant management software gives a restaurateur the advantage to add or remove items centrally through one single platform. Apart from that, a restaurant POS would help you identify the performing and non-performing items in your menu, using customer data.
Many restaurateurs believe that a restaurant POS is almost like a partner for their restaurant. Since standardization in operations helps majorly in cutting down food costs, forecasting consumption trends and enhancing profits, it becomes kind of essential to have a restaurant POS at your restaurant in Goa. “A restaurant POS provides end-to-end solutions for all the operations. We use the enterprise module which helps us in analyzing the sales and gives reports about how each branch is performing. We also use the base kitchen module which helps us in controlling the food costs. From the actual sales to taxation, everything is integrated. Posist is always improving and is open for customization, which is one of the best things,” says Mittal and Dsouza, founders of Tio Tilly, Goa.
v) Inventory Management
Another aspect crucial to restaurant management in Goa, especially fine dines, bars and resto-bars is inventory management, which is mostly centered on liquor. As a restaurateur, you must have your inventory details and a stock requirement on your tips. Using technology for the same becomes a necessity here.
The incorporation of restaurant management software makes it possible for you to keep the necessary track of your stock consumption daily, plus the future prediction of how much stock would be needed the next day. This ensures that your customers are never devoid of their favorite drinks, and you always manage to give them a great experience. Along with that, your restaurant POS helps you deal with all your vendors and purchase orders through one single platform.
Many restaurateurs from Goa believe that having a well-established relationship with vendors and suppliers is a major hurdle while running their outlet. The incorporation of technology has helped the restaurateurs to a marginal level, by maintaining communications with the contractors.
Tavora believes that the people in Goa are not that active when it comes to getting the work done on time. “It is troublesome when it comes to getting the work done through third parties, which is why we direly need a restaurant POS here in Goa.”, says Tavora.
vi) Anti-Theft Feature
Having loud parties at your restaurants invite a lot of possible situations for theft and pilferage by your staff. There are many instances where the restaurateurs have complained of a shortage of alcohol, because of which they faced losses in their revenue generation. This is why the shacks, bars and even quick-service restaurants in Goa need restaurant management software to ensure that there are no loopholes while managing your restaurant.
Restaurateurs must have access to every kind of data from their restaurant to avoid any loopholes for fraud. “The minute details of sales in the restaurant to the fraudulent activities taking place, I can access everything. Posist is a notch above in the rest of the market. As it is always improvising in terms of features, apps, and products,” says Tavora.
vii) PMS Integration
Goa has several restaurants within hotels, to serve the needs of tourists. All of these big chains of hotels have a Property Management Software to streamline their hotel operations. Keeping up with the hotel business as well as your restaurant could be a challenging task. This is why having an integrated PMS would help the restaurant in multiple ways.
- Analyzing the room to restaurant conversion ratio, or the number of clients who are visiting the restaurant while staying in the hotel. This would help you have an estimate of the crowd that is expected at your restaurant, and you’re therefore better prepared for the customers.
- Analyzing the in-room delivery time through the software to ensure that no order is late, and the customers are always happy with your services.
- Easy transfer to rooms, which is to say that the bills generated would directly be added to the final bill of their hotel rooms. This makes your customers’ life easier and thereby improve productivity.
All in all, choosing a restaurant management software in Goa requires special features to make sure that the guests have a wonderful experience at your restaurant. Features like anti-theft, quick billing, and inventory management make your restaurants run even at your peak hours without creating havoc.
